[SLL] faking Unix knowledge? pretend to know open source Unix?

[Bryan McLellan]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Glenn Stone <technoshaman at liawol.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 01:21:45PM -0500, Bryan McLellan wrote:
>>Let's pretend we're talking about having 30 minutes worth of
>>knowledge, rather than faking any knowledge. Which is not ethically
>>appropriate and makes for really terrible managers.
>
> Actually, if a manager has good people he can trust to do the techie bits,
> and is willing to devote himself to *just* fighting the political fires and
> being an advocate for his team, it can work.  I had a manager like that at
> Boeing... it was great because we could implement something *our way*, and
> he'd sign off on it.. knowing that it was *us* that would get beeped at 0430
> if the fit hit the shan..... sort of a "loosely coupled" interface.

Oh sure. Being a sysadmin, I've reported to many managers with
software development experience but no administration experience. Most
companies just don't know what to do with us wildebeests. Anyhow,
they're technical and would trust me, but none of them pretended that
they knew what I was talking about when I didn't.

But if your boss is faking that he knows what he's talking to you,
he's lying, and that's the opposite of trust.