I'm really getting sick and tired of people who have a stack of certificates but who can't tie their own shoe laces. If I have to hand-hold any more SixSigma black belts through the simplest process of not alienating the client whilst still getting the job done I will probably show up on CNN next day as the guy who took an Uzi to the office...
It seems as though you can't walk in to a Starbucks in this part of the world without discovering that the guy squeezing the beans has some god-damned MBA from some two-bit third world flea pit. Every person who arrives for an interview for any position regardless of how technical claims to be Cisco Certified to some degree or other, but strangely they just sit there and grin at me when I start asking them how they'd design one of our networks.
I sort of "get it". I understand how hard it must be to stand out from the crowd when the crowd has literally billions of people in it, and to figure even in the top 50% is maybe fantastic because they at least means there are a hell of a lot of people further down the food chain to you. I sort of "get" that...but I don't get all the expats who seem to want to join in with that crap instead of just standing out on their own merits.
Today (not just today...it's been a while now) I've been once again disillusioned by a person with a lot of certificates. This guy left the company just the other day (and would have been fired if he'd stayed any longer) after spending months digging us into a worse and worse mess on a site with a client. Throughout the process he's been telling me all is good, he's been telling me he's on top of everything. He's been telling me he's in constant touch with the vendor who sold us the equipment he's been trying to get work, and he's been telling me that everything is being done to resolve the problems.
Bull...shit...
All of it.
We paid this guy good money. We even touted the guy around, telling people how great we were because we had such a highly certified engineer working with us...sigh...
I don't have time to follow these guys around holding their hands and making sure they're doing things right. Why (and I have used this expression several times already this week) have a dog, and then shit on the carpet yourself?
The process of resolving problems seems to be beyond so many people nowadays. So many people would rather sit in front of a PC monitor and stare at it for hours and hours in the hope that some solution to their problem is going to just leap out at then...when we all know that it frequently does not.
Fix things. Make things work. It does not matter that you ask for help or that you do not know all the answers, finding the solution is all that matters.
I get a little annoyed with people who try to pull the old "we need to solve the problems ourselves if we are going to learn". No, my friends. You need to fix the fucking problem so the company can get paid and thereby pay your god-damned salary at the end of the month. Full-fucking-stop!
You want to learn? No problem, we'll send you on a training course. Fix the problem and we'll make enough money to do that, otherwise call the god-damned support line, read the fucking manual in your own time and do what you get paid for!
