Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Dear everyone who feels as if they should comment on business, economics, and careers.
I appreciate you want to do so. I appreciate analysis. I especially appreciate those of you who can produce actual numbers in your discussion that come from reliable research. We need to have these discussions on jobs, employment, health care, etc.
But, my dear assorted commenters and commentatrixes, could you please, maybe, in your theories KEEP IN MIND THE HUMAN SIDE OF economics?
I want to talk about the next Dumb Idea.
Why do I want to do this? Because I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about the Next Big Thing. It's always coming, it's always here – and it will always be forgotten in the next few months. In many cases it wasn't the next big thing anyway, but of course the various pundits, experts, and bloggers (guilty, here . . .) go on to look for the Next Big thing even when they got the last one wrong.
iPad. DLC. Mahwa. Whatever. I keep hearing what's absolutely going to rock my socks off in the geekonomy.
So I'd like a change of pace – I'd like people to start discussing the incredibly stupid ideas that are going to go down in flames.
Whenever my friends, family, coaching subjects, co-workers, ex-co-workers, etc. talk about their job searches I almost always hear some version of the following phrase:
"But I don't have THIS!"
THIS is usually a bullet point out of a large amount of bullet points on a job posting. It may be a skill, or a class, or a certification that, but THIS is something the person in question does not have, and they fear they won't get the job because of it. Their whole world collapses into the fact "I don't have THIS."
I'm really tired of THIS.