Two weeks ago, I got shafted at a presentation. Our purpose was to speak about three things:

  • An entire database structure I stood up
  • An API I wrote for it to interface perfectly with:
  • This guy's copypasta'd web app he built while on a team in a separate branch in the company.

He asked me to give him a run-down on the system before the presentation. Me, being enthusiastic and proud of my accomplishments, gave him a grand tour. Come presentation time, he stole my tour verbatim. The entire time, he was belittling my accomplishments, and using "we" when I did something, and "I" when he did. But he was higher up in the chain. Not my boss, but I let him have his day, following whatever ground of Rule #1 of power this guy stood on.

Over the course of the next day, I realized I had been played. The more I thought about it, rule #1 wasn't in effect. He wasn't my boss. Though much older (23 vs 40), he was brought from the other branch to assist me.

We had another minor presentation today, focusing on improvement of frequent tasks. I've deliberately been as vague as possible in my e-mails and communications to him regarding the system's improvement. I allowed him the floor first, like before. He tried stealing my vague script again, and was blasted with questions. As much of a dick as it makes me seem, the schadenfreude in seeing him unable to answer them was euphoric. Every question was followed by a panicked look at myself, begging me to chime in. After a couple, I stood up, and suggested giving a more detailed explanation of the system's improvements.

Boss just came in to talk to me, and I focused entirely on body language, after reading a few great posts on it recently. He was impressed on the performance, and said it was clear who was really getting their hands dirty with this stuff. He said he saw through the guy's BS last presentation, but glad I redeemed myself this time around.