The Online Photographer

"No One Cares How Hard You Worked"

I'm glad you think your manager is a good guy and that you like him. I might like him too. My first reaction to your question was, "The gold badge might be worth the paper it's printed on" -- not too far from your manager's coffee comment.

But that little exchange between you and your manager betrayed a lot. I suspect your manager is thinking about what results you deliver, but you're thinking more about the effort you've put in. The problem is that nobody cares how much effort you put in. Mostly they're looking for results, and results are what drive economic value.

This is not to say that posting to StackOverflow is worthless. It's not. (I'm a participant there too.) But its value is what you get out of that activity: what you've learned, the practice you get, and yes, the motivation you get for scoring points and getting badges. Isn't getting a gold badge an accomplishment? Not to anyone outside of SO. It's mainly evidence of time and effort you've put in, but it says little about how much you have or could accomplish if someone were to hire you.

Do a web search for the phrase "no one cares how hard you worked." You'll get some articles on this theme. One is [1]. Ok, this is about photography, but the point is relevant: someone likes a photograph or they don't. It doesn't matter that you put a lot of work into it, they still might not like it. Or [2]. See point #4, but also #3 and #7. Economic value comes from the results you…

There's a fascinating solution to this problem, used by Nikon[1]:

[...] Nikon Corporation (that's Nikon Japan) officially and consciously blesses all regional pronunciations of their company name.

This is policy, agreed upon decades ago—likely in the 1950s—in some meeting room somewhere in Tokyo. Nee'kon is correct. Neye-kon is correct. Nick-on is correct. Many others are correct.

This was explained to me when I was a Nikon employee by the Executive Vice President of Nikon Inc. himself, in the flesh. I can still picture the conversation, 25 years later. And to anticipate the usual objections: Nikon Corp. is the ONLY, the SOLE, the UNITARY authority on this question. "Nikon" is not a natural word in the Japanese language. The company that is now Nikon (then Nippon Kogaku, K.K.) made it up. It's a brand name—like Kodak or Xerox. A neologism, and maybe even a portmanteau (that's debated). It was likely first conceived in the Latin alphabet, not in Kanji. Nikon Corp. gave birth to this name, and they own it. They get to make the rules about it. And their rule is clear: all regional pronunciations are equally correct. If you doubt this, just listen to their own regional advertising, produced by the company's various subsidiaries around the world. You'll hear several different, completely official, pronunciations. Oy. I feel better now.

Addendum: Of course, it goes without saying that however they pronounce it in Scotland is wrong.

[1]…

My thoughts exactly. The photographer probably thought he was doing this innocently, but even a small manipulation like this can seriously change what a picture means. There's a really good example of this somewhere online showing how the meaning of a photo can be changed by cropping the right and left sides of a picture involving a soldier. Sadly, I can't seem to find it. So, here's a couple of other examples:

http://familybible.org/israel/conflict/PeacefulTerrorists.htm

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/07/unethical-cropping.html

AP is absolutely correct to take such draconian measures - they need to be credible.

EDIT: Found it! See here: http://www.rhetorik.ch/Bildmanipulation/soldat.jpg

Let me quote one old guy not this all new person https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

I do not think he will survive in the older days. Bit in the new economy and have a few hundreds Patreon he got enough to live by in USA. Not much just write an article a day or two and filter and react to fan comment.

Not sure he saved enough as USA has no health and he lived alone. When he stopped writing for 2 days without saying it, I really started to worry. ... USA is so harsh in this aspects. But guess that is a reality. Still read him everyday.

And he is sixty something.

There have been some great posts/discussions at the blog The Online Photographer in the last week about this, proximately prompted by the new Fuji digital rangefinder just announced at Photokina:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/09/beautiful-fuji.html

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/09/flove-or-speaking-selfishly.html

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/09/x100-in-cologne.html

and then less directly:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2010/09/eno.html

>Of course, roasting yourself is not really an option.

Why do you say that? I've been meaning to try it after I saw Michael Johnston describe it as his hobby[1]. He bought a 300$ machine[2] that by his math will pay for itself since green bean is cheaper than roasted. Amazon also seems to have a few cheap and well reviewed home roasting machines[3].

[1] http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/01/open-mike-coffee-n-the-car.html

[2] http://www.roastmasters.com/behmor.html

[3] http://amzn.to/1d9OvOB