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October 18, 2004
Reducto Ad Absurdum
Let's imagine you've just brought that Lamborghini Diablo you've been lusting over for the last 10 years or so. It's one of the highest performing cars available to people with the dosh to pay for it. Given it's bloodline; big beefy sports car, you naturally expect it to do big-beefy sports car type things bigger and beefier and sportier than pretty much anything else on the market. After all, that's why you paid so much for it - performance!
So, given all this, would you then lock your pride and joy in a squallid, dank garage? Would you regularly forget to service it? After all, you're paying a small fortune for the best the market has to offer - shouldn't it therefore be able to take anything you can throw at it with aplomb and still perform the pants off anything else around?
Does the fact that it's a Lamborghini excuse the owner from paying attention to those mundane yet necessary matters of it's upkeep to ensure it's still behaving like a Diablo next month rather than a Edsel?
If you agree with that last statement, I dare say your local Lamborghini dealership (or equivalent) probably sends you a bottle of Hermitage Grange every year on your birthday to ensure your patronage the next time you're in the market after yet another knackered Diablo has been towed away from your premises.
(and here comes the tenuous connection with the general topic of my blog...)
Assuming you see the breakdown in logic in the above paragraphs, then "riddle me this, Batman": why then do generally sane IT Managers in companies the world over treat their hugely expensive employees like the personnel equivalents of the Lamborghini in my hypothetical situation above? Why is it that companies pay good money to obtain IT resources (either as direct employees or consultants, doesn't really matter) and then assume their purchase cost ensures they're capable of producing consistently quality work in any number of stupendously poor work environments?
Be it the level of ambient light, noise, desk layout, airconditioning (or lack thereof), pay, corporate policy, dress code, bureaucracy or any one of umpteen other infinitely-controllable elements, I see workplace after workplace where the employer has made huge investments into the hire of their staff and then demonstrated a staggering lack of interest/knowledge in the simple things that can ensure their highly-paid little princesses are given the best chance to perform day-in, day-out.
P.S. In no way do I consider myself a Lamborghini Diablo of developers! I'd be more than happy being the developer-equivalent of my Honda VTR1000, but even then I suspect my sites have been set too high.
Posted by Andy Marks at October 18, 2004 08:04 PM
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