[Noisebridge-discuss] Dijkstra's "There is still a war going on"

[Gian Pablo Villamil]

It goes beyond division of labor: the technicians are mostly concerned
with making stuff happen with THINGS, whereas business & marketing are
mostly concerned with making PEOPLE do stuff. This is what Djikstra
refers to as the "battle".

Ultimately it is people who decide who to reward, not things. Hence,
someone who spends all their time influencing people is likely to be
better rewarded than someone who spends all their time influencing
things. Those who use their influence over things to try to influence
people tend to get treated rather roughly.

Fortunately, there are organizations that reward technical skill, and
in the medium/long term, this lets them do stuff better. Some places
have figured this out, some have not.

It seems to me that portraying this as a battle between scientists and
managers is misleading: the scientists aren't even on the same playing
field. Developing organizational combat skills (euphemistically known
as "people skills") in scientists might be a better approach.

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 4:34 PM, Jason Dusek <jason.dusek at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I am a great fan of Dijkstra's writing. Something that
>  recently showed up on Reddit:
>
>    http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD11xx/EWD1165.html
>
>  He makes such a strong case for the role of the technician,
>  the scientist, as the creator of value that ultimately makes
>  our modern world possible. Surely this is correct; but is he
>  missing something? The dominance of the business/marketing
>  side is undeniable; if technicians were really so powerful,
>  would we not have managed to overcome our thralldom by now?
>
> --
> Jason Dusek
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