You really need to watch this in High Resolution on youtube –> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbNymZ7vqY
“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
http://reddit.com is one of those nerd/geek websites doing social news aggregation. Its much more geeky then digg or others, so the content seems to be of higher quality, if not focused more in to my spectrum of interest. A lot of it can be tripe, but every so often, a diamond comes out of the rough.
A few weeks ago one of the members posted this simple sentence.
I’ve had 4 “real” programming jobs in my 5-year career. They’ve all ended the same way: innovation isn’t allowed, new features are all emergencies, and development ends up the least of my responsibilities.
Sounds like some self pitying whining talk to me… except every so often I wonder if I’ve been in the same boat as well… Then my optimism and naivety kicks in and I forget about complaining, and just do the best job I can. But it still was there, scratching at the back of my head… Something is wrong, at a larger level then I can identify…
A friend of mine, who follows reddit as well apparently noticed one of the comments on in the thread. I’m reposting it here in full, but please visit the thread to at least give reddit a few more hits in their ad counters 
If you are talking about the US, no, it’s not just your job – it’s most medium to large corporations, and too many small companies. The last decade of corporate strategy can largely be characterized at all levels of operation as a “fear strategy”.
The company I used to work for has been in pure fear mode for most of this time – it is economically imploding now largely due to its own mistakes caused by this fear, not for lack of market opportunity as they tell their shareholders. Most other companies I visit as my customers or suppliers are also.
Fear strategies are characterized by irrational risk fear and reduction efforts, by inward looking diminished goals and reduced scope of activity and outlook, by general pessimism and CYA.
The negativity is so pervasive that we now are gaining major advantages over far larger competitors with just our small modicum of optimistic planning, strategy and execution. Most of our competitors have literally lost the capacity to innovate as far as I can see. I like it but it’s scary for others who depend on them to be otherwise.
There are two coupled reasons: most Fortune 1000 companies are in their terminal phase of life cycle “fade”, and various major events have triggered fear. Each of these feeds on the other in a positive feedback loop (taking them in the wrong, fatal direction).
The first is the diametric opposite of corporate start-up and being on a leading edge of something productive which is dominated by optimism. Just as corporations are born, they can and usually do die. There is usually a small cluster for key mistakes that get made that transition the company into a declining, trailing edge organization – most of corporate America is in that phase.
One of the big ones was to abandon manufacturing almost entirely and embrace financial services. Remember that before the crash, FIRE was 70% of US GDP. The Fortune 1000 was 70% of GDP. Not always the same 70% but close enough when it’s the majority of economic activity.
The events are the obvious ones such as the displacement of Cold War fear attention, the dot-com crash, 9-11, general fear-mongering by politicians, over-reliance on single point, profit-driven news sources (the Internet partly ameliorates this), the Wars, Peak Oil, Boomers reaching a similar biological terminal life cycle phase, etc.
Only creative destruction and embrace of their deaths will ever fix anything. The Fortune 1000 is largely not repairable and trying to do so is akin to putting a terminal, comatose 90-year-old on life support; mostly a futile and wasteful effort despite the superficial emotional satisfaction of false continuity and false permanence it brings.
Individually, join or start a small, new company. Consider emigration. Be responsible for your own destiny – the Fortune 1000 never really cared about that and certainly won’t now. Downsize to what really matters, which once you try it you’ll discover is a whole lot less material and less expensive.
My wise father said that you can tell what part of a corporate life cycle a company is in by the credentials of the CEO and executive staff: start-ups have creative professions which include engineers and scientists to imagine new ideas, products and markets for a new company; young adult companies have sales and marketing people to take advantage of the leading edge profit opportunities; the middle-aged company is led by process people and accountants because there is no growth left and every dime of profit comes from cost control and efficiency; and terminal phase is led by lawyers and politicians because the company must do merger & acquisition to grow, lie about its products’ value and have legal cover, or must go through “probate”.
Think about why the Fortune 1000 “needs” to own the political process at all these days – this is why we have the political corruption they’ve caused: if they could compete at all it would be easier and cheaper for them but they can’t so they have to “buy” political cover to survive. Have to have bail outs from the government to survive. It’s pretty obvious.
… join or start a small, new company. Consider emigration…
How about both?
An interesting read, that helps cement some things I’ve been thinking about pretty hard.
Seriously, this weather? Awesome.
Things achieved this morning.
1. got up
2. had coffee
3. took a shower
4. launched a website
http://www.uarts.edu just launched with a new home page, and a refresh to the interior style sheets. its *MUCH* cleaner now.
bigger changes are down the road, but we’re on to a great start.
Its 1230pm on a saturday, and I feel great.
I’m speechless.
The 5 year compensation plan for the CEO of CIGNA could pay for *ALL* of the out of pocket expenses of everyone in Rhode Island.
The health insurance industry is a profit making engine. Its built to take your money, and not provide a service.
Watch, learn, act.
Taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4TsaHmtgfA
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks
Written by Jeff Ello
September 8, 2009
Opinion: The unspoken truth about managing geeks
September 8, 2009 (Computerworld) I can sum up every article, book and column written by notable management experts about managing IT in two sentences: “Geeks are smart and creative, but they are also egocentric, antisocial, managerially and business-challenged, victim-prone, bullheaded and credit-whoring. To overcome these intractable behavioral deficits you must do X, Y and Z.”
X, Y and Z are variable and usually contradictory between one expert and the next, but the patronizing stereotypes remain constant. I’m not entirely sure that is helpful. So, using the familiar brush, allow me to paint a different picture of those IT pros buried somewhere in your organization.
My career has been stippled with a good bit of disaster recovery consulting, which has led me to deal with dozens of organizations on their worst day, when opinions were pretty raw. I’ve heard all of the above-mentioned stereotypes and far worse, as well as good bit of rage. The worse shape an organization is in, the more you hear the stereotypes thrown around. But my personal experiences working within IT groups have always been quite good, working with IT pros for whom the negative stereotypes just don’t seem to apply. I tended to chalk up IT group failures to some bad luck in hiring and the delicate balance of those geek stereotypes.
Recently, though, I have come to realize that perfectly healthy groups with solid, well-adjusted IT pros can and will devolve, slowly and quietly, into the behaviors that give rise to the stereotypes, given the right set of conditions. It turns out that it is the conditions that are stereotypical, and the IT pros tend to react to those conditions in logical ways. To say it a different way, organizations actively elicit these stereotypical negative behaviors.
Understanding why IT pros appear to act the way they do makes working with, among and as one of them the easiest job in the world.
It’s all about respect
The author goes on to discuss the nature of respect from the perspective of an IT professional and the various character traits that come out of that mind set. How the stereotypes of the nerdy anti social and rude IT person actually are reflections of legitimate frustration among IT workers in an environment that doesn’t support their LOGIC FIRST attitude about getting things done, and being productive.
If you’ve ever even been the guy who helped fix your granmoms computer… let alone work in a “serious” IT environment. This is a great read.
I read it twice in fact when I was linked to it via Twitter, in fact…
I just need to figure out a way of tactfully making my bosses read it… all 3 of them *headache*.
