Posted by
glen ropella on
Jun 11, 2013; 1:34pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-AP-kerfuffle-tp7583146p7583220.html
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
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