SYNERGEN – gives you energy following a corporate merger.

ANALOZAC – No-one gets requirements capture right first time, so avoid those ‘post-requirements analysis blues’ with Analozac. The customer doesn’t want to deal with depressed software analysts, so a daily dose of Analozac keeps you smiling and cheerful and pretty soon the customer will question his own sanity. Also useful before, during and after any review at which the customer is present, especially ones where the customer is going to be less than happy with your team’s efforts..

OBJECTOMYCIN – A course of Objectomycin enables software developer to produce object oriented software; should be administered at project start-up stage and dosage continued until project closedown.

HACKERCETAMOL – Hackers giving you headaches? Two tablets of Hackercetamol three times daily will alleviate symptoms of hacking . For really hard-to-reform hackers, use Hackercetamol Plus.

DESIGNOPROFEN – alleviates the headaches, pains in the neck and other symptoms of ‘design strain’.

CODE-AGRA – One tablet administered 10 mins before coding enables poorly performing programmers to write code with vigour and stamina (three to four hours); quality of output not guaranteed.

BUGICILLIN – given to V&V team, kills off 99% of all known bugs. Given to programmers, prevents 99% of all known bugs. Caution: over-use of Bugicillin may lead to resistant strains of bug in some environments; some programmers are allergic to Bugicillin; cannot be mixed with Code-agra.

REVIEWALIN – Suffering from Review Concentration problems? Your attention wanders during those long management meetings? Reviewalin helps control RCDHD (Review Concentration Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ‘the review jitters’ for short). Can be used in combination with Analozac.

OHNOHYPNOL – Take one Ohnohypnol before your performance review and you won’t remember all the bad things said about you. Unfortunately, you’ll lose your inhibitions and won’t remember all the bad things you say to your boss but at least you won’t remember the pain and rejection of being fired on the spot.

Synertocin: this promotes production of synergy and makes the synergy available to other metabolic processes; the ‘synergy let-down hormone’.

Synerdrenalin (Esynaphin): produced during high stress situations, allows rapid synergy synthesis, increases heart-rate, pupil dilation, respiration rate etc. In non-engineers, these symptoms are also seen when attracted to others, in engineers these symptoms are purely part of the synergy cycle and should not be confused with attraction (unless engineer is gazing longingly at a coveted piece of kit).

Thyrosyn: Responsible for high or low tolerance of synergy; over-production means greater utilisation of available synergy (symptoms: ravenous appetite for mergers); under-production means low-level of synergy uptake (symptoms: anergy).

Testostosyn: what male engineers produce, responsible for the ‘urge to merge’.

Oestrosyn: what makes female engineers have an urge to merge. Held in check by progestosyn which, at the wrong time of the cycle, can send engineer running screaming at mere thought of a high-synergy situation.

Engineerogen (Geekoxin): makes engineers supremely unattractive to anyone who isn’t also an engineer. Also causes geekiness, tendency to tell bad jokes and boring stories, collect gadgets and dismantle/reprogram entire systems just for ‘the hell of it’.