Having collaborators isn’t always great
Posted by Nathaniel.
On one hand, I met the famous Jay Anderson of Rice last week and he’s a very nice guy who ended up helping me out a lot. In that case, collaborators are good because you can use other people’s knowledge instead of inventing the wheel yourself.
But there are seagull collaborators too, they fly in, squawk a lot, shit on everything, and then leave. If you keep score, it’s really surprising how many good collaborators a seagull one can negate.
There’s one Italian guy in my group who sent me a two page email this morning. On the negative side, he called a bunch of things that I did “a nonsense” but then logically said what he thought should be done instead. The end result was extremely positive.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:46 pm Using
Not that I’ve dealt with a seagull yet, but the metaphor is brilliant.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:25 am Using
Unfortunately, I didn’t make up the seagull term. I first heard it back in the .com days when people would say they had a seagull boss.
Anyway, it only took one revision of the poster to get everyone on board. Wasn’t really that painful at all.