The End-of-Release-Cycle Motivational Email
August 20th, 2005
Feel free to use this with your colleagues and/or subordinates.
From: Dan McKinley
Comrades,
As you slave away at your desks today, putting the finishing touches on another outstanding release, you can know it was all worth it. You have made it. You are now #3 on an arbitrary list somewhere:
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestjobs05.html
I know what you’re thinking — Dan, many of the jobs beaten by ‘computer software engineer’ on that list are not, in fact, real or respectable professions. ‘Chiropractor’ and ‘advertising manager,’ for instance.” I know, I know, this looks suspiciously like a plot by management to squeeze more work out of you. But it isn’t. Probably, anyway. I don’t have any conclusive evidence that that’s what it is.
But while you’re thinking about that think about this: god gave us the data and it’s up to us to make it dance.
Dancing’s something that can be a wonderful end in itself! Even if you are just dancing because someone is firing a revolver at your feet, for the amusement of a legion of dumbass pretty-boys who work in nice offices and go home at 5:00. You can still derive pleasure from the act of dancing. If you’re the kind of person that likes dancing, I guess, which most of us probably aren’t. But I digress.
Looking at the end of this thing, I am astonished at how much we have accomplished. I always knew I would be laughing all the way to the bank. Even if I had no business there.
“Do you have an account here, sir?” They’d say.
“No,” I’d say.
But I would be laughing, laughing, because I am beautiful. What was I talking about? I lost my train of thought there.
Your buddy, Dan McKinley
