Sandals and ponytail set cramp Linux (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

Sandals and ponytail set cramp Linux (ZDNet)

Posted Mar 28, 2006 17:31 UTC (Tue) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341)
Parent article: Sandals and ponytail set cramp Linux (ZDNet)

When a company (or a representative of a company, but that's essentially the same) cares more about looks than performance (which I'd like to define to also include things like stability, suitability for the task, and so on, not just raw speed), then something's rotten in the state of Denmark - it's a faint whiff of decay that you're catching there, and it's a sure bet that that company has jumped the shark and will - sooner or later - die (this may take a long while, of course, particularly in the case of big companies, but it's ultimately inevitable unless the company undergoes a radical cleansing - something that most companies will not do).

This is a piece of common wisdom that's most often applied when it comes to employees - when a company cares more about what an employee (particularly one who's not in direct contact with customers) wears than about how they perform, the ship's sinking.

But it's also true for other things: when a company cares more about whether the programmers of a software package have ponytails than about how suited the software is to the tasks at hand, the ship's sinking at well. You can still do business with that company, as long as you always demand/get prompt payment, but you should definitely not take this advice - if you listen to this ugly siren's song, you (that is, your project) will be next.

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