Brian's World

The Good Shepherd

I’ve always been fascinated by the common comparison between leaders and those who herd sheep for a living.  I seem to have this memory in my mind of various religious figures being called shepherd who would tended their “flock” of followers.  I often wonder why one of the sheep cannot just start leading the flock on their own, or better yet, what happens when you herd a bunch of shepherds together?  Who takes charge of them?  Simply stating the goal or desired outcome isn’t effective, its hard to judge if they truly have a vested interest in the goal.  Each shepherd probably feels more than qualified to go do their own thing and without some super-shepherd around there is no one they feel obligated to report to or no one they feel obligated to follow.

Thats not always a bad thing I guess.  An autonomously guiding set of nodes could probably do some really cool things if they were programmed to share similar goals (botnet?), but if each node is only serving their unique needs the graph isn’t going to get very far.  I think a fly just flew into the light socket on my T60 laptop screen.  I suspect that the most outspoken shepherd, or the most socially-acceptable one would end up getting their fellow shepherds to follow along, regardless of qualifications or sheep-herding skills.

They always forget about the sheep whenever they talk about the shepard.  Ok, I lied.  Sometimes they mention the sheep, but usually only when its time to sacrifice one or address some issues with the straggler or gimpy sheep.  They never talk about the average sheep who’s not selected for a ritualistic death…. I think that clears up any possible confusion.  Unlike the special sheep, these boring sheep go about the same routine every day, probably not changing too much.  Unless they can turn their fur gold or something like that, there is a low likelihood they’ll ever advance (if advance is the right word) to anything more than your average sheep.  I find this discouraging, as I like to believe that if you work hard enough at something you can make progress.

What’s a little bit different about sheep is that they are forced to have friends.  Unlike other things being moved, sheep are densely packed into a mob and guided more as a unified object than as N individual sheeps.  They can’t possibly escape from being close to  a lot of other sheep, which probably helps them remain content in their herd.  A herd of size 1 would probably be a herd full of sad sheep, and maybe a sad shepherd too.

The shepherds on the other hand are not forced to be social.  They can all work together quietly and awkwardly on their mission; hey, they can even opt to leave that weird shepherd out from the small talk because he acts a little different from the rest.

Whats better, being a sheep or a shepherd?  I postulate most people would rather be a shepherd, under the assumption that the position would entitle them the guide a mass of sheep.  If however, the shepherds were to be guiding a group with their peers to a location I think it would be far less appealing, being a sheep might be a bit more interesting.

Luckily, I don’t like things like ‘lamb chop’ so I’m not really involved in the sheep herding market much these days.

Today, Tomorrow, Yesteryear

Every once in a while I’m just trotting along doing my thing when I remember there are larger issues to worry about.  I thought I saw the Career Fair sign being hung over RPI’s footbridge a few days ago but I was able to successfully forget about it by the time I finished walking to my destination.  Today at the RPI TV meeting we were discussing upcoming productions and someone mentioned it happened to collide with the fair at RPI.  Hrm, I might want to start thinking about it again soon.

So I’m here, worried about where I’m going to be in 8 months after I graduate from RPI.  My typical approach might be to model my efforts after successful people I know who’ve graduate at RPI.  Let me think, I know of 3 people who’ve graduated and departed from RPI with similar degrees… of which 1 is fully employed, probably the person I have the least contact with as well.  I know plenty of people who’ve ‘extended’ their stays at the institute, be it to seek additional degrees or higher degrees, but I don’t know if that’s for me.  I think I’d rather be working, as I have yet to see an MS/PhD program interesting to me.

As such, I find myself updating something that looks like a resume and refreshing the list of cool and exciting projects I work on.  This ‘fair’ doesn’t look too promising.  I reviewed the list of companies in attendance and none of them particularly leaped out at me as a great place to work.  I’ve been consistently disappointed by RPI’s inability to get companies that interest me to come to campus.  Microsoft was here 2 years ago I think but they haven’t been back.  I’ve seen nothing from any other company that I recognize as a driving force on the web (sad face).  I don’t know who’s problem it is here at RPI.  Maybe this school isn’t just good enough, maybe the CS department is misguided in their curriculum, or maybe the people who run these fairs don’t knock on the right doors… like I said, I don’t know.

Things were always much easier when I always new the mission at hand and, almost as important, that another mission was always in the pipeline.  I might have taken for granted the fact that finishing earlier always meant I could jump quicker onto something new without having to wait around.  While the hours may have been grueling and the pay left something to be desired it was steady work, something that seems harder to find today.

But I can’t forget about the goings on of present.  Someone’s got to remember that indeed things need to get done for us to continue making progress.  Sometimes I wish progress left a more positive aftertaste in my mouth.  It seems 2009 has been a year where progress hasn’t flavored nearly as well as the past.  My taste buds have been burnt by indiscretions of others, my tongue distained with failure, and putrefied with poor communication.  What else is one to do?  I guess I should have employed some  strategic mouth wash early (and often) but it went against my belief in facilitating others happiness.  Now I’m left with what?  I guess I have left than I started, but that usually implies a large loss when I didn’t start out with very much at all.  I guess I’m left to build it up and see what happens.

Good night moon.

Development

This semester at RPI they have me taking 2 of these Professional Development classes.  By “they” I am referring to the people who decided that I need to take them to graduate.  So far I’ve found them mildly junky.  One of the classes is about leadership theories and so far I don’t think I’ve learned much of anything.  Part of the class involved reading about a box and how to get out of it, but the book spent 50% of the time describing the box, 35% of the time describing how we all end up in the box, and only a meager 25% percent on how to get out of the box (more specifically, 3/4 of that 25% focused on how not to get out of the box).  If I had written the book, which I would probably never do in the first place, I would have been like this:

Ok, so nobody is perfect.  Secretly most of your co-workers dislike you, but its nothing new.  Here is how to make them like you by liking yourself and not being a moron.

Maybe someone will publish that.

The other class is a little bit different.  It appears the instructor plans to call on us and ask us questions.  It also appears she plans to teach us some sort of interview skills/techniques, or so she said.  I’m not a fan of going into situations like an interview knowing how to form my responses; its like those students who always spit the question back at the start of their answer, while the technique works its not unique or a presentation of yourself.  I understand that certain interview situations may be advantageous to those who say what the interviewer is looking for, but I’d rather just tell them what I’m thinking.  If the interviewer doesn’t find it fitting into their model of correct answers than maybe I am not a fit for what they are looking for, who knows.

This was the same instructor who started off a class by asking how many of us didn’t have jobs yet.  I don’t know about my peers, but I don’t know what I’m eating for lunch the next day… never mind what I’m doing after I graduate.

I think I need to bring out the sheep herder’s manual again.  I could be a bit rusty at it or the sheep could have grown a bit since last time.