Wednesday, March 23, 2011

A Proxy For Google

I was recently asked why I write down my thoughts on Identity and Access Management in a blog. In fact, I was recently asked why I give away all our secrets and didn't I know that my actions were damaging to my long-term job prospects. In effect, educating others means more competition in the job pool.

I have some answers to these questions:

1) I enjoy writing down my thoughts and it helps solidify the concepts in my own head. It also allows me to refer back to past experiences

2) I like the idea that others read my blog and are maybe inspired to take the thoughts and improve them

3) Educating others relieves me of the responsibility of being the custodian of a certain piece of information and allows me to concentrate on learning new things. After all, we should always aspire to learn new things and stretch our imaginations

Having said all that, my time is precious. When viewers of my blog request help, I will try my best to provide guidance and pointers but I may not respond immediately. I don't actually provide this as a service and therefore there is no SLA! Requests should also be thought through - I don't like being a proxy for Google, for example. (You may get a response including a Let Me Google That For You link!)

In short, I enjoy writing my blog and I enjoy helping people but I prefer to help people who have demonstrated that they have already made a good attempt at addressing their problem.

1 comment:

Dave Hay said...

Hi Stephen, yes, I agree, sharing is so much more rewarding than "Scrooging", but it is nice when people can take the first few steps, BEFORE they ask for help.

As ever, thanks for sharing your experiences, that's a great reason for blogging.