If you are involved in corporate politics – especially in the IT industry – I really recommend the following.

Go read the following Q&A interview with SciFi author Neal Stephenson; specifically go read the pitch and response to question 2:

2) The lack of respect… – by MosesJones

Science Fiction is normally relegated to the specialist publications rather than having reviews in the main stream press. Seen as “fringe” and a bit sad its seldom reviewed with anything more than condescension by the “quality” press.

Does it bother you that people like Jeffery Archer or Jackie Collins seem to get more respect for their writing than you ?

Stephenson turns this question around, desconstructs it, and then breaks into a long and interesting analysis of two kinds of writer.

One – a kind he terms Beowulf writers – are the sort that write and succeed without political or financial patronage. In perjorative terms they might be referred to as populist:

[…] I doubt that Beowulf was written on commission. Probably there was a collection of legends and tales that had been passed along in an oral tradition – which is just a fancy way of saying that lots of people liked those stories and wanted to hear them told. And at some point perhaps there was an especially well-liked storyteller who pulled a few such tales together and fashioned them into the what we now know as Beowulf. Maybe there was a king or other wealthy patron who then caused the tale to be written down by a scribe. But I doubt it was created at the behest of a king. It was created at the behest of lots and lots of intoxicated Frisians sitting around the fire wanting to hear a yarn.

…and then, in the self-confessedly-oversimplified flipside, there are the Dante Writers who live by crawling their way up a ladder of achievement in which progress is moderated by the patronage, formerly of Princes, now of Critics, who follow a journeyman path:

Considering the economic function of these reviews (explained above) it is worth pointing out which writers are and are not suited for participating in the somewhat hierarchical and political community of Dante writers. […] If you are trying to become a writer by taking expensive classes in that subject, you want your teacher to know more about it than you and to behave like a teacher. And so you might hear advice along the lines of “I don’t think you’re ready to tackle Y yet, you need to spend a few more years honing your skills with X” and the like.

Something in Neal’s whole response – and these are mere snippets, I really recommend you should read the whole thing – to me something in the text is just so resonant of the worlds of academia and business, especially in matters regarding patronage and advancement.

Occasionally accused of being arrogant, or didactic, or patronising by friends or by others in the work environment, it seems contradictory that I do not bear patronage well, or indeed try not to bear it at all. I admit that I am happy to hit people over the head with my boss is bigger than your boss where it is (a) true and (b) expedites a goal, but that’s not the same as getting an extra rung or two up the ladder by by being inducted into some society of your supposed elders and betters, or by uncritical adherence to some religion/trend/methodology that supposedly achieves better results than common sense, clear thinking and experience.

A former manager once told me the secret to his success was to attend management training sessions, nod considerately and thoughtfully throughout, be seen to take copious notes, do the roleplay, and then throw the lot in the trashcan afterwards. It must have worked to some extent since he was considerably more senior than I for our similar ages, but I felt even then that he was having a lot less fun than me.

Decisionmaking. Strategy. Execution. All of these day-to-day matters are things in which I often have an interest or opinion, and I feel free to express that opinion liberally. I suppose I am fortunate that I can do so, but then statistically speaking I’d never stay very long at any place where I couldn’t, so that skews the sample. Nonetheless: through this climb up the eternal ladder it’s never struck me that just because someone gets paid more than me, would mean that their considered opinion was necessarily better than mine.

Sometimes they know more/see more broadly than I do, but that’s fair enough. 😎

As an aside, I work for the firm that I gather is supposed to have spawned the term Career Limiting Move; to this date I still aver that avoiding non-outright-stupid CLMs is one of the most career-limiting things that any employee of any firm can do – unless they are extremely unfortunate.

Back to the article, and I find some succour in Neal’s suggestion that such tribulation might just be due to a clash of culture:

I was slagged for entitling my latest book “The System of the World” by one critic who found that title arrogant. That criticism is simply wrong; the critic has completely misunderstood why I chose that title. Why on earth would anyone think it was arrogant?

Well, on the Dante side of the bifurcation it’s implicit that authority comes from the top down, and you need to get in the habit of deferring to people who are older and grander than you. In that world, apparently one must never select a grand-sounding title for one’s book until one has reached Nobel Prize status.

But on my side, if I’m trying to write a book about a bunch of historical figures who were consciously trying to understand and invent the System of the World, then this is an obvious choice for the title of the book. The same argument, I believe, explains why the accusation of having a big ego is considered relevant for inclusion in a book review. Considering the economic function of these reviews (explained above) it is worth pointing out which writers are and are not suited for participating in the somewhat hierarchical and political community of Dante writers. Egomaniacs would only create trouble.

Oh yeah. Trouble. No argument there. What do I look for in a good manager? Faith, vision, trust, rapid approval of my expense claims, and someone who values me enough to moderate the flack that comes from being a IT Beowulf-ist. 😎