
Now Hiring: Ruthlessly Honest Dick - raganwald
http://www.mattblodgett.com/2008/11/now-hiring-ruthlessly-honest-dick.html
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unalone
Wow. A blog posting an image of a Twitter post. That's like uberspam.

I think that companies ought to hire just the Ruthlessly Honest Dick, and let
its product users become evangelists. If you're good enough, shouldn't that
just happen?

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LPTS
How about make something good enough that the ruthlessly honest dick can be
the evangelist.

This seems to be Apples strategy.

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unalone
I didn't want to explicitly say Apple, but yeah. That's what I was thinking.
Once your dick has nothing to say, he's an evangelist.

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sh1mmer
Disclaimer: I'm an evangelist.

So I think the problem is that some horrible sales shills are using my job
title. I wish they would stop, or die. Either way.

The concept of evangelism (in terms of the word) is someone who believes in
something telling others about it. For the stuff developer tools that I
evangelize at Yahoo! I only do it if I believe it's worthwhile. I say that as
a developer.

The problem comes when people aren't really evangelists. They have no problem
screwing over what they are supposed to be passionate about by lying to people
who can spot them a mile away. Developers aren't your average chump.

While I don't expect this to be true for lots of companies I hope our
evangelists are honest and knowledgeable. If we are ever any other way I'd
love to hear about it so I can fix it. The last thing an evangelist should be
is someone who drinks their own company's cool aid and doesn't know about the
outside world.

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avner
As crass as that may sound- its very true. When 'evangelists' start throwing
around crazy ideas and plans at cocktail parties, it leaves the people on the
ground who are actually working on a product dumbfounded

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lallysingh
Q: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?

A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.

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brentr
I've never worked at a place where a person like this is acceptable. I've been
told too many times that I was too negative when in fact I was just being
realistic.

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unalone
Same thing, and I view that as a big flaw in how a lot of companies think.
Constructive criticism should be rewarded, partly because it's useful, partly
because it's a lot harder to be constructive than a lot of people think.

It holds true in all fields, too. Creative writers open to criticism are
always better than writers who refuse to listen to criticism. The best
creative writers are the ones who take criticism, then explain _why_ they did
what they did, and possibly educate the critic as to a part of writing. I had
a teacher who defended Joyce like that to me, once, and it did me worlds of
good.

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redorb
my boss calls this being brutally honest, his business is ran this way - he
always has the toughest questions but it makes you produce better things and
be prepared for questions,

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tdavis
I absolutely love Merlin's Twitter name, I just can't decide why.

"Hotdogs, ladies!" just sounds hilarious.

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time_management
He can hire the Ruthlessly Honest Dicks that getrealordie.com advertises by
public pillory of their cover letters.

