Engineering Blog

In a previous post, Eric “The Red” Siefkas outed one of the nicknames we use internally, complete with technicolor highlighting. Adam has been rocking the name “Glitterpants” since before I was at Rally. Eric has been “The Red” since March or so. I’ve been “Ryan (not Martens)” since shortly after I started. There are plenty of others.

The nicknames all have unique stories. Some are totally NSFW (at least at any place I’ve worked other than Rally). Some are simple variations on the person’s real name, like Russ “Rusty Bolt” Teabault. All of the names help keep the atmosphere light.

Many people’s display names and/or avatars in Rally reflect the nicknames, often to the amusement of coworkers. How many teams do you know of where someone looks at the Kanban board and seeing an unrecognized owner on one of the cards, says “who’s Foul Bachelor Frog?” That’s the new display name a former coworker chose for me when my wife and kids left town for a few weeks during their summer vacation. He was speculating about… uh… never mind. In retaliation I changed his display name (and avatar) to “Trollface”.

Along the same lines, Garston incorrectly refers to himself as G-Money in his summary of “Phys-Ed”. Our application thinks his name is Garstina.

Obviously, whomever decided to make us subscription administrators severely misjudged our maturity levels.

The nicknames and avatars are only part of the constant ribbing to which we subject each other. Perhaps the most amusing (and least appropriate) aspect of our friendly teasing is the constant denigration of each other’s mothers. There’s a shot at the foosball table named after my mom. It’s when you severely misjudge the position of the ball, stub the shot, and break the leg off of the man. The shot is named for my mom’s unfortunate kiteboarding accident and her brief stay in a wheelchair. That’s about the only mom-themed joke I feel comfortable sharing publicly.

“Your mom” jokes are widespread enough that in an all-hands meeting a few months ago, a high ranking management-type saw fit to crack one. His didn’t quite conform to the same style we use in engineering, but it was much appreciated nonetheless.

How cool is that?

Here’s a sampling of some of the other nicknames: Jeff “Smitty” and/or “Smit Dawg” Smith, Matt “Big Sexy” Novinger, “The” Chauncey, James “Doc” Brundege, Sarah “Tippy” Tipton and Stephanie “Full House” Tanner.

Did I miss any?