A poll of lottery ticket buyers indicate that a good proportion expect to win.

1. Have congress declare anything delivered by the USPS to have the same legal protections as the mail it currently delivers.
2. Establish email addresses that correspond to physical addresses; issue digital stamps.
3. Profit

I generally avoid the whole debate of review or not to review. My rule of thumb is, let them use their own method, be it with peer review or not; if they're shipping faster and profiting more, I have something to learn. So what about the manager that wants to promote best practices? My answer is, it is hypothetically possible to data mine for best practices. Of course, you aren't any good data mining, and you don't understand productivity yourself, so your observations about best practices are either anecdotal or hopelessly biased; in short, you're doing more distraction than good. Case in point, the latest greatest plan to make the programmers productive never does ship more software. Oh sure, it produces lots of great stories for which the boss can never cough up data, but never more software.

One of those old Chinese stratagems says "Let the enemy's own spy sow discord in the enemy camp". In this case, the camp is one's own mind. If you find yourself falling into this trap too often, better to ignore the cacophony.

You have to understand, when changes are allowed five minutes from or after the deadline, then by definition it is impossible to be on time, no matter how great a job you've done as programmer. I don't stay late, and I don't do overtime. Period. As a result, I'm always on time (of course, I do get my part done on time). Is that counter intuitive? If you've been in the trenches, you probably understand, the problem is not technical, it's social. As such, all it requires is a little backbone on your part to solve it.

* Do yourself a favor, say no and hold onto your dignity. Any programmer who won't stand up for themselves is just asking to be a punching bag, and those sort of relationships turn the manager into something worse.
* It's just last minute nerves, they'll get over it. The change wasn't important anyway. No, it really wasn't.
* You won't get in trouble for not "taking one for the team". Deep down, the guy asking for the change knows the reason for being late is his fault. If it was a genuine problem, he was either unprepared or didn't think things through thoroughly. Anyone looking into it will see that it's his fault, and after all, it's his butt on the line. At this point, cognitive dissonance will kick in, and they'll either decide the problem wasn't so bad, or it's OK to be a little late.
* You won't get rewarded for "taking one for the team".

So now the self-promoting guy who spends his time writing blogs about how bad the smart programmers smell gets the job done better? Yea, right.

The article reads like a typical journalistic straw man. Strange cave dwelling programmer is rude, smelly, and not at all chivalrous. Bad programmer (if you're not convinced yet that our antagonist is bad, the story will add other irrelevant, and probably untrue details to help persuade you, generally by trying to conjure an image of someone that's done you wrong). Wouldn't it be nice to be rid of them? (duh!) *sigh*, if only they weren't so in with the establishment (a set up for bringing down the expert). Something happens to show that programmer was just mediocre (hooray!). The brave consultant/knight saves the day. And they lived happily ever after.

This story is pure rubbish. First of all, there are plenty of talented, polite folks that bring the whole package to the table. I don't claim to be one, but I am fortunate enough to work with a few. Also, the consultant rarely succeeds in doing anything other than screwing things up while they firmly attach themselves to the money mammaries of whatever company they are milking.

Fortunately, the reverse story is generally true. Evil snake-oil consultant is latched on like a lamprey. Smart, humble, articulate, lemon scented programmer saves the day with a elegantly simple technical solution. Other programmers rejoice at their new found freedom. The new knowledge spreads through the technical ranks, elevating everyone's game.