{"id":290,"date":"2007-04-09T06:21:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-09T13:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=290"},"modified":"2007-04-09T06:21:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-09T13:21:00","slug":"an-interesting-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/?p=290","title":{"rendered":"an interesting conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&apos;m having a conversation with <lj user=\"greatbiggary\"> right now about <a href=\"http:\/\/greatbiggary.livejournal.com\/216836.html\">his latest post<\/a>. I am surprised he mixes home and work so freely. But enough about that. It made me think of a few observations about corporate life.<\/p>\n<p>Aristotle said: &#8220;The law is reason free from passion.&#8221; I say: &#8220;A corporation is greed unfettered by morality.&#8221; Or by intelligence, for that matter&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Companies, particularly software companies IME, are usually engaged in a little self-deception. <i>Videlicet<\/i>:<\/p>\n<p>1) We exist by virtue of the competitive advantage of our IP, so we must protect it at all costs.<br \/>\n2) We hire only the best.<br \/>\n3) Our developers produce amazing stuff, better than anyone else out there.<\/p>\n<p>This leads to the rather <i>reductio ad absurdum<\/i> conclusions that:<\/p>\n<p>4) Our developers are brilliant in a vacuum. They never talk to anyone else in the industry because of point 1), therefore their brilliance is a direct result of point 2) and the great environment the company provides which enables these amazing ideas.<br \/>\n5) When our developers leave the company, as they do from time to time, they somehow stop being brilliant, because they leave this amazing creative environment.<\/p>\n<p>In some cases I have even heard developers (not just management!) saying things that indicated they actually accepted point 5! I had to jump in and point out this craziness. &#8220;So, last week when John worked here, he was brilliant&#8230; but now he works at Sonic ScrewdriverSoft, he&apos;s somehow not as good?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&apos;m having a conversation with right now about his latest post. I am surprised he mixes home and work so freely. But enough about that. It made me think of a few observations about corporate life. Aristotle said: &#8220;The law is reason free from passion.&#8221; I say: &#8220;A corporation is&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.elbeno.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}