ESR Interview in Fast Company Magazine

srl writes "Fast Company, a magazine that talks a lot about the "new world of work" and how the Net is changing business, has a long interview with ESR in this month's issue. The interview talks about how open-source is changing people's ideas about *why* we should work. " If you've been looking for a magazine to further educate your PHB ^[?] , grab this issue. They can read on dead trees about open-source and believe you, because it's in Fast Company, and everyone know dead trees don't lie. *sarcastic grin*

Comments

ESR

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone's interested and in the Midwest. ESR will be speaking at the Mizzou LUG this weekend in Columbia, Missouri. You can get the details at http://expo.missouri.edu

Re:PHB considered harmful

[remande]

I doubt that such a study has been conducted. The first problem with this is indeed defining the PHB. Egad, if you could do that you could actually launch PHB pogroms and purge your company of idiots.

As far as why PHBs get hired and why companies survive with PHBs in them, let's just say that corporate America is not as Darwinistic as it is cracked up to be--especially in tech firms.

Tech firms have what I call the Gorilla Effect to deal with. The Gorilla Effect is both the reason that Microsoft makes so much money and the reason that Linux is catching up to it in many ways.

The Gorilla Effect is: In a set of competing communities, the largest will gain size, even at the expense of smaller ones, regardless all but the most blatant discrepancies in quality of the technology holding the communities together..

This keeps Microsoft afloat because they sell more community than software. I am running Windows both at work and at home. IMHO, it stinks. But it lets me interact with a large community of software developers (mostly by purchasing their wares). I use Windows because it's the only way to run the software I want to run, because it lets me interact with a big enough community to meet certain of my needs.

This used to work against Linux, but Linux has gotten to the point this year where it is actually riding the effect. Linux is actually having a field day with the Gorilla Effect because it is open source. Closed source software improves at a rate only slightly related to the user base (popular code allows the vendor to hire more engineers), but open source software improves at a rate highly related to the size of the user base. This will allow Linux to meet that "most blatant difference" test, likely in the next year or two.

Why do PHBs get hired? Often, a person looks a lot different to his superordinates than to his subordinates. Often, superordinates and subordinates use two different yardsticks.

Again, this is rampant in tech firms. Superordinates see a manager who is using classical MBA-style management theory--that is, going by the book. A lot of this theory is built upon assumptions that don't jibe with the tech industry. Creative professionals (software engineers, musicians, actors/actresses) simply do not respond well to the MBA textbooks built to manage steelworkers and retail clerks.

Secondly, never underestimate the power of bull-slinging. Managers can often get away with several forms of lying--straight out, legalistic (a la Clinton and Gates), and the ever-popular lying by bamboozlement (string enough long words together, and people won't admit that they have no clue what you're saying). They can get away with this because their world is further from reality. The job of a manager is, quite literally, to stay a step back from reality. Theirs is not to actually do the company's business, but to motivate, assist, and coordinate others who actually do the company's business.

Individual contributors (ICs, basically everybody but the managers) immediately get burned by Real World effects: if the cash drawer doesn't add up, the donuts not made, the bridge not sturdy, the software buggy--they feel the consequences right quick. Such consequences get filtered through individual contributors before getting to managers at all.

Honestly dealing with reality is not a moral superiority of the individual contributor over the manager, but a matter of practicality. It simply hurts more to be a pointy-haired IC than a pointy-haired boss.

Finally, few PHBs get sent to the can-o-matic because relatively few idiots at all get sent to the can-o-matic. In my world at least, firing is pretty rare. Layoffs are less rare, but they are almost by definition not merit-based, so they aren't good for ditching the idiot. Frankly, firing people can open you up to legal action (so can breathing--don't get me started). In many European countries, it is even harder to actually fire people.