On Thu, 8 Jun 2017 15:55:36 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Thursday, 8 June 2017 17:54:58 UTC+1, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Pick your own path to enlightenment and try not to bite the hand that
feeds you knowledge.

Yes he gets things right. He also gets them wrong and makes a real
spectacle of himself. The madness comes out. Regularly. I try to learn
from everyone, but I wouldn't want to work with him.
NT

You probably would not want to work with or for me. I really don't
care who's right or wrong. When such discussions would appear, I ask
that discussion of the problem at hand be temporarily terminated, and
that we only discuss who is at fault. After about 15 minutes of
watching everyone involved make complete fools of themselves, they
usually get the clue, and the tribunal mode doesn't resurface.

Things become more difficult when dealing with foreign educated
engineers, where admitting that they are mistaken is a mortal insult
and should be avoided at all cost. Getting them to abandon a lifetime
of covering their ass is difficult, but not impossible.

More recently, I've been involved in a few virtual companies, where
the participants are scattered all over the planet and in some cases
have never met. The distances involved and medium of communications
tends to amplify personality conflicts and differences of opinion,
which are sometimes considered mistakes. I have directories of saved
project emails that make Phil's colorful comments read like praise and
compliments. There are ways to prevent such things from getting out
of hand. I used one of them on you in my previous message.

As for "the madness comes out", you don't understand the problem until
you have worked with the extremes of what you might consider madness.
I had to work with a technician who was in some program that distilled
to "get a job or go back to jail". I was seriously worried that he
would try to kill me if there was a disagreement. In the end, we
discovered that he was quite good at programming and I used him to
build and program an automated test system for a product that I was
helping design.

I have other less extreme example if you need them. In most cases, I
was able to successfully work with what would normally be considered
very difficult co-workers. The trick was to spend the time trying to
understand their motivations, inspirations, and what makes them tick.
In the previous example, the tech had failed at literally everything
he tried doing, and was in critical need of any success to boost his
pride and self-esteem.

I don't know what makes Phil run. I also don't care. If I did know,
I wouldn't discuss it in public because they have nothing to do with
the repair problems under discussion. All I care is that he continue
to produce correct answers and offer useful experiences. Behind the
keyboard, he could be the reincarnation of Vlad the Impaler, and I
would still say nice things about his troubleshooting and experience.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558