On Mon, 2013-06-10 at 19:17 -0600, Marcus G. Daniels wrote: > I don't think that > is representative of how most people who do this kind of work actually > think or are motivated.
I agree completely, though most simply because any generalization will fail to apply to most people. The real trick is the extent to which the distribution of motivations of a decentralized collection of contractors can be estimated and controlled to satisfy a mission's requirements. And I'm saying this as a contractor myself. Which types of problems are appropriate for contractors and which types are appropriate for employees? (That's been a burning question of mine ever since I was audited and accused by the local government of mislabeling employees as contractors. They later apologized and _noticed_ that most of my contractors were actually contractors. [sigh]) > And while it is reasonable this matching of > motives and incentives, I don't see how the right ethic can evolve in a > management consultant type setting. It seems to me this was a bad > situation. While I don't think it's quite fair to describe Booz Allen solely as management consultancy, I still agree. Sysadmins are given a surprising amount of power, often extremely asymmetric against the relatively few skills they need to do their jobs. [*] I think this is the very heart of the many caricatures of "the IT guy" in Dilbert-style cube-space jokes. [*] That's the nature of our modern computing architecture. I had such high hopes for Plan 9! ;-) -- ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella Pink rays from the ancient satellite ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
