Drinking tea at my townhouse with a friend, last week. We start talking about a Google engineer Rockwell (* name changed).
"Group X started jovially calling Rockwell 'Mr. No', because he says no to so many of their requests."
"It's not just that group. Everyone calls him that."
"Oh really?"
"Someone even wrote a device driver in the linux kernel called /proc/rockwell. If you run it on production machines, it prints out 'No.'"
"[laughing] That's awesome!"
"Actually, nine out of ten times, it outputs 'No.' The tenth time, it writes 'We're already doing that.'"
The kernel people added this on April 1st one year, but it didn't get rolled out in production until over a year later. Guess whose fault the delay was? I am not making this up!
ReplyDeleteLOL! That's hilarious!
ReplyDelete(Still laughing.)
that is the only use of that kernel? so interesting~~ :))
ReplyDeleteNiniane, Ask me to *@!$ and I'll say "Yes"!
ReplyDeletelol, thanks!
ReplyDeleteMr. Rockwell is a Monitor-Evaluator according to Meredith Belbin. Every team needs people with different roles to be productive.
ReplyDeleteSee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Belbin .
RC, The Netherlands
I remember reading one off-the-cuff analysis of why NBC went off the rails after Tartikoff left. The reasoning went like this: Tartikoff was the gas pedal at the network and the other guy was the brakes. And when Tartikoff left, he was replaced with another 'brake pedal', since apparently it's either more fun or safer to be the guy who says "no".
ReplyDelete(This is not to say that NBC should have had two 'gas pedals' instead, of course.)
ReplyDeletep.s. don't i wish sometimes... http://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/0446526568
ReplyDeletejust had a similar experience today.