For the past few days my daughter has had one of those (many) unknown viral diseases that afflict toddlers. This has caused a few sleepless nights in my house. The funny thing is that I feel exactly like I’m in a deathmarch - I can’t quite think straight, feel like everything is coated in glue, don’t really believe that anything will make it better, all the while believing (paradoxically) that after this next sleep or next dose of paracetamol she will magically get better.

At least this ordeal is with my family and not a bunch of cranky nerds.

P.S. My daughter doesn’t have a fever anymore, the rash appears to be diminishing and she is sleeping happily. Yay!

This is a very very funny post on a very funny blog. I hope the level causticness can be maintained for the long-haul. Found via the Scobleizer.

When managing, the best way I’ve found to deal with this sort of person is to give them lots of opportunities to present their ideas to the rest of the team. Inevitably they’ll bite off more than they can chew and will realise that they don’t know absolutely everything. An alternative conclusion is that they will paint themselves into a corner and I will be able to have a private chat to them about their lack of experience or judgement.

When I’m forced to work with this sort of dork I generally follow the same approach of letting them have as much rope as they need while all the while hinting to them that they might be heading down the wrong path.

Never believe anyone is good (even yourself) just because they say they are.

When I was first made responsible for the technical aspects of a project I was too young and too inexperienced to do it well. The technical stuff went fine, no problem there. It was my relationship skills. Despite working in a “flat” company I had bits of the command-and-control mindset in me (I blame working in Woolies as a kid). I also had only really seen one other technical leader in action - one of the company’s founders. So, I pretended to be him when dealing with others and when “leading”. Of course as a 22 year old with no real experience I wasn’t really able to pull off being a 30-something genius with a great and inspiring vision. It took me about six months before I started acting like me. Of course, once I did, I stopped pissing people off and became much more successful.

Is this post just a confession? Maybe (sorry Greg, Jason, Todd, etc). The other hope I have is to point out the foolishness of copying someone else’s work style. Being true to one’s own nature is much easier. Everyone can tell when you’re faking and the chances are you won’t be doing it very well.

Recent posts

Nerdherding for Beginners is written by Michael Harmer, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Australia licence powered by WordPress and designed by XiAP Design Studio.