revelation

here's a revelation..

the privilege of being a technical person is that you can be dogmatic, you can be stubborn, you can refuse to do things until you are convinced of its true value ... and people will respect you for that (even if the respect will only acknowledged in the long run, i.e. they may not see this value rightaway).

They may say "ah.. this dude doesn't see the business perspective of things" ..

but don't get them wrong, there's a difference between "not being able to see", and "refusing to see because you know you can add more value to the team by being dogmatically stubborn." and you have the privilege of being able to choose to be stubborn because you have the authority to make judgement calls on anything that is technical.

the truth is that most technical people can see the business perspective; and they may even see things in a more organized/structure way and refuse to entertain things that are "in the grey area", because "grey areas" are difficult to manage, difficult to control, and manageability and control is high in any technical guy's list of priorities. This may sound uncompromising and unrealistic, but they know that this is where their true value lies.

Compromises tend to lead to mediocrity if not backed by a solid core of uncompromising technical zealots who know exactly what can be done and what cannot be done.

And it's scary if you see your technical guys "compromising" .. . just to get the job done.

they're not supposed to do that.

and it's scary if you see your project leads/managers forcing your technical guys to start compromising..

so here's to all techies out there.. be uncompromising.. be stubborn.. that is what you're hired to do.