A few weeks ago, TheHackerCIO promised to reveal his secret recipe for dealing with assholes.
He used it a few weeks ago himself.
Because at that time, he had a major asshole encounter.
First note the extreme dedication of TheHackerCIO to his work. He made himself available over a holiday weekend for testing and bug-fixes -- trying his utmost to speed delivery of code and shipping of product. A holiday weekend!!!
But, as the old saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished."
Major Asshole -- who is politically connected, corporately speaking -- doesn't find it necessary to actually provide a bug report that describes what he expects the Server API call to return and what he encounters instead. He just wants the server developer to "figure it out," on an API he has never before seen and for which he has no documentation.
That's when the power of the secret recipe comes into play.
"Just don't!"
You can't deal with assholes.
As an extremely wise philosopher said, "you can deal with a fool, but you can't deal with a damn fool."
An asshole is the modern term for a damn fool.
So, the secret recipe is to simply walk. And the only way you can do this is if you have plenty of cash in the bank. That gives you the liberating power of not giving a shit. You see, if I had to have the pay from this client, I couldn't have risked it by doing the right thing and leaving the jerk alone with his jerkhood. I would have had to cater to him, try to sooth him, try to placate his irrational jerkiness. And he would have continued to spread it as wide and thick as he could get away with.
By simply not caring; because I could easily miss out on a months billing or more; I was able to walk away until the company came to their senses and found a decent person to perform the testing with.
It's a tremendous power, money. It's not so much about what you can buy with it. It's about the freedom it can buy you. Freedom not to put up with BS. Freedom to walk from the A-holes.
TheHackerCIO doesn't mind sharing the secret. But he knows that only a very select few possess the discipline required to live debt free, as he does, and put away the cash to liberate themselves from stupidity. Most people will continue to deal with assholes, because they have to. And that's a shame.
Don't do it.
I remain,
TheHackerCIO
