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Monday June 13, 2005
The worst insult for a geek Looks like a few of us blogger types were mentioned in a San Francisco Chronical article on corporate blogging.
We geek types take our geekness with pride. We embrace the fact that we are "different". Getting dates with the command line was much easier than the real thing (... umm ...or was that just me?). That's why being referred to as a Sales Rep in a widely read article is not taken to kindly. It's a hit to my geekhood (mostly because the sales-types got all the dates). This is the kind of verbage that would end up in a Wild-West duel 100+ years ago :)
It's pretty obvious the columnist doesn't read The Clingan Zone. I don't know many sales reps that would spend their spare time finding out how many zones they can get installed on an Ultra 10. Or the writing an SMF descriptor for tomcat. Or blogging about Java Studio Entprise 7 collaboration. Or blog at all. Most sales reps can't spell IDE. Instead of all that, they would be out on dates instead. I've earned my geekness, please don't rip it away! Sigh, as a geek, is there any insult worse than being referred to as a sales rep?
Now for some level-headedness. I'll use the typical catch-all phrase "Some of my best friends are sales reps" :) OK, that catch-all is actually true. FYI, the pre-sales geeks always have fun with Sales Rep's on this topic. It has been an ongoing joke ever since I have been at Sun, so take this blog entry for what it is: Mostly humor :)
Update: One of my sales reps responded that being referred to as a "sales rep" is an "upgrade". I love working with my peers :)
(2005-06-13 09:34:57.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Posted by Amjith on June 13, 2005 at 10:56 PM PDT #
Thanks for the vote of confidence and don't worry about changing blogging style. Hey, I didn't know geeks had any kind of style. Your not trying to call me a sales rep, are you?? :)
FWIW, I don't take the reporters mistake very seriously. I just had fun with it. The pre-sales geeks at Sun have this "inside-humor" stance about sales reps, and the sales reps know it and embrace it. It's part of the culture. We get our jabs at being geeks too. It's all in fun although I am not sure my blog entry was clear enough in that regard. The entry is really aimed at my co-workers sales-oriented co-workers and not the person who wrote the column.
Posted by John Clingan on June 13, 2005 at 11:08 PM PDT #