Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #32 One is willing to punish; the other is willing to accept 周瑜打黄盖，一个愿打，一个愿挨
A situation where one appears to punish another, but it’s just a ruse.
This article is one of the “Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals” series.
The Story
The Battle of Red Cliff (John woo made a film with the name in 2008) was a famous battle in Chinese history. Zhou Yu, the commander-in-chief of the South resisted the invasion of the powerful North.
Huang Gai, a well-respected general of the South, came to see Zhou Yu, and suggested attacking the army with fire.
Zhou Yu claimed excitedly, “Wow, that’s exactly the strategy that I was thinking! But we need a spy who can infiltrate into the enemy's camp and plot the strategy.”
Huang Gai said he was willing to do it. They decided to carry out the trick of Huang being flogged to win the enemy’s trust.
The next day, Zhou Yu convened a general assembly. Huang Gai purposely infuriated Zhou Yu by criticising his battle plan.
Zhou Yu was enraged and ordered to execute Huang Gai. After others’ pleading, the punishment is reduced to whipping 50 times. Huang was badly injured and passed out a few times.
Zuge Liang (widely regarded as the smartest person in Chinese history), an honourable guest of the ally, watched and did not say anything. After the event, the South’s deputy commander came to see Zuge Liang and complained: “Sir, why didn’t you say nice words to save General Huang?”.
Zuge Liang smiled and said: “Why should I? One is willing to punish; the other is willing to accept.”
Subsequently, Huang Gai escaped and joined the North. Shortly after, he was able to set fire to the North’s camp, and the South won the war.
The Meaning
A situation where one appears to punish another, but it’s just a ruse.
Examples in Software Development
1. Useless Methodology Training
Over my 20 years working on many different projects, I found that the team members usually didn’t receive technical training, such as Test Automation. Instead, they often attended useless methodology training, such as STIL, PRINCE2, Agile, Scrum and SAFe.
Below are two interesting stories on methodology training.
PRINCE2 Training
Around 2009, PRINCE2 was a popular software project management process used in governments. Not surprisingly, some organizations started offering training and certifications.
One day, several business analysts and a programmer mentioned they would attend the PRINCE2 training the next day. The certification exam was in the afternoon immediately after the training. Our project officer heard and asked with interest. The senior business analyst said: “It is a process, everyone can pass”. So, the project officer went with them the next day.
They all received their PRINCE2 certifications a few days later.
Agile Training
In 2019, I worked in a large financial company. Every team had a dedicated Agile Coach (contractor) then. One day, all contractors were told that there was no need for them to come in on Wednesday as all permanent team members would attend an ‘Agile Training’ provided by a consulting company. The contractors could attend the training but would not get paid for the day.
I chose not to go. I attended this kind of ‘agile training’ at other companies before and found that 100% were fake agile stuff.
The day after, a few contractors asked the permanent employees how the training went. “It was good” was a common answer. During the stand-up meeting, our Agile Coach pointed to the Jira board (on a big TV), and said “this is what the coach talked about in yesterday’s training”.
A manual tester who started learning test automation with me about a week ago, said quietly, “We’ve already had an agile coach. Why did we go to learn from another one?”
Later, when I was mentoring this manual tester in developing/maintaining automated tests, she asked me a few questions. Then she said: “Yesterday’s training was a waste of time. It sounded like a perfect process, but it did not touch regression testing at all which has always been the biggest problem with our project. Seeing automated test execution feels real Agile to me.”
2. Why do these agile training exist?
I am sure many readers have experienced some useless training like the above. Why? It certainly costs quite some money for the company: training fee as well as staff time.
The reasons can be explained with this idiom:
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