Re: OT: Why Hackers dont do well in Corporate World

[Anonymous Monk]

Sorry for posting anonymously, but you'll understand when you read on.

I am working as a consultant in such an environment.

My course of action when I started my first project with the company was to give advice on The Right Tools to use for the job at hand, and they did not listen to me. As a result, I got paid to do something I didn't like, without the level of confidence that I would have had if I were allowed to use my tools, and without that kind of personal satisfaction that comes from knowing that a good app is (at least partially) obtained from your suggestion.

But I learned my lesson, and when the next project started, instead of simply proposing The Right Tool I wrote a nice presentation with fancy colors, got a fancy name out of the top of my head, and sold the company a Perl wrap that I wrote around the right tool. This way, I had the confidence of the tool, the satisfaction of being part of the decision making chain, and a bunch of money more than my usual fee. (You can't just sell Open Source for peanuts, because the management does not take you seriously; but if you charge them an outrageous amount for something that they could find in SourceForge, they usually go for it). I had even the guts of releasing my wrapper under the Artistic License.

Perhaps this approach does not apply to every company, but the next time you are in a position of proposing a solution, keep this story in mind.

Anonymous Saint

[spurperl]

This is somewhat like the advices given by Carnegie in "How to win friends and influence people". People don't like to be told what to do abrubtly - you have to "work on them", tell them stories, make them wanna do it themselves. The highest level of mastery comes when you manage to convince people it was actually their idea, this way they're glad to do what you initially wanted.

[DrHyde]

ITYM "work them over". It's more than they deserve.

[artist]

I agree entirely with anonymous monk and spurperl. People like stories. They cannot take barebone contents. It's not easy to handle. Packaged contents are good. Packaging seems different for different people depend upon experience. Even on sf.net it's nicely packaged for you. Just try yourself. How many barebone ideas you have handled? Packaging works, not just because people like that, but because it might be the part of inherent laws of nature. What might be true for most people, may have atleast some values.