Document Formats and Recruiting

[jc at trillian.mit.edu (John Chambers)]

Chuck Young writes:
| Direct managers and engineers may be cool, but the larger places
| are firmly entrenched in the current establishment, don't you think?
| It's just a tool.  Who cares what kind of car you drive?

That's a good example.  In most firms, a manager who  said  "We're  a
total  GM  shop;  don't  even  bother discussing anything else" would
probably not last long. Even if a company's vehicle fleet is all from
one manufacturer, management normally reviews such purchase contracts
annually, and is willing to change if something better  comes  along.
By  "better"  they  usually mean some combination of cheaper and more
reliable. And "reliable" is usually given top billing, because a dead
delivery vehicle is a serious expense.

Most fleet purchasers would be happy to jump from GM to Ford, Nissan,
BMW,  or  Mitsubishi if the right agreement could be made, especially
if the salesman could present data showing high reliability under the
company's working conditions.  The weird thing about computer systems
is that so many companies have management without the sense to  treat
their  computer systems the same way.  Computers are becoming a major
portion of most companies'  expenses,  and  a  major  part  of  those
expenses  is  maintenance.   You'd  think  they  would be hunting for
computer deals they same way they do with vehicles.  Especially in  a
market  where there is a clear inverse relationship between price and
reliability.

| What is important is that you can get your message across in terms and formats
| they can easily understand; how you do it is irrelevant.
|
| OK hit me for thinking and saying it out loud...

Nah; it's ok; really it is. ;-)