"Contrarians" are a kind of investor who wager against the conventional wisdom. Of course, the words extends beyond just the financial world.
TheHackerCIO is a contrarian.
He sees no reason to respect conventional wisdom. Historical tradition isn't enough to justify decisions, policies, or edicts. They must be reality based. They must be true. They must make sense. They must have reasons and good ones that justify their prescriptions. Otherwise, it's time to ignore them, or defy them with everything you've got.
ManagementSpeak, for example is the accepted convention. Wikipedia explains that:
Corporate jargon, variously known as corporate speak, corporate lingo, business speak, business jargon, management speak, workplace jargon, or commercialese, is the jargon often used in large corporations, bureaucracies, and similar workplaces.[1][2] It may be characterised by sometimes-unwieldy elaborations of common English phrases, acting to conceal the real meaning of what is being said. It is contrasted with plain English.
Readers of TheHackerCIO will recognize this as the language of the Bloated Behemoth Enterprise. One of many pathologies found there.
This one has to be opposed with everything you've got. Why? Because it has evil purposes: dishonesty, evasion, pretense, concealment of truth, deliberate confusion to distract, or at best, a lack of candor, openness, or transparency.
And one of the most pernicious effects of ManagementSpeak is the nearly universal impact on resumes:
- Boilerplate is mandatory.
- Never use a personal pronoun.
- Only 3rd person.
- Use acronyms to blast the brain.
- Ungrammatical Bullet points describing accomplishments which never even feature a subject, but start off with a verb, such as
- Analyzed requirements with end users
instead of
- I analyzed and discussed requirements and features with key users.
- Then, since the result is so mind-stultifying, no more than 2 pages of that, thank you very much.
What brought this to mind was that I applied for a job. The e-submission had a check box for a free resume evaluation, so I unchecked that box, having no desire for more spam to deal with. Naturally, the software ignored my selection and the next morning I had my free evaluation. I immediately clicked the link to unsubscribe, and haven't been troubled again, luckily.
But ...
I read their "eval." ; and it was evil.
They wanted $300 to fix these problems:
1. It was too long.
2. It had a personal pronoun.
3. There were deceitful ways to as they put it "minimize," short term assignments.
Needless to say, TheHackerCIO isn't coughing up hundreds of bucks to get his resume into conventional shitform. But he has been acutely aware that rewrite-time was nearing. Now I just have to do it. Starting as soon as I post this, I'll be doing a full top-to-bottom rewrite.
Contrarian resume is coming. I'm going to be 100 percent grammatical, spelling out the first person for every one of my many accomplishments. It's all about me, as indeed it should be, being my resume, so "I" and "me" are going to be a major element. (I'll report here later with the final count, so be sure to check back here in a couple of days. UPDATE 2014-05-02: I counted at least 60 instances of self-reference, including I, Me, I'll, I'd, and so forth. ) I also will pay no attention to length at all. I will only concern myself with showcasing relevant experience. If I fall one word over to another page, that's the way it's going to be distributed. If it takes 10 pages, so be it. I'm going to highlight my short-term projects, as well, by explaining that the instability was the clients, not mine. I might even mention that I resent them for it.
In short it's going to be fresh, honest, clear, relevant, personal, non-deceitful. It's going to be a blast to write it.
Never yield to evil. It leaves a bad taste. And you won't find happiness that way...
I Remain,
TheHackerCIO
