Disclaimer: I actually have never seen the movie "Bambi." Disney's "classics" were out of fashion by the time I was at the optimal age for enjoying them. Nevertheless, the message, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" cropped up in my childhood. But that maxim can also be turned that on its head: "If you don't have anything to say, say something nice."
Today is one of the rare days when my idea-basket has stayed empty the whole day. But that's okay, because it clears the decks for something I've wanted to mention for awhile. That "something" is how very impressed I've become with the team that creates the open-source Derby database system, currently under the wing of the Apache Foundation.
In the short time that I've been trying to stay on top of the mailing lists for internal development and user forum, I've been struck by how absolutely gelled the core group seems to be. No small part of that seems to be the excellent written communication skills. And this is a good time to point out that, based on the names of the core contributors, I'd be willing to bet that not all of them natively write/speak English. But you'd never know that. Which makes me embarrassed to think how I've let both Spanish and French rust since high school. (And to think how I used to pride myself on trilingualism!)
And so I think that these folks deserve a shout-out for their dedication and organization and their mastery of language, be it computer or human--all on top of being plain ol' freaky-smart. I very much look forward to learning even more from them in the weeks, months and years to come.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
A missing link
While drafting Saturday's post, I knew I was missing one of the hyperlinks that I wanted to include. Naturally, I didn't run across it again until this morning's news-cruise. The irony was that reading it was the seed of wanting to address the topic of bottom-up innovation being squashed by top-down management.
I'm sorry to admit that I have signed non-compete agreements. The first time I was too naive to know that they are a legal joke here in Wisconsin. Or at least were--I'd have to double-check now. The second time, I had a lawyer ready to rock, should it come to that. (It didn't.)
But it just floors what intellectual fastidious remains in me that these ridiculous things haven't been outlawed at the federal level, upheld by the Supreme Court and notarized by God Almighty. They're Just That Stupid. I'm not saying that employees can't walk out with intellectual property and damage their employers. It's happened to firms for which I've worked, although the real damage has been that the, errr, "spinoff" company has absconded with clients, sometimes under false pretenses. But with other more legally viable options available, the use of non-compete agreements only further cements my opinion that "management science" is an oxymoron.
C'mon: Don't you find it just bit ironic that you can walk down the bookstore business aisle and find rows upon rows of dead trees breaking down "success" into seven habits or one-minute parables or six sigmas or whatever the paint-by-numbers meme-du-jour happens to be?
Yet, just as most people want the miracle pill in place of nutrition and exercise, you'd never sell a leadership book that says "Retain only the best employees and don't give them any motivation whatsoever to to elsewhere." Why? Because it's a "waste" of manager and potential co-worker time to spend hours vetting the top applicants. Because too many managers would rather try to isolate or ignore a "problem" (or even sub-optimal) employee than fire her/him. Because too many people--particularly managers--have been convinced that if they just tweak the reward/punishment mechanisms enough, they can close all the productivity and morale leaks and operate on auto-pilot.
Long story short, non-compete agreements are a cop-out. Just like threatening to fire people for discussing salary information. Or waiting until a downturn to remove the dead wood. Or hiring outside talent rather than growing it from within.
And so I hope that the Massachusetts Legislature sets a trend to remove one cop-out from the business play-book. For good managers--and there are many--won't miss it. Everyone else has one less excuse to suck. And that can't be anything but good news.
I'm sorry to admit that I have signed non-compete agreements. The first time I was too naive to know that they are a legal joke here in Wisconsin. Or at least were--I'd have to double-check now. The second time, I had a lawyer ready to rock, should it come to that. (It didn't.)
But it just floors what intellectual fastidious remains in me that these ridiculous things haven't been outlawed at the federal level, upheld by the Supreme Court and notarized by God Almighty. They're Just That Stupid. I'm not saying that employees can't walk out with intellectual property and damage their employers. It's happened to firms for which I've worked, although the real damage has been that the, errr, "spinoff" company has absconded with clients, sometimes under false pretenses. But with other more legally viable options available, the use of non-compete agreements only further cements my opinion that "management science" is an oxymoron.
C'mon: Don't you find it just bit ironic that you can walk down the bookstore business aisle and find rows upon rows of dead trees breaking down "success" into seven habits or one-minute parables or six sigmas or whatever the paint-by-numbers meme-du-jour happens to be?
Yet, just as most people want the miracle pill in place of nutrition and exercise, you'd never sell a leadership book that says "Retain only the best employees and don't give them any motivation whatsoever to to elsewhere." Why? Because it's a "waste" of manager and potential co-worker time to spend hours vetting the top applicants. Because too many managers would rather try to isolate or ignore a "problem" (or even sub-optimal) employee than fire her/him. Because too many people--particularly managers--have been convinced that if they just tweak the reward/punishment mechanisms enough, they can close all the productivity and morale leaks and operate on auto-pilot.
Long story short, non-compete agreements are a cop-out. Just like threatening to fire people for discussing salary information. Or waiting until a downturn to remove the dead wood. Or hiring outside talent rather than growing it from within.
And so I hope that the Massachusetts Legislature sets a trend to remove one cop-out from the business play-book. For good managers--and there are many--won't miss it. Everyone else has one less excuse to suck. And that can't be anything but good news.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Can workaholism be encouraged?
To me there are only two coding "highs" worth having:
Sure, you can foster a workaholic culture through traditional means. The threat of firing--particularly in the depressed job market--will work for awhile. Sometimes workaholism comes with the territory: Both programming and investment banking have (or had) reputations for being "warrior cultures." Thus, managers in those industries could reliably expect 60-, 80-, and 100+-hour workweeks from their underlings, all the result of pure machismo. Huge incentives for equally huge performance might work for some in just about any industry.
But what about everyone else in Cubeville? Apart from being able to concentrate on what I'm being paid to do, other things that make me more inclined to stay at my desk (real or virtual) rather than leave it are:
But it seems to me that getting extra productivity from the folks who make a business work doesn't have to cost that much. You just can't let the efficiency-freaks take over. Because "efficiencies" come with a price, sometimes up-front (mostly when you're talking about equipment or software), but with people the cost (in my experience) is ongoing. The underlying problem, of course, is that the true cost of "efficiency" most often doesn't appear as an itemized debit/credit on the books. But it does find its way to the bottom line.
- The fifteen-minute (or so) high that comes from fighting (and fighting and fighting) but ultimately vanquishing a gremlin.
- The high that comes from falling into the vortex of the raw act of creation, and losing oneself in it for hours on end.
Sure, you can foster a workaholic culture through traditional means. The threat of firing--particularly in the depressed job market--will work for awhile. Sometimes workaholism comes with the territory: Both programming and investment banking have (or had) reputations for being "warrior cultures." Thus, managers in those industries could reliably expect 60-, 80-, and 100+-hour workweeks from their underlings, all the result of pure machismo. Huge incentives for equally huge performance might work for some in just about any industry.
But what about everyone else in Cubeville? Apart from being able to concentrate on what I'm being paid to do, other things that make me more inclined to stay at my desk (real or virtual) rather than leave it are:
- Is there a refrigerator where I can stash my lunch, or do I have to go/order out?
- Can I access email from outside the office?
- Better yet, can I remote into my desktop from outside the office?
- Best case scenario, can I remote into my desktop without having to fire up my Windows computer?
- If I have to stay late and (inevitably) get the munchies, is there anything besides junk food in the vending machine(s)?
- If I have to make a private phone call, do I have to go to another part of the building entirely?
- Can I flex my hours between weeks so that I'm not cleaning my filing cabinet and/or hard drive just to make the sacrosanct 40 hours one week and leaving stuff half-done the next?
- Am I working in the "cliquey" kind of office where people go on break in herds? Because it's rather disruptive when an entire herd disappears.
But it seems to me that getting extra productivity from the folks who make a business work doesn't have to cost that much. You just can't let the efficiency-freaks take over. Because "efficiencies" come with a price, sometimes up-front (mostly when you're talking about equipment or software), but with people the cost (in my experience) is ongoing. The underlying problem, of course, is that the true cost of "efficiency" most often doesn't appear as an itemized debit/credit on the books. But it does find its way to the bottom line.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Golden eggs and goose-feed
Sometimes I think that we take the mythos of Yankee ingenuity a bit too much for granted. Particularly when we expect to invent some new gadget that will set the world on fire and drag an entire economy out of its doldrums.
The essential problem is that we expect the proverbial golden eggs without any thought to what we're feeding the goose. To illustrate:
- The U.S. patent system is an unmitigated disaster that exists to keep lawyers in Armani suits.
- AP was suing its own affiliates for posting AP content. Fortunately, AP clued into its own cluelessness before any serious damage was done. (Which is only one level of stupid below Fox News suing The Simpsons a few years ago, which would have lead to Fox essentially suing itself.)
- A couple years ago, Microsoft's Visual Studio blatantly ripped off a feature from the open source BlueJ project, then attempted to file for a patent--which would, presumably, have led to an infringement lawsuit against the feature's actual creators.
- The whole issue of whether or not "orphaned works" can even be brought into the public domain--a no-brainer, one would think--devolves into an Olympian squabble over who cashes in, in the unlikely event that one of them turns out to be the next DaVinci Code.
So...explain to me how, exactly, the legendary two guys (or gals) in a garage are going to pull us out of this mess?
[Sound of crickets chirping]
Yeah, I thought so.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Time for Marketing 2.0?
It's a truism that the point of "classic" marketing is to make you unhappy. Unhappy enough to fork over your hard-earned gelt for whatever snake oil makes you believe that the unhappiness will stop. And if the marketing is particularly clever, you can pass on your unhappiness by flaunting your snake oil in the face of The Joneses so that they will rush out to own their very own bottle of anti-unhappiness.
Key term: "Anti-unhappiness." I don't mean "bottle of happiness." The opposite of "unhappy" is not always "happy." The no-man's-land between the two can be miles in breadth--and I think that it tends to widen if one does not have clear and concrete definitions of both terms.
But (radical thought) what if marketing made you happy? Not just an artificial injection of feel-good: Kittens and American Flag and cute guys/girls smiling Just For You. No, not the usual schtick. That's been done to death, too. What about marketing that treated the interaction as more of an ongoing consultation rather than a one-off slam-bam-why-are-you-still-here transaction? The closest thing I've seen so far is President Obama's 2008 campaign and subsequent "policy support" campaigns. You don't have to like the guy to recognize that he's a game-changer on a number of levels. That's merely one of them.
I'm old enough to remember Reagan, a.k.a. The Great Communicator. Particularly the feeling of turning to our national paternal figure for explanation and comfort after the Challenger explosion--and knowing, even as it was happening, what a pastmaster that man was at it. I also remember watching Clinton's State of the Union address as the Monica Lewinsky scandal was breaking and thinking, "Dang, you're good at this."
But the new guy at 1600 Pennsylvania? Those moves I haven't seen before. But you can bet that my inner consumer and I are certainly on the lookout for them now. Because not all marketers are Least Common Denominator troglodytes. Specifically, we're looking for the gap between those who grok the new rules and the warranty-scam or akai berry or wrinkle eraser sleaze-balls to form. If the bottom-feeders slither back under their rocks and more or less leave the field to the peddlers of actual happy, well, I can think of worse legacies for a President to have...
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Flamebait, Part II
He doesn't--and almost certainly will never--know it, but I lost one of my mentors today: A geek who can write. Trust me, they're not exactly a commodity.
I've been a "Joel on Software" reader for at least eight, probably creeping up on nine years. Mr. Spolsky has provided some tremendous help/encouragement as I've morphed from technical writer to programmer and freelancing trying-to-be.
By nature, I have a hot temper that cools very quickly after an explosion. So I put several hours between reading his latest column for Inc. and this post, to allow time for cooling. That (mostly) hasn't happened.
The article, if you haven't perused the above link, discusses the compensation system at Fog Creek Software, the company that Mr. Spolsky and Michael Pryor founded. The passage in question is this, taking the liberty of adding emphasis:
Let's get one thing straight: There is no such thing as "rote, menial work" for human beings in any company. That's why we have computers. If you can't keep every last one of your employees mentally engaged and wanting more, it's a Management Fail. If you penalize employees for work you've created to be rote and menial, that's an Epic Management Fail.
Now, you--as in the rhetorical "you"--might argue that there is a distinction between "profit centers" and "overhead." That is, if you pay attention to the bean-counters. Isn't that, after all, how they start out every Microeconomics course ever taught? You remember: A doctor loses billable time scheduling his--and it was still invariably "his" back in my day--own appointments, filing paperwork and so on. So the hypothetical doctor hires an equally hypothetical assistant (at a considerably lesser hypothetical salary) to free up that time for more profitable use.
But then the logic goes one step further...and in my irate-and-considerably-less-than-humble opinion a step too far. That step involves finding a means to minimize the assistant's cut of the billing rate to maximize the doctor's take. Naturally, the quickest route to depressing the receptionist's earnings is to trivialize that work as "just answering phones" or "just typing" or "just" what-have-you. And, frankly, that's just stupid. For any company, not just a doctor's office.
Of course, much of what passes for the "science" of accounting involves pushing costs on third parties: WalMart employees on public health care, Delaware corporations, companies going bankrupt to avoid litigation, or offshoring to less...shall we say..."legally fastidious" countries. And so on. The profit-center/overhead distinction is, to my thinking, living on the same street, ethically, as the cost-avoidance tactics just mentioned. And, contrary to the world in which bean-counters and Econ. professors inhabit, the costs are no less real for not showing up on this quarter's P&L statements.
Dude, that "assistant" is the first contact that a potential customer/vendor/employee/partner has with your company. Possibly even the last. You'd better believe it matters. Do you think I give a fat rat's patootie if you cater in lunch for your programmers or let them play Rock Band on company time when I'm calling with a question/order/problem? What planet do you live on? All I want is a friendly voice that connects me to exactly the right person in thirty seconds or less. Imagine how, in this day of Byzantine touch-tone menus and call centers whose function is not unlike that of the Soviet peasant in wartime, how much of a competitive advantage it is to have a person who can tackle the problem at hand without a script?
Similarly, you can consider software testing and data validation "menial" if you care to. I'll take a pass. Caste systems are for incompetent managers who can only see value in what looks suspiciously like what they've done for a living. For me, it makes too much sense to have people doing what they're best at. Case in point: I'll spend close to a day of "programmer" time reconciling messed up data. Which is all well and good at the beginning of the fiscal year when there's funding to do so. But later? Well, we've hired several "data people" who have moved up the supposed "food chain" to other things--not always to good effect, organizationally. We'd managed to find one person who actually liked (go figure) scrubbing and importing data. Except that we laid off that person when the chips were down. So much for that doctor theory from Microeconomics, hey?
So here's where I want to hammer home an important distinction: I've said before that I want nothing to do with prima-donna employees. But I do want an All Rock Star team. Sure, I want rock star programmers. Who doesn't? I also want a rock star receptionist, rock star testers, rock star data folks, and so on. If I can afford it, I want a rock star barista for the coffee/wine bar. The friggin' janitor should be a rock star. Why? Because I don't want botulism from ookey coffee carafes. I don't want a potential customer/employee/vendor/partner swinging by the rest room and being put off the drippy soap dispenser or scale around the faucets or what-have-you. I don't want people getting sick from the HVAC system or whatever cleaning chemicals are floating in the air. So you end up paying your janitor an outrageous wage. Ooh-lah. When you think about the obnoxious bank that pure incompetents were/are making, running entire companies into the ground, I don't think that a so-called "overpaid" janitor really matters in the grand scheme of things. I mean, if you're looking to hire only "the best," that should permeate the entire organization--not just the "caste" with which you most strongly identify-- should it not?
And, yes, I realize that there is a price to be paid for this ideal. That's why they call them "ideals." Organized religion wouldn't be 1/100th so profitable if folks had the stones to live up to what they profess. Originally, Ben and Jerry's pay scale was such that the salaries of the eponymous Ben and Jerry were never more than ten times that of the lowest-paid employee. Eventually, they sold out to the Dark Side. We've seen that movie before. It's easy to say that, if I won the small business lottery and found myself heading a big company, that I'd be different. Heck, it's probably sheer hubris to say it. But I'm gonna say it anyway. In front of the entire internet, even. And I'm gonna go one better than B&J. My salary? Five times, max. If the bills are paid and there's a bit left over for a vacation once a year and a gadget or three, do I really need anything else? Okay, maybe setting up college/retirement trust funds for my family. But a beach house? Oh, please. I'd have a company to serve. Not to mention that I sunburn in a heartbeat.
But here's what: I'm also the kid who hid her stacks of $500s and $100s under the Monopoly board and looked the other way when her stepsister landing on Boardwalk or Park Place would have bankrupted her. Why? Because that would have brought the game--and consequently the fun--to an end. If you're not in it for the game, why bother? You can make more working for The Man. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The only thing "wrong" is becoming The Man. When your bathwater starts tasting like '82 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, it's time to stop drinking. (Actually, when it tastes like anything other than bathwater, it's time to stop drinking, but you know what I mean...)
So, on second thought, perhaps I am somewhat wrong about losing a mentor. Because an example of how not to be can be equally instructive.
I've been a "Joel on Software" reader for at least eight, probably creeping up on nine years. Mr. Spolsky has provided some tremendous help/encouragement as I've morphed from technical writer to programmer and freelancing trying-to-be.
By nature, I have a hot temper that cools very quickly after an explosion. So I put several hours between reading his latest column for Inc. and this post, to allow time for cooling. That (mostly) hasn't happened.
The article, if you haven't perused the above link, discusses the compensation system at Fog Creek Software, the company that Mr. Spolsky and Michael Pryor founded. The passage in question is this, taking the liberty of adding emphasis:
I can't fairly say whether or not that made my eyes cross, because at the time all I was seeing was pure red--as in #FF0000 for the web and graphics mavens. It's merely a sign of creeping middle age that my pod-mates weren't treated to a spluttering round of profanity--for which I have some reputation of note, I might add.In Fog Creek's system, every employee is assigned a level. Currently, these levels range from 8 (for a summer intern) to 16 (for me). Your level is calculated formulaically based on three factors: experience, scope of responsibility, and skill set. Once we determine your number, you make the same as every other employee at that level.
The experience part is pretty easy: It's based on the number of years of full-time experience you have in the field you're working in. No work done while you were still in school counts, and certain types of rote, menial work can never add up to more than a year of experience. If you worked as a receptionist for six years, for example, you aren't credited with six years of experience; I give you credit for one year.
Let's get one thing straight: There is no such thing as "rote, menial work" for human beings in any company. That's why we have computers. If you can't keep every last one of your employees mentally engaged and wanting more, it's a Management Fail. If you penalize employees for work you've created to be rote and menial, that's an Epic Management Fail.
Now, you--as in the rhetorical "you"--might argue that there is a distinction between "profit centers" and "overhead." That is, if you pay attention to the bean-counters. Isn't that, after all, how they start out every Microeconomics course ever taught? You remember: A doctor loses billable time scheduling his--and it was still invariably "his" back in my day--own appointments, filing paperwork and so on. So the hypothetical doctor hires an equally hypothetical assistant (at a considerably lesser hypothetical salary) to free up that time for more profitable use.
But then the logic goes one step further...and in my irate-and-considerably-less-than-humble opinion a step too far. That step involves finding a means to minimize the assistant's cut of the billing rate to maximize the doctor's take. Naturally, the quickest route to depressing the receptionist's earnings is to trivialize that work as "just answering phones" or "just typing" or "just" what-have-you. And, frankly, that's just stupid. For any company, not just a doctor's office.
Of course, much of what passes for the "science" of accounting involves pushing costs on third parties: WalMart employees on public health care, Delaware corporations, companies going bankrupt to avoid litigation, or offshoring to less...shall we say..."legally fastidious" countries. And so on. The profit-center/overhead distinction is, to my thinking, living on the same street, ethically, as the cost-avoidance tactics just mentioned. And, contrary to the world in which bean-counters and Econ. professors inhabit, the costs are no less real for not showing up on this quarter's P&L statements.
Dude, that "assistant" is the first contact that a potential customer/vendor/employee/partner has with your company. Possibly even the last. You'd better believe it matters. Do you think I give a fat rat's patootie if you cater in lunch for your programmers or let them play Rock Band on company time when I'm calling with a question/order/problem? What planet do you live on? All I want is a friendly voice that connects me to exactly the right person in thirty seconds or less. Imagine how, in this day of Byzantine touch-tone menus and call centers whose function is not unlike that of the Soviet peasant in wartime, how much of a competitive advantage it is to have a person who can tackle the problem at hand without a script?
Similarly, you can consider software testing and data validation "menial" if you care to. I'll take a pass. Caste systems are for incompetent managers who can only see value in what looks suspiciously like what they've done for a living. For me, it makes too much sense to have people doing what they're best at. Case in point: I'll spend close to a day of "programmer" time reconciling messed up data. Which is all well and good at the beginning of the fiscal year when there's funding to do so. But later? Well, we've hired several "data people" who have moved up the supposed "food chain" to other things--not always to good effect, organizationally. We'd managed to find one person who actually liked (go figure) scrubbing and importing data. Except that we laid off that person when the chips were down. So much for that doctor theory from Microeconomics, hey?
So here's where I want to hammer home an important distinction: I've said before that I want nothing to do with prima-donna employees. But I do want an All Rock Star team. Sure, I want rock star programmers. Who doesn't? I also want a rock star receptionist, rock star testers, rock star data folks, and so on. If I can afford it, I want a rock star barista for the coffee/wine bar. The friggin' janitor should be a rock star. Why? Because I don't want botulism from ookey coffee carafes. I don't want a potential customer/employee/vendor/partner swinging by the rest room and being put off the drippy soap dispenser or scale around the faucets or what-have-you. I don't want people getting sick from the HVAC system or whatever cleaning chemicals are floating in the air. So you end up paying your janitor an outrageous wage. Ooh-lah. When you think about the obnoxious bank that pure incompetents were/are making, running entire companies into the ground, I don't think that a so-called "overpaid" janitor really matters in the grand scheme of things. I mean, if you're looking to hire only "the best," that should permeate the entire organization--not just the "caste" with which you most strongly identify-- should it not?
And, yes, I realize that there is a price to be paid for this ideal. That's why they call them "ideals." Organized religion wouldn't be 1/100th so profitable if folks had the stones to live up to what they profess. Originally, Ben and Jerry's pay scale was such that the salaries of the eponymous Ben and Jerry were never more than ten times that of the lowest-paid employee. Eventually, they sold out to the Dark Side. We've seen that movie before. It's easy to say that, if I won the small business lottery and found myself heading a big company, that I'd be different. Heck, it's probably sheer hubris to say it. But I'm gonna say it anyway. In front of the entire internet, even. And I'm gonna go one better than B&J. My salary? Five times, max. If the bills are paid and there's a bit left over for a vacation once a year and a gadget or three, do I really need anything else? Okay, maybe setting up college/retirement trust funds for my family. But a beach house? Oh, please. I'd have a company to serve. Not to mention that I sunburn in a heartbeat.
But here's what: I'm also the kid who hid her stacks of $500s and $100s under the Monopoly board and looked the other way when her stepsister landing on Boardwalk or Park Place would have bankrupted her. Why? Because that would have brought the game--and consequently the fun--to an end. If you're not in it for the game, why bother? You can make more working for The Man. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The only thing "wrong" is becoming The Man. When your bathwater starts tasting like '82 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, it's time to stop drinking. (Actually, when it tastes like anything other than bathwater, it's time to stop drinking, but you know what I mean...)
So, on second thought, perhaps I am somewhat wrong about losing a mentor. Because an example of how not to be can be equally instructive.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A caveat for consultants...and consultees
I've spent most of my official geek life as a consultant in one form or another. And while I'm still mystified over what constitutes "consulting skills," I have developed an appreciation for consultant jokes along the way. (My rationale: If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, at least show them that you don't take yourself all too seriously. ) To date, the best consultant joke I've heard is...
Q: How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the bulb and the other to hammer it into the faucet.
[Rim shot]
Being quite politically clueless m'self, I'm grateful to William Cohen and his How to Make it Big as a Consultant for pointing out that your immediate function as a consultant may sometimes have bupkis to do with your technical skills. Rather, you may at some point be brought in as the figurehead "expert" for a purely political battle. In the proverbial nutshell, you're being paid so that someone can go all "Neener-neener-neener" on someone else.
For the politically-unsavvy technical folks out there: File this away in your list of "occupational hazards." If you haven't heard why the ancient Greek sage Teiresias was blinded, look it up now. This is anything but a new phenomenon.
For the more politically-inclined folks: Please don't think about doing this. Sure, maybe you'll be lucky enough to draft a new or naive technical person to The Dark Side. But the odds are better that you're just tipping off the geek in question that you've become power-blind--and as such, the proverbial useful idiot for anyone who's clever enough to work you. Watch Yojimbo (or A Fistful of Dollars if subtitles annoy you...or Last Man Standing if you prefer shooting to scriptwriting), should you want further illustration of the concept.
Q: How many consultants does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the bulb and the other to hammer it into the faucet.
[Rim shot]
Being quite politically clueless m'self, I'm grateful to William Cohen and his How to Make it Big as a Consultant for pointing out that your immediate function as a consultant may sometimes have bupkis to do with your technical skills. Rather, you may at some point be brought in as the figurehead "expert" for a purely political battle. In the proverbial nutshell, you're being paid so that someone can go all "Neener-neener-neener" on someone else.
For the politically-unsavvy technical folks out there: File this away in your list of "occupational hazards." If you haven't heard why the ancient Greek sage Teiresias was blinded, look it up now. This is anything but a new phenomenon.
For the more politically-inclined folks: Please don't think about doing this. Sure, maybe you'll be lucky enough to draft a new or naive technical person to The Dark Side. But the odds are better that you're just tipping off the geek in question that you've become power-blind--and as such, the proverbial useful idiot for anyone who's clever enough to work you. Watch Yojimbo (or A Fistful of Dollars if subtitles annoy you...or Last Man Standing if you prefer shooting to scriptwriting), should you want further illustration of the concept.
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