I was talking to my old friend Cowboy Dan (who really is a cowboy, as in training horses, roping cattle, you know, all that home, home and deranged stuff), and after a couple of beers we got talking about what kind of things you’d never hear Real Cowboys say.
We came up with quite a few, including things such as “I’m really verklempt,” “Do you think the cut of these jeans suits me?” “Do you think a pinot noir would pair well with the baked beans?” and “To hell with cattle dogs, I’m gonna get me a poodle.” Only a lack of beer made us stop.
The reason that Real Cowboys would never say such things is that to utter them violates the unwritten code of Cowboy-ness. Cowboy-ness is a way of being that involves how cowboys behave, dress, speak and what they are seen doing (though what cowboys might do in private is their business and getting nosy might result in a one-way trip to Boot Hill).
Now, it strikes me that the IT world has its own guy-ness, its own set of unwritten rules about how Real IT Guys behave, dress and generally go about being, well, Real IT Guys.
I should take a second to make it clear the women in IT aren’t immune to these rules if they want to be taken seriously. There are certainly exceptions that are allowed simply because they are female, but not many. Being a Real IT Guy is more a state of mind than really being a guy.
Interestingly, some qualities of Real Cowboys are shared with Real IT Guys. For example, after a long, hard multiserver upgrade session, just as after a hard roundup, both are likely to have jettisoned some (if not most) personal hygiene in favor of gittin’ it done.
Here’s another: If you ask a Real Cowboy how he makes a horse do something tricky or how to throw a rope, he won’t really be able to explain it in any detail, unless you have some experience with horses or ropes. The same applies with Real IT Guys: Ask them how to configure Linux or what exactly is the spanning tree algorithm and if you don’t have serious operating system experience or have no clue about protocols, forget it.
What don’t Real IT Guys say? Here are a few samples:
“I don’t need a faster PC; this one I’ve had for the last year is more than fast enough.” If you hear someone say this, it is a marketing guy pretending to be in IT, or it’s an IT guy trying to impress The Powers That Be. In either case, that ain’t no Real IT Guy, because there’s no such thing as enough power or enough memory or enough disk space, and sucking up to The Powers That Be is for wimps. End of story.
“Sure, we don’t mind if you install that app; in fact, we’ll help you get it up and running.” It is just not conceptually possible for a Real IT Guy to say this. Users should never get to pick which apps they have installed and, if by some fluke of organizational permissiveness they do, IT should never offer to help unless it is the CEO or some other big shot who could get you fired. Even then, a Real IT Guy should try to find reasons why the app won’t work and stall as much as possible. If the user really needs it, he’ll keep waiting.
“I’ll have cottage cheese and fruit for lunch.” This phrase instantly dismisses you from the ranks of Real IT Guys. Pizza and Jolt are Real IT Food, with meatball subs and coffee (only if it is at least five hours old and bitter enough to dissolve the enamel on your teeth) coming in a close second. Cottage cheese, chicken salad wraps, anything with tofu . . . these are all big no-no’s. What you choose to eat at home is up to you – just don’t talk about it when you’re in the office.
More examples? “Microsoft is not an evil company,” “What’s Linux?” “iPod, schmi-pod” and “I think stock options are overrated” are a few that come to mind.
And the one thing that all Real IT Guys will never be heard to say? “I don’t read Backspin.”
