No sorry Ive stated a physical reason why cool tubes don't cool.
I hope you might read that over and come to the same conclusion!
Business lessons.
Mike taught me to poison the well. While he was a shitty coder and I pushed him into management and he could sell billion dollar contracts, the best thing about him was what he taught me politically.
Poison the well.
When you show up in a new environment and there's some asshole you need to get rid of, but they're well established, take your time. Compliment. Make it known that there is zero animosity.
Part of the compliment should be a subtle damn with faint praise. There should always be a question of their competence or loyalty.
Don't do it all the time. Give it time to work.
When the time comes, pull the trigger.
Damn, Mike was good.
That was for when you're going into a new environment. It's totally different when you're established and someone is brought in to get rid of you.
Dino taught me Machiavelli. When he arrived he actually had a bookshelf of a variety of technical and political and management books. Machiavelli was number one.
He fucking use variations of that name in his passwords. Of course I knew his passwords. I knew everybody's passwords. I was in charge of all the systems. I sniffed all the traffic.
Has anyone ever read the Bastard Operator from Hell series on the web? Really, you'll have a blast and you'll have a hint of the level of shit that goes on in system administrators heads when they're dealing with users.
Ignore the current stuff. Go find the stuff from the '90s. This was pre-web. But he kept with the times. I had that vax.
It took me a couple of years to get Dino fired. That was open warfare. I hadn't learned to be subtle yet.
He was brought in to fire to me and take over the division I built. I had negotiated too hard with Lou so that pissed him off so Lou had to get rid of me. He failed.
Dino did a leap over Lou who brought him in and he tried to control the next level and he negotiated with the CEO and he became the CTO.
The kind that dances in front of audience with a microphone.
We had a saying.
See the pretty bird? See the pretty bird? Smack!
That was Dino as he was distracting you before he slammed you over the head with a baseball bat. He was really good at distraction.
I still got him fired in about 6 months from that point. Along with the boss who hired him to fire me, I just made him a consultant to the group as we eased him off into retirement. That sad old man. Lou was in charge of the world.
My brother gave Lou a stroke. Literally. He got him to scream so hard. He had something explode in his brain. Took him 6 months to supposedly recover. But at that point he was really easy prey.
He was amazing though, he taught me to perform. My brother used to say he it was as if he was an executive out of central casting.
We were having a great meeting and then he called someone in from the hall and he fucking exploded in fury for about 3 minutes. Halfway through he glanced at me and winked and smiled. Then he went back and ripped that guy a new asshole for a while. He was practically crying. That was a performance. It was amazing.
He was the one who sent me to the people class. He was the one I negotiated that 30% raise with. That was a mistake on his part.
They all worked for me in the end.
Sometimes I play an asshole. Sometimes I am an asshole. Either way it's good for drawing out the attackers. And there will be attackers here.
They will try to distract.
The next one will be more subtle. Keep your eyes open. Keep that dopamine up. Anticipate the attack.
Paranoia is a survival trait. Whoever saw the movement in the bushes and ran and it was only the wind survived. The one who ignored it and it was a tiger is dead. The paranoid genes lived on to generate more. I got them paranoid genes.
People screaming in the doorway aren't really worth time other than to give me a chance to tell stories. And I enjoy that.
Keep at it.
