If you've ever been a programmer in a bureaucratic environment, you've surely thought of yourself as the spawn of the red-headed step child and the family mule.
Performing heroic acts in a bureacracy is patently a bad idea. Why? Because if you've jumped the Grand Canyon on a motorcylce once, surely you can do it again or anything else for that matter. The bureaucrats are only half the problem here folks. Our damnable need to please (or to not rock the boat) is the other half of the issue. You're a programmer right? That must mean you can do anything. Time to start disabusing some folks of some faulty notions. Expectation management is a must. Every boy or girl programmer out there wanted to be Superman or Wonder Woman growing up right (or some other ridiculously clad character with amazingly unrealistic physique)? Why, because we were/are geeks. We were/are social outcasts because we were smarter or more creative or something than everybody else and they loathed us for it. Time to grow up and put the cape away.
While we are at it, we might think about passing on some understanding about what it takes to do our job, because the higher ups haven't a clue, and its more because we over-respected the pecking order and never told them just how much it takes to do what we do than them being self-absorbed.
Secretaries don't get enough respect. They keep the world from being overrun by incompentent managers. They don't get appreciated enough, why should we? Why, because for the most part, secretaries are support personal. We are production assests. You can't speed up the auto line any more that it already is Mr. Ford, and it is already going too dang fast. Managers can see into the daily lifes of their secretarial staff and at least try not to push them too hard. As far as most of them are concerned, designers, IAs and developers might as well be performing black magic.
What is grossly needed here is some education about what it takes to design web pages, architect information and build web apps, and no Mr. Boss Man I can't, "Just build one of those CMS thingies from scratch." At least not for what you pay me. :)