🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 21 May 2018 10:36:24 -0700 (PDT), hanc...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>On Sunday, May 20, 2018 at 11:49:29 AM UTC-4, Dan Espen wrote:
>
>> > Perhaps.  But even in these cases, a consultant needs more
>> > than the gift of the blarney if disasters are to be avoided.
>> 
>> I sure don't have the gift of blarney.  That's for the salesmen.
>> I relied on honesty and talent.  My employer understood fully that
>> when I showed up at the client site, some of the salesman
>> promises would have to be taken back. 
>
>Having good communication skills and able to present an 
>intelligent, organized, and interesting presentation, 
>especially of technical material, is a very valuable skill, 
>and a lot of programmers don't have it.
>
>Some programmers take seminars or training in public speaking
>and pick up useful skills they didn't even know about, and how
>to avoid distracting habits (like jingling keys/change while
>speaking, having the talk properly organized, noting timing, 
>giving not too much detail, etc.)
>
>Many technical people did not care for their schoolwork in
>public-speaking assignments.  
>
>Today, with video common, someone can film their talk and play it back
>and see how they come off.
>
>This is all different than the "gift of blarney" of salesman
>presenting B/S that they don't even know what it means.
>
>IBMers were well trained in this.  Mentioned before was the
>big difference between IBMers and representatives from other
>computer firms.  Amazing that the other companies never caught
>on, it was not a secret.
>
>(But then I'm amazed that Burger King can't run its outlets as
>well as McDonald's does, despite 50 years of experience.)

Yeah, you can get stale food outside main meal times at Burger King,
but not at McDonalds.