Writing

Feed Software, technology, sysadmin war stories, and more.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Scenes I may have seen

Scenes I may have seen...

I may have seen a stage full of SVPs and VPs (yep, two levels of VP types) tell a packed auditorium of employees that their company was still like a startup.

I may have seen execs who are already public figures be completely unable to fathom why some people might not want to have their entire lives indexed by their given name.

I may have seen a stage full of executives with a gender ratio that caused me to divide by zero.

I may have seen a stage packed with execs with just one person from a given gender present receive a question about "what's it like to be that gender here", at which point the question is thrown to that one person by the CEO. I possibly saw that person's eyes blaze with the fire of a thousand suns before uttering a pleasant reply. Clearly, this person has been trained to suppress an honest answer rather effectively.

I may have seen countless remarkable individuals exit a place which claimed to welcome them because the advertising did not fit the reality.

If I'm ever in a situation where I'm surrounded by a few hundred employees and we're being told it's a startup, I'm going to pose a question to the presenter: Answer any two of the following:

Then again, I do have a flair for exposing the dishonest, even if it starts a lot of trouble. Maybe I should join the police force.