I only shrug and nod compliantly when tech folks say the housing debacle, the credit crunch, the equity market gyrations, and other macroeconomic factors those very same tech folks proudly proclaim their ignorance of, does not effect them.

It does. And it will continue to do so.

Good advice…keep working.

Of course, the Congressional Budget Office now says there won’t be a recession, and despite the fact that their report’s “no expectation” assessment included a caveat that economic conditions could change on a dime, you should have nothing to worry about.

Not too many more, but pretty negative on tech high-flyers (and much less thoughtful than my “suggestions“).

UPDATE: Yep…just count the feet.

UPDATE 2: If you take self-aggrandization in the face of much more important issues into account, maybe the predictions linked to above aren’t too far off.

UPDATE 3: More gloom and doom for tech.

Don’t tell the most sought-after shoemaker in town how to do their job.

I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with folks who couldn’t tie their own shoelaces, but were quick to judge how long everything takes and how much it is worth for you to do it for them. That phenomena is particularly prevalent in the technology world - many think it all comes easy. I could say the same about business process re-engineering, developing compensation plans, and even creating financial projections. On the latter, I was once ask to do the same, only to find the company didn’t maintain standard double-entry accounting records - they kept track of their finances by dumping their checking account statements from the internet. I had no problem with that - the business was new, short staffed, and growing like wildfire. What I did have a problem with was facing incredulity, skepticism, and downright rude behaviour when I told them it might make sense to get past books and records together before looking to the future. And it got worse - once convincing them of that need, I had to take the same beating again when I asked them where the invoices and payables files were.

The folks from Electric Pulp, a development firm out of South Dakota that has been on a bit of a roll lately, have taken a different approach to the “can’t tie their own shoelaces crowd”: they posted some of their more outlandish technology related inquiries on their blog instead of wasting time dealing with the folks. It was a bold move that apparent ticked at least one potential customer off. And while they proceeded to offer apologies, I say they shouldn’t have.

Electric Pulp has a skillset that is in great demand right now, so they have the luxury of picking and choosing their clients. There will always be someone with a negative attitude waiting to dance on a grave, but if they continue to do great work and keep their shop lean, any eventual downturn in the market isn’t going to effect them as much as the competitor who took every tom, dick and harry as a client and ate costly project overruns (which always happens) instead of squirreling away the good nuts.

It’s something everyone out there looking for exceptional help should take note of. Treat your vendors (and those you are courting) with trust and respect, and that includes doing a little homework before you go out looking for bids. Otherwise, there may come a day when you find yourself wearing worn out shoes and there is nobody around both capable and willing to fix them for you.

UPDATE: Another, slightly different take. This may be the reason Electric Pulp gets so many ludicrous requests - those inquiries are coming from wishfully thinking founders of non-entities - founders that have not the capability to conceptualize the task at hand. Or as Nussbaum put it:

“I think managers have to BECOME designers, not just hire them. I think CEOs have to embrace design thinking, not just hire someone who gets it.”

I say fat chance - creative thinkers everywhere should get used to hearing stuff like this:

“I have a revolutionary new idea to discuss with you once you’ve signed my NDA.”

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.
2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.
4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don’t have e-mail addresses.
6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.
7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.
8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn’t have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.
10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.
11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )
12. You’re reading this nodding and laughing.
13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.
14 You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.
15. You actually looked back up to check that there wasn’t a #9 on this list.

…and you are now laughing at yourself.

I’d add…and then you put a blog post up about it, and laughed a little more.

As always, thanks go out to the contributor (who has a cell phone with built-in GPS, which they use to navigate the local dog park).

Or maybe that should be “next to the Zip disks.”

Sophos discovered a spyware kit for sale on a Russian website. Price? Under $20 bucks.

Some look at it as opening up the spyware game to any and every wanna-be malcreant. But since the scripts, etc. contained in the kit will be useless very soon (now that they have been discovered), I see it differently. To me, it is just one more case of buying technology, only to find it’s obsolete the moment you leave the store.

I read that the White House and Congress fail miserably in addressing internet security issues, and wonder why anyone would think otherwise.

Politicians will always be partisans - they will fight amongst themselves ’till hell freezes over. Their egos will never allow them to get any competent advice, and the ones that know their place will make the smart move.

CNET recently published a list of the top 10 dot-com flops, and after reading through the list, I could only think the list was contributed to by the folks at Fucked Company. Simply put, nobody seemed to herald any part of the ideas, and I believed some of the companies actually had some merit.

Read through the list, and ponder these points:

- What is not hot right now could very well be hot a few years later - trends matter
- Business models are often remade for changing times, much the same as major motion pictures are
- Getting the word out is hardly ever a bad thing
- Technology breeds efficiencies, despite what your IT director says about that ERP implementation
- Being spendthrift almost always causes pain down the road

Big failures should lead to learning, or does the free flow of capital simply dumb people down? Certainly, all of CNET’s top ten suffered from one “ailment” - an awful lot of money.

Douglas Adams said “Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

I wonder what the next list of flops will look like, and who will make the next billion off of someone else’s “failed” idea.

AT Kearney recently completed a study where they found top executives at manufacturers, software companies, and IT services firms were determined to concentrate on nurturing existing product lines, rather than invest in new technology development. In Poll: U.S. has conservative tack on innovation, they say AT Kearney found roughly 90% of executives were concerned about “falling behind”, but were doing little about it. If that isn’t a tech entrepreneur’s call to arms, I don’t know what is.

The problem with Corporate America is not a lack of resources or talent, but an unwillingness to take risk. Executives have little incentive to do the “next big thing.” Good.

Let the little guys build it for them. Then the corporate bigwig can buy it for 2¹⁰⁰ times 2020’s forecast revenue, take their $100K bonus for doing such a “great” job, and drive happily away to their 4 bed, 3 bath, stick and stucco in suburbia, relishing in their victory.

The risk takers, the thinkers and doers, the ones that will keep the US at the forefront of innovation leadership, will be sitting on a beach in a faraway land, sipping fruity cocktails with little umbrellas in them, and relishing in theirs.

As a whole, Americans are not keen to learn about computer technology. If you are proficient in multiple platforms, an amateur or professional coder, or a network admin (present or former), I think you know what I mean. Someone recently commented to me, “Boy, would I be happy to work in an organization where I wasn’t the CFO’s personal tech assistant.” That is sad. Even at the upper echelons of Corporate America, people just don’t understand, or want to understand, computing. They would rather let someone else do it for them. In other words, they are lazy, and laziness is going to hurt.

Some say “I don’t have time for that stuff.” Well, they had time to learn how to drive their fancy new car, program time, date, and content settings on their TIVO, and plug in that new Xbox (just be careful with the plug…!) But they don’t seem to want to learn anything about the next device to become a staple consumer product in our increasingly connected world, the personal computer.

It is not all their fault.

I was always fairly proficient with Windows. I could do a few more things than the next guy, like set up a home network. But I soon found that was peanuts. Windows and its ubiquitous Plug-N-Play made things too easy. I never thought about the ramifications of that ease, things like bloated hard drives full of drivers I would never need, and admin permissions that let every piece of voyeur-ware through.

The present stupidity crisis is Microsoft’s fault, and it is also the users’ fault. Microsoft wants things to be easy, and users don’t want to learn. This is a dangerous combination that has ramifications beyond stolen credit card numbers. Not only are individual identities being stolen (and being solely blamed on technology), but the US’s identity as the innovator, the core of scientific advances, is being stolen as well.

A few of us will survive. I started learning about Linux last year, and now I can maneuver the system with relative ease. I also bought a Mac, which isn’t Windows, isn’t Linux, but the best of both worlds. It wasn’t easy learning something new, but now I am fairly confident with all. It makes my computing life much easier. It did not take a ton of time, but it sure does save me a ton of money. I don’t need to mail a lot checks, pay a travel agent to book trips, or incur late charges for movies. And I can do it from anywhere, on anything, without worrying about security. I don’t have to pay some schmuck 400 bucks to install a new hard drive on a machine when I run out of storage. I don’t need to buy 20 file cabinets to store a lifetime of documents (it is all digitized, and strongly encrypted). And I don’t need to buy a lot of really expensive software either.

I feel bad when people call, saying their screen just froze, their hard drive is making sounds reminiscent of a meat grinder, or that their phone bill included $1,000 of 900 number calls initiated from their modem.

But I am not going to feel bad when they tell me they lost their job; that some young buck straight out of college installed the latest version of an enterprise level accounting package on their laptop and took over the payables and receivables departments, singlehandedly.

If you are not interested in learning, fine…no it is not fine. If you want tech support, you are going to have to pay someone for it. But in the long run, Americans are paying in more ways than one.