So, what exactly do you do?
The CEO’s new Executive Assistant paused at my desk this morning and asked, in a jocular manner, “So, what exactly does everybody over here [in the engineering office] do?”
What an excellent question. Even better because M does not have a software development background - she’s not all wrapped up in the jargon and mystique and assumptions that filter everyone else’s vision. She’s the kid in the fairy tale “The Emperor Has No Clothes” - a bullshit detector. If the activities of the Engineering team and the general purpose of the company’s products and protocols cannot be explained in about ten minutes to an intelligent person who has no domain knowledge, our activities and products are probably bullshit. Or, more probably, our activities and products are so enmeshed in obfuscation and fogginess of purpose that the question is moot, because nothing effective is getting done anyway.