Its smart to be an idiot

"Being an idiot, means losing the sense of self-criticism that is often found in programmers, sysadmins and engineers and truly learning." -- Noah Gift

Thanks to Gordon of Yell if it Changes for passing on to me Noah's article called The Importance Of Being An Idiot which as you can tell from the blog title, its something I believe in.

Admitting that you are not an expert, or don't know everything is hard, however, if you are an indispensable expert... you can't get promoted. And I certainly hope that all CEOs are jacks who hire experts rather than being an expert who only looks at one thing (usually that quarter's bottom line).

And Noah's article has a nice quote from The Edge -- "Most people lost in the wild die of shame. They didn't do the one thing that could save their lives –thinking"

Being an idiot means not being ashamed to ash the questions stupid questions.

Like how do I...

Will

tags : overheard, idiot, programmer, sysadmin, engineer, o'reilly, Noah Gift, Yell if it Changes, jacks, thinking, stupid questions