Dilbert: Quality at a Day Job (Keep Working on your Startup) | Hacker News Reader

Dilbert: Quality at a Day Job (Keep Working on your Startup)

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24 pointsmikesabat11 comments

What they should have done was get posters from Demotivators and see if the PHB noticed.

http://www.demotivators.com/viewall.html

I had the pleasure of working at a company where daily I walked by the adjacent offices of a VP and a head developer.

The VP had a real motivational poster on her wall, one about teamwork and aspirations. The developer had a de-motivational poster, one about replacing workers with robots. http://www.demotivators.com/motivation.html

To my knowledge, the two never acknowledged the irony of the situation.

"... get posters from Demotivators and see if the PHB noticed. ..."

Maybe if you plaster them all over the window views or mirrors in the bathroom they might notice them. The only coy. I worked at that had demotivators hanging off the walls, the boss was a hacker. Most of the others probably would have laughed it off. My demotivators would go something like ...

    Startups
    It doesn't matter if you "make things that users want". You are all going to fail anyway.

    Venture Capitalists
    It's a spelling mistake. It should read, 'Vulture', 'Vampire' or 'Vegan'.

    Programming languages
    Why use just one? Try as many as possible.

    Ideas
    Old ideas never die, they are just re-implemented with a new website.
    
    Web 2.0
    It's the one after Web 1.0

He seems a little confused about whether the benefit of capitalism is that the fittest survive so that the failure of the unfit benefits the entire system or whether employing people to pursue ideas which fail is good in itself since it stimulates the economy. The latter would be an example of Bastiat's "broken window fallacy" (http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss1.html).

Actually he is more confused than that. He uses a poor analogy with animals who can never do stupid stuff because they can never do anything new in the first place. They are not into creation just procreation.

Now, the analogy to really use is evolution. Evolution tries a lot of stunts but not every creation lives, most die in the process and the some that survive are well adapted to the system. Is evolution pushing useful resources off the cliff. Is evolution moronic?

I'm not sure I agree with him classifying those people who take a risk, but ultimately fail, as "morons." Although he also classifies those who don't take a risk (i.e. work at corporate jobs) as morons as well. I guess smart people are the ones who somehow succeed without ever first failing?

Nah, the ones who succeed without ever failing are "lucky". There are no smart people.

I think it's a nifty perspective. Everyone's an idiot. Remember that the next time you think you're smart.

I'd change the title to "Adam Scott:" because the way it looks like it should be a Dilbert cartoon.

Point taken. It's actually Scott Adams, and I was in a hurry posting the while... at my job.

Haha, same with me, I was in a hurry posting my reply while... at my job. It's ok though, I was compiling.

seems hindsight enables us to judge 'what a moron' --however we are all willing to take the chance of being "the one that will be the 10% IT'

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