I've mentioned before, but I think about this a lot:
"There must be another room, somewhere down the hall, where the real meeting is happening, where the real experts are, making the real decisions ... because it can’t just be us. It can’t just be this." -- Jake Sullivan, 2013
I hope you have occasion to come across this revelation in your own time.
This is the room where it happens. With people like this. In circumstances like this. Where everyone is experiencing exceptional. It's people. It's just me. For everything. No older no wiser. It's just us.
@SwiftOnSecurity "“THERE'S NO JUSTICE,” said Mort. “JUST US.”"
Because of course there's a Terry Pratchett quote for something like this.
"There is no justice least you make it"
- Sansa Stark quoting Littlefinger.
@SwiftOnSecurity This is very much my feeling in the Linux world as a full time professional observer of, and reporter on, it for the last 3 years.
99% of it is "you guys can't be serious. You don't really think this is a good idea. Surely you're joking."
And then they ship it, and a couple of years later it's a key product.
@SwiftOnSecurity I have not enjoyed the countless times I’ve had this revelation over the years.
It’s mostly led to me just always assuming if I say something then there is a decent chance of that “just happening” because others were listening. I’ve never sought such responsibility. But somehow it finds me.
Military research seems to suggest that there is only about 5-10% of the actual effective soldiers. Really dedicated to the art of making the other guy die (source: Grossman, "On killing")
Also, I found when I wore a PM hat, that even a monkey can deliver outcomes with the A-Team.
The truly expert, can take a random rabble of misfits, left-handers, layabouts and droolers and make them deliver.
@SwiftOnSecurity On the one hand, the incompetence I am surrounded with is intolerable. On the other, if I don't stay and counteract them, the consequences will cause tangible harm to people who are at the mercy of the world's largest bureacracy. The only consequence for failure is a larger budget to fail at an even greater scale next year.
I've been participating in a slow motion train wreck for 10 years and it feels like a microscopic representation of everything else going on around us.
The realization for me is competence is completely unrelated to success and the train conductor is going to get us all killed and my actions are merely delaying the inevitable.
Daniel Erenrich
SwiftOnSecurity
Mikalai
Dan Sugalski
Wulfy—Speaker to the machines
Liam Proven
J.P. Stewart
Mark Reid
Clemens
William