Technology is a tough business to be in. People are afraid of having their know-how stolen. Complicated NDAs and non-competes are routine. it’s not pretty, but it’s life. Or is it?
You’re #CuriousAboutData – so read on!
I always felt that there had to be a better way
to do business.
It all began way back when. A younger version of me was looking for a system administrator job (yes, a W2, 9-5 kind of a thing). The technical interview went well, and all I had to do was to meet the IT director for a “sanity check”.
So, he asks me a routine question.
Q: “What do you see yourself doing in 6 months to a year from now?”
I don’t know what came over me, but I answered …
A: “Taking long lunches and sipping margaritas.”
Believe it or not, I got that job, and I kept my promise. After I was done with setting things up, everything was humming along and barely needed my intervention. In fact, for a full year after I left they didn’t need to hire another sysadmin.
This incident led to the development of BitWise’s “Margarita Principle”. (Which, by the way, is on its way of becoming a major concept in organizational psychology – wink).
The idea is that computers are made to serve humans, not the other way around. That’s why at BitWise MnM, we’ve heavily invested in DevOps, CI/CD and other forms of automation. We’re supposed to avoid routine tasks no matter how lucrative they may seem.
That’s a shift in our perception of what constitutes value. As routine accomplishments become trivial, real value is placed on human interaction and true innovation. Which is how things should be, really.
So, we no longer have to worry about know-how being stolen and don’t have to force clients to sign NDAs, or long term contracts. Price to pay? Painstakingly careful implementation, in-depth analysis and an ongoing effort to push ourselves to new heights.
In his piece “The Open Window”, the Spanish Cubist, Juan Gris, invites you to look at your everyday world in a slightly different way, as if somehow moving through time and space. No other art is a better fit than Cubism for representing software and databases, as they are a digital (the discrete) means of representing the real world (the continuous).
We like people, so feel free to call or write. Humans only.
