The Robot's Thoughts

Rands In Repose has a great blog post on "Toxic Assets". These are the people who go ALL CAPS on your ass. People avoid this team member. He doesn't get the memo. He's defining someone as "Toxic" when despite Management's best efforts, people can't work with him and he might have to be let go. He closes with this:

The history of the Silicon Valley is full of stories of toxic people who were, well, right. These people were physically removed from their respective companies, but their agenda, their ideas, however unpalatable to the existing cultural regime, were actually the right thing to do for that particular company.

The paradox is we often need these toxic people. We need these self-centered assholes to totally ignore cultural conventions and to mix things up beyond recognition. They don’t need social grace and they don’t need charisma. Both help, but their value lies in their intense belief in their own culture.

I have an intense belief in my own culture. I've had debates where the other person has left the room because they felt they weren't being heard. They probably feel I was going ALL CAPS on them. I was just bypassing the part of the argument where they talk. This might sound arrogant, but I've heard it before.

You don't grow up poor, punk, educated, atheist, and liberal in central PA without facing intense cultural scrutiny. You're an outsider. People you've never met know things about you before you even start the conversation.

Anyway, the article and its simple model of relationships provoked thought in me, and I thought it was a good read. So I thought I'd share.

Labels: corporate culture, goals, links, personal, ramblings, thoughts

I turn 26 tomorrow. On that omission, its a slow downhill slide to 30. Its got me thinking about what I need to accomplish, or in other words, where I want to be when I'm 30.

So here's a (brief) list of goals. I'm omitting goals that are, for the most part, out of my control, such as getting married/kids because that "takes two".

• Own property. Or at the very least, save for a house. Hello, tax write off!
  
• Relocate to a more urban area. The three preliminary areas are Seattle, Wa., Boulder, Co., and Washington D.C. I have friends and family near most those areas. Its not that I don't enjoy Morgantown, but I have a feeling that what I enjoy the most (my friends) will have mostly graduated and moved on by the time I'm ready to move on.
  
• Finish my master's in computer science.
  
• Continue to swing dance. I still need to learn the Lindi Hop down pat. My footwork and timing is sloppy.
• Resume playing Piano. I played for six years and hated every god damned second of it. But that's mostly because of poor parenting. Don't ever set up music lessons for your kid on 8am on a Saturday. I don't see how my mother and father, together since they were in high school, and with nearly a decade of parenting experience thought that was going to do anything but inspire resentment and waste money. But I guess my dinosauric instructor was right: I'll be back someday.
  
• Travel. Travel. Travel.
  
• Heart hack. I just invented that term, so if its never been used before, I'm coining it. Engineering and programming teach you to recognize patterns and analyze things. You're given a toolkit to keep learning and recognize problems and solve them. I'd like to develop the same toolkit for emotional, instead of intellectual issues. Part of me thinks this might take spirituality, and re-reading the books I have written by the Dali Lama couldn't hurt, but I'm thinking some kind of rational, objectivist way of recognizing when I'm in an argument with blinders on. Or when I'm treating someone unfairly. In short, I want to re-program my emotional firmware.
• Write a book

I'm open to any ideas that aren't entirely cliche (e.g. "Run a Marathon"). But this is all I have for now, besides "get more sleep" because I'm tired.

Labels: birthdays, goals, personal, thoughts