[CLUE-Talk] interesting home business article - from slashdot

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 07-26 00:25, Matt Gushee wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 26, 2003 at 01:32:28AM +0000, psychoi3oy at linkline.com wrote:

> Another thing is that modern corporate culture doesn't favor scrupulous
> honesty. Although blatant dishonesty is usually not tolerated (unless
> you're a top exec), spin and hype are more often than not considered to
> be marks of professionalism (BTW, I nominate "professional" for the
> most-abused word in the English language). 

A-freakin-men. I suppose you've read Peopleware. IIRC, their take on the
usual meaning is that "professionalism" == conformity, and little else. It's
funny you mention groupthink a bit further down because I've definitely
thought a lot about that regarding the hiring process: definitely a herd
mentality going on out there. If "everyone" does it, it must be the correct
way, right?

I guess we should all just hire by asking for a laundry list of skills that
we know no candiate will have, we should all buy MS, we should all be sure
our knowledge workers are thrown into a high-traffic, high-volume cube farm
with no natural lighting, promote the folks who play golf/eat lunch/dinner
with the right people, try to skip or skimp on any sort of real design or
testing...and then groan that software projects almost always have schedule
slips or failures - and furrow our brow in puzzlement over how this could
possibly be. 

<Bill Hicks> Join me. It's the comedy of hate. Yes, join me.</Bill Hicks>

:)


> I'm not suggesting that silly job requirements like the one you mentioned
> are *deliberately* designed to elicit less-than-truthful responses. It's
> more of an emperor's-new-clothes kind of thing. Groupthink. So in effect,
> those announcements are a kind of test of your willingness to be a team
> player. People who prefer to see and speak truth (and I'm one too) can
> have trouble with this kind of thing.


-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
Get MLAC at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlac/
Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment. 
-seen in a posting in comp.software.testing