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Let Me Tell You How You Can Increase Your Value Add

So I gotta say, being an executive sounds pretty awesome. If you do a mediocre job, you make a lot of money. If you do a really really bad job, you make a lot of money, and they have to pay you a lot more money to leave. And don't even think about trying to hire cheaper, more efficient executives from overseas, that'll never work. You see, each American executive ~~is hired by a closed circle of other American executives~~ is a unique and special snowflake whose copious talents are accurately priced in the marketplace!

How do we peons break into this club? I think the fairest way would be trial-by-combat. Close your eyes and imagine this scene: hundreds of your co-workers surrounding you, beating drums, chanting, "Two engineers enter! One engineer leaves! Two engineers enter! One engineer leaves!" You raise the severed head of your opponent high before them. Feel the frenzied chants wash over you! The still-warm blood flows down your forearm! "ENGINEERS!" you roar. "I am your NEW CTO! Bow down before me, and give me your private keys!!"

Anyway, I don't think I'll ever be an executive. But if I was, I would dispense the following directives:

Mur Lafferty's Playing For Keeps podcast novel is drawing to a close. If you haven't gotten a chance to read it, now would be a good time. I had the great fortune to read Playing For Keeps way back when it was in draft form, and it knocked my socks off. Oh yeah, that's right, I knew Mur Lafferty before it was cool! Before she sold out! Before she married Courtney Love! Back when it wasn't about the millions of dollars and the hookers and the blow ... it was about something BEAUTIFUL, man! ...

Whoa, where was I? Ah, yes. Playing For Keeps. Good stuff. Go download and listen. It's pledge week on NPR, for crying out loud, there's nothing on the radio at all. You have no excuse.
Bart Patton, aka the Avocado Desperado, is on fire today. Literally on fire! After you finish dousing him with CO2, check out his guidelines for pen names. You'll be glad you did.
Confidential to Dave: Go ahead, eat the donut. Advanced technology from the mid-21st century will save you.

And if it doesn't, that probably means there was some sort of apocalyptic economic collapse due to global warming or biological warfare or a limited exchange of nuclear weapons. If any of those occur, at least you had the donut. See?

Posted by Evan Goer on Jan. 15, 2008 at 5:34 PM | Comments (13)

Comments

Richard K. Morgan wrote a novel, Market Forces, in which executives battle for position by killing each other on the freeway. Not exactly what you were talking about: engineers don't seem to be in the equation. But it's got the violence.

The existence of something that implements any idea you come up with reminds me of a cool Google feature that a friend pointed out to me. If you come up with an idea for a company, type it in to Google and they will invent a company that does that for you. Amazing! I bet it works with Yahoo!, too ;)

Posted by Dinesh on Jan. 15, 2008 at 8:12 PM
That kind of sounds like Quantum Internet Fetish theory, where as soon as you think of any fetish, no matter how bizarre, you immediately cause newsgroups and forums and email lists devoted to that fetish to spring into being.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 15, 2008 at 9:56 PM
Hah, "newsgroups", how quaint. I meant "blogs and MySpace pages"!

Posted by Evan on Jan. 15, 2008 at 10:02 PM
Sounds like the same thing. Except mine won't get you Websensed!

Posted by Dinesh on Jan. 16, 2008 at 6:01 AM
Are MySpace pages the new newsgroups? You open a MySpace page, and suddenly your computer speakers scream like the Root Canal Tabernacle Choir at the weekly No Novocaine chapel service.

Back on USENET, you had to imagine that sound by reading the ones and zeroes in alt.binaries.nickelback, or reading the threads on alt.peeve.

Sincerely,

The Humblest Avocado on the Net

[attachment:Avocado-Warlord-ASCII-art-sig.txt]

Posted by Bart on Jan. 16, 2008 at 11:16 AM
I read Market Forces. I was decidedly disappointed how much cooler the jacket cover description was than the actual story. (And I usually love Richard K. Morgan.)

Alright. I'm going to go have a donut and enjoy the apocalypse now. Cheerio!

Posted by Dave T. on Jan. 16, 2008 at 1:11 PM
You know, Nickelback is vastly improved when played back in 2-bit mono internal PC speaker sound.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 16, 2008 at 10:48 PM
Interesting idea, Evan. It could lend a whole new meaning to business-world phrases such as "back stabbing" and "make a killer proposal."

-- Mom

Posted by Anonymous on Jan. 17, 2008 at 8:48 AM
Hi Evan,

Was looking for a way to email you, but can't seem to find an address or form on the site.

I wanted to thank you for the AIT to Docbook article, and wondered if you wanted to include a sed script that does most (of the easy parts) of the improvements you suggest in the article.

Cheers S

Posted by Samuel on Jan. 18, 2008 at 8:17 AM
Whoops! I used to have my contact info listed. I'll add it back.

In the meantime -- yes, it would be great to have a sed script for this procedure. Email sent.

Posted by Evan on Jan. 18, 2008 at 10:39 AM
If engineers had to battle to the death we'd have personal powered armor battlesuits in no time. And having watched some japanese television I'm kinda surprised it hasn't happened over there yet. Or maybe it has and thats why their robots can beat up our robots. Either way powered armor would be pretty handy when the flying spiders begin their takeover of the global ecosystem. Also, when aliens show up.

Posted by Sam on Jan. 25, 2008 at 3:40 PM
If engineers had to battle to the death we'd have personal powered armor battlesuits in no time. And having watched some japanese television I'm kinda surprised it hasn't happened over there yet. Or maybe it has and thats why their robots can beat up our robots. Either way powered armor would be pretty handy when the flying spiders begin their takeover of the global ecosystem. Also, when aliens show up.

Posted by Sam on Jan. 25, 2008 at 3:46 PM
If engineers had to battle to the death we'd have personal powered armor battlesuits in no time. And having watched some japanese television I'm kinda surprised it hasn't happened over there yet. Or maybe it has and thats why their robots can beat up our robots. Either way powered armor would be pretty handy when the flying spiders begin their takeover of the global ecosystem. Also, when aliens show up.

Posted by Sam on Jan. 25, 2008 at 5:34 PM

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This entry was posted on January 15, 2008 by Evan Goer.

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