Why Management Shouldn't Touch Computers
There's a suit-clad, balding, incompetent, pointless, blinkered,
fascistic fool in every office environment. The generic name for these people is Middle
Management and it is vitally important not to let them near computers, and
paramount not to send them on training courses.
Bearing
in mind that generally the word manage can be directly replaced with wank it
should be obvious to all why these vermin, only one rung above salesman-scum on the
evolutionary ladder, shouldn't ever use the things. If this mental picture eludes you I
will describe the stages of annoyance you'll experience.
Power
As with every other facet of their lives - they are obsessed with power. They spend most
of their time discussing everything in terms of Gigabytes and Megahertz. Believing all of
the B.Gates et al style hype, they'll only be happy with the latest release/bugfix of
Windows 2000, 128 Meg of Ram, DVD, 3D graphics and sound card on a 'Genuine Intel'
pentium-III. Yet all it ever seems to get used for is to produce cliche-ridden half page
memos that look like they've been knocked up on a typewriter.
Jargon
Management love jargon. It is probably one of the main reasons why they love computers.
However, they seem not to realise that Jargon has a purpose; to abbreiviate and clarify.
They tend to use jargon to verbosify and mystify. In only one half-day Microsoft training
course an average middle manager can learn and misuse over 500 different computer related
terms. Here are some dead giveaways:
- Referring
to 3.5 inch disks as hard-disks.
- Referring
to Netscape as 'the Internet'
- Referring
to Windows 95 as anything but a pile of crap.
- Referring
to files as sectors or clusters.
- Referring
to a monitor as a VDU.
- Referring
to their computer as a CPU or processor.
- Using
the term "Power User" in any context whatsoever.
- Using
the term intranet without being ironic.(See Below)
- Talking
about "Knowledge Sharing / Management"
The Underlying Fear
Technology moves fast. Too fast for any human to keep track of everything. In Managers,
this creates a feeling of uneasiness and fear that they are getting left behind. There is
no measure too desperate for these people to take when it comes to keeping their heads
above the sea of technology. One odd spin-off from this effect is that their
misunderstandings get fed-back through the computer industry itself and suddenly the
people in the know are speaking in management tongues.
It's easiest to demonstrate this by using
an example. The word intranet is meaningless, or rather redundant. Ask 500 people
what they mean by it and you will get 500 different answers. It's all things to all
people, it's internal web-sites, databases, LANs, email, and newsgroups. Where this word
came from is still a mystery, but I suspect that some balding, useless fool in middle
management heard it and wet his pants. Since that great moment the computer industry has
had to stoop so low as to use the term in normal marketing so that these scum will fork
out for their mediocre products.
Email software ?
Boring. No. Got it. Done that.
Well how about a knowledge sharing system that integrates with your intranet to provide a
personal information exchange solution ?
I'll get the cheque book.
How did those bastards at Mircosoft manage
to convince the world to buy their bloated, buggy, low quality, expensive, proprietary,
out-of-date, time-bombed filth ?
Its time for the techies to take
control...
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