Essay RFC delayed.

[Pat St. Jean]

On Fri, 20 Aug 1999, Eric S. Raymond wrote:

>I would have preferred that outcome.  Turns out I'm *very* good at
>this bullshit; good enough that high-powered professional PR types
>call me a "natural" and I've seen at least one serious semiotic study
>of my propaganda technique (in Feed magazine late last year).  I've
>got the right cortical wiring, I guess -- but I don't *want* it.

Eric,
  The world actually needs *MORE* people like you.  The way I see it is
that the "suits" that call the shots are the problem.  The more
techno-savvy people that get into the "media whoring" or *ghasp*
management, the better off ALL of us geeks are.

>Truly, I would have been a hell of a lot happier *not* discovering
>that I really am the kind of guy who can smile, and smile, and smile,
>and hand out soundbites carefully tuned for journalists with the
>attention span and IQ of toe fungus, and shake hands with fat-assed
>corporate predators who never had an original idea in their lives.

So, lets replace these morons.  The only way it's going to get any better
is for at least some of us to get out of the trenches and start calling
the shots.

I'll tell ya something.  I'm truly fed up with people complaining that the
geek's lot in life is to take all this crap.  Crappy OSs, crappy
development tools, predatory sales and marketing practices, etc.  It
isn't.  Wake up folks, as long as someone else is calling the shots your
powerless.  Go back to school and take some business classes, get that MBA
if you want, just get yourselves up the corporate ladder.  You'll get to
where you can call the shots, then we TRULY win.

Just ask youselves this, "If there were more of us in management, would we
have this problem?"

I'm unsubscribing at the end of the day because I'm moving to Fort Worth
to take a new job.  I'll get back on ASAP.

Regards,
  Pat

-- 
Patrick St. Jean              '97 XLH 883                psj at cgmlarson.com
Programmer & Systems Administrator                    +1 713-977-4177 x115
Larson Software Technology                        http://www.cgmlarson.com