Blindly emulating

I have gathered that this phenomenon is quite rampant in the industry. With peer pressure quite significantly high, the IT industry is witness to blind chase of best practices. Well, am not really talking about an organization's best practices but individual. The recent one I stumbled upon was the trend to be paranoid or pretend to be so. Well, that's the best and easy way to showcase you are hardworking, you're proactive and full of energy. Little does the person realize that his peers are intelligent and what works today the best is the smart way of working and not being paranoid.

Paranoia, apparently is a negative word. It could mean fear, suspicion, obsession etc. Excessive obsession is also not healthy, isn't it? Well, I met this chap who is in his mid thirties and was professing the need for professionals to be paranoid. Well, seeing his enthusiasm, I did fell for it. However, it was pretty much evident in the first day itself that it was all vapour ware - I mean the paranoid part. It was no work till late in the evening and some data entry job in the evening onwards. And, then there was tweaking up fonts, colours, aligning etc also that went took 2-3 hours. In all a perfect example of unscrupulous work and unproductive work atmosphere.