People’s Software Company

Yaks walking through fresh snow

Originally uploaded by Mahatma4711

Because of my background in what is called (ugh, buzzword) “hyperlocal” news, I’m sometimes asked to address groups of working journalists about using the web to build an online community of the people who work at the paper and the people who read it. So one time I was at one of these meetings, and I thought, great, these are just the people I want to talk to — they run small-town papers and suburban weeklies. But right before my session was this horrible gloom and doom session. And then lunch. Only about half of them came back after lunch from the hotel bar, and those who did sat at the back of the room.

These people did not need my Powerpoint. These people needed Prozac. And that was very sad, because pretty much every journalist I’ve ever met has been smart and hardworking and emit-Diet-Coke-from-your-nose funny.

So the next time I got a chance to talk to a room of journalists I gave the talk I wish I had given to those guys. It’s a talk about how to stay sane in the high tech industry. Layoffs are normal. Companies big and small have the average structural integrity of a wet cardboard box. A career in tech offers reincarnation without having to die; you’ll see the same people again and again, now as your boss, later when you’re their boss; so act accordingly. Basically, the news industry and the tech industry are becoming one. My kids, 4 and 6, won’t see the New York Times as being in a separate business from Google (heck, by the time they can drive maybe they will be the same company). Our career norms — short tenures, lots of volatility — were becoming their career norms, and it was scary and not fun for them.

And of course I had to tell them about The Yaks. The teeming herds of hairy, fuzzy yaks. All people who work anywhere near tech know about the Yaks, and about how we all must shave a yak on occasion.

A “yak shaver” is a task where you want to do A), but in order to do A you must do B, and in order to do B, you must do C, and pretty soon you find yourself on a hillside in Nepal shaving a yak with no clue of how you got there or what it was you were trying to do in the first place.

So don’t worry about it, I tell them. It’s normal.

Normal, yes, but also…OMFGWTFBBQ is it head-explodingly frustrating. I tell you this because I spent the last 30 hours shaving one and I just noticed I missed a spot. See, I’m trying to do some UI, but then I couldn’t get the UI toolkit working, and to do that I had to mess with the Windows Registry (shudder) and to do that I hadda consult my various tech rabbis for advice…

You get the idea. Denuded Yaks for Progress! Onward!