Nick is the author of "An Engineer's View of Venture Capitalists" http://ycombinator.com/tredennick.html and a dynamic and insightful speaker. You can get a sense of his humor from the bio for the talk:
Nick Tredennick has the usual degrees from typical universities and has held an uninspiring assortment of run-of-the-mill jobs. For example, he has been a fry cook, Air Force pilot, janitor, university professor, dishwasher, design engineer, truck driver, naval officer, oil field worker, and corporate executive. He even helped start a few companies, but was soon forced out. However, despite an appalling lack of knowledge about programmable logic and electronics in general, he was once chief scientist at Altera, a leading maker of programmable logic devices. Through what could only have been a monumental bureaucratic foul-up, he was also once a Research Staff Member at IBM's prestigious Watson Research Center. Tredennick has put considerable effort into finding something he could do well. No luck so far. He started his career as a working engineer (nerd), but moved to management when he found watching people work was easier than working. He moved to a university when he found talking about work was even easier than watching it. He has finally reached the pinnacle of his career in a position where he doesn't even have to talk about work. He is a technology analyst for Gilder Publishing.
Nick Tredennick has the usual degrees from typical universities and has held an uninspiring assortment of run-of-the-mill jobs. For example, he has been a fry cook, Air Force pilot, janitor, university professor, dishwasher, design engineer, truck driver, naval officer, oil field worker, and corporate executive. He even helped start a few companies, but was soon forced out. However, despite an appalling lack of knowledge about programmable logic and electronics in general, he was once chief scientist at Altera, a leading maker of programmable logic devices. Through what could only have been a monumental bureaucratic foul-up, he was also once a Research Staff Member at IBM's prestigious Watson Research Center. Tredennick has put considerable effort into finding something he could do well. No luck so far. He started his career as a working engineer (nerd), but moved to management when he found watching people work was easier than working. He moved to a university when he found talking about work was even easier than watching it. He has finally reached the pinnacle of his career in a position where he doesn't even have to talk about work. He is a technology analyst for Gilder Publishing.