How to Shed Credibility Quickly
I was recently having a conversation with someone at a VMUG event that I think is an incredibly sharp engineer, a fantastic presenter and content creator, and someone that truly has given quite a lot back to the IT community. We were talking about feeling a bit overcommitted in various areas of our lives, and at one point I said that part of his problem is that he’s so well-respected that people are always going to be lining up to get some of his advice, insight, or support on a project. I remember clearly saying that “the problem is that you’re so dang credible that people can’t help but want your talent.” And without missing a beat, he came back at me with “I could use a little less credibility.”
I laughed and suggested that he could easily write a blog post with horrible advice that would be easily proven wrong and that could help him get less phone calls. We riffed on this idea for a little bit about ways to erode credibility, and I haven’t been able to let go of the idea since. So, since he declined to write it, and because I’m feeling a little overextended the past few weeks -I thought it would be a fun departure to talk about a few ways that you too can erode credibility in your IT Career. You know, just in case you ever feel like you just need people to want you involved in things a little less often.
Make Stuff Up
If you can have slightly less facts, and just a bit more fantasy than Star Wars, you’re well on your way.
Are you routinely besieged by questions that you have no reasonable way of knowing the answer to? Do you feel like you are not just a point of escalation, but the vaunted keeper of all authoritative opinions? Well - what if I told you that you could once and for all be rid of the pain of knowing how to find answers to technical challenges? It’s actually quite simple: the next time that someone asks you how to do something or why something is (or is not) working in a particular way - just make some bullcrap up and pass it off as something you’ve known for ever. Yes, fellow IT professional, this is the way!
The more you try to sell it, the better this will go for you - especially if someone calls you on it and says that whatever malarkey you just barfed out doesn’t sound right. Don’t take that kind of direct personal attack from someone; instead, immediately tell them that they have no idea what they’re talking about. You can even name drop that you read it in Bill Gates’ authoritative book on Linux administration. Did someone provide you with definitive proof that you were wrong? Just shrug and say that a patch must have changed it, because it “used to be” the way you said.
If you do this often enough, people will eventually realize that may not be as talented or in-the-know as they once believed you to be. While it may be simple for you to just say, “I don’t know” when they ask you something you don’t immediately know the answer to, that would be too embarrassing - so just wing it in real-time.
For bonus points, be sure to belittle the person you’re talking to as if only an idiot wouldn’t know that 011y is the latest in 3D file systems. Scoff at them while you say it.
Be As Condescending as Possible
What he said, I guess.
Come to think of it, it’s not just for bonus points when pretending to know things; being condescending and belittling to people who haven’t invested the 10,000 hours you have into being an expert at retrograde clock reset in a nonpersistent VDI environment is a surefire way to let everyone around you know that you’re the best that has ever lived.
Frankly, the more you can assert dominance by acting like nothing impresses you and that every idea anyone else ever has is absolute crap, the quicker you can get rid of any credibility you already have. Best of all, you can do this one even when you aren’t working by wearing snarky tee shirts that say stuff like “No, I won’t fix your computer,” or bragging to the other parents at your kid’s sport event that you wouldn’t use commercial software even there was a gun to your head. Yes - if you take this advice your reputation around the office will plummet faster than Netflix stock after I bought in a month ago. Hey, it may also free up your nights and weekends as your friends realize that the kind, considerate, humble person they thought you were has been replaced by Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons”.
Blame Everyone Else
Did you forget to start a process for the overnight data collection? Was that you that let a duck into the datacenter? It doesn’t matter how big of a mistake you made - just blame someone else! Yes, that’s right; if you kicked the PDU powering the firewalls that connect your entire eCommerce operation to the internet costing your company millions of dollars and it is incontrovertibly caught on camera, or maybe you just missed a routine staff meeting - there’s no situation where you can’t simply pass that buck like a hot potato to anyone else in your vicinity. No failure is too large and no lapse in judgement is too small. The quicker you can deflect all responsibility and blame someone else, the faster you can enjoy the fruits of total irrelevance in your company. Don’t worry - the damage to your reputation will be permanent, so you’ll never again be looked up to by people in your team or anyone who knows anyone on your team.
The blast damage isn’t the only reason to try blaming someone else; it’s also a fantastic way to practice getting into politics. People who have gotten good at this skill have made it as far as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue many, many times in a row. If you get good enough at dodging responsibility, you too could have a mustache drawn on your likeness in the back of a 6th grade social studies textbook. And of course - no one in the office will want to spend any time with you at all anymore, so it’ll be great that you have this new career path.
Bonus points here come from blaming your boss for something that went wrong. If you can successfully point the finger at them, you’ve reached the storied “next level.”
Stick With Legacy Technologies
Literal perfection. I see no reason to innovate here. Move along.
Cloud shmoud! Keeping everything on premises, using only Windows 2003 (or even better - Windows NT), and keeping all your data on spinning disks (the lower the RPM the better) is the only true way to make sure that you’re getting the very best out of your investment in an IT career. At least, that’s what you need to be telling all of your colleagues. You need to make sure that everyone knows that any time they even consider mentioning something brought to market since the Clinton Administration, you’re going to be ready to throw down on them to defend the honor of code that has its 20th birthday in the rearview mirror. Kubernetes? How cute – we’re all about FORTRAN here, amirite?
In fact - if you want to set a new land-speed record for how quickly you can get to the very bottom of the credibility curve, take some time to replace every book in your office with something that the library is giving away due to obsolescence. If you can get a book on Norton Commander or FoxPro, you’d really be making a statement about your willingness to invest in your own career so that you’re providing relevant guidance and support to your company.
If you want bonus points for this category, eavesdrop around the office and anytime someone mentions an upgrade, patch... or anything else really – jump out from wherever you are and angrily tell them that their idea will never work. Make sure to loudly espouse the virtues of the most obsolete technology possible before angrily storming away.
Don’t Complete Projects or Tasks On-Time
If you want to take the more passive aggressive approach to reducing your credibility in and around the office, just sign up for a bunch of work and then when it’s due don’t submit anything. It’s that easy. All you need to do is develop even an intermittent habit of not doing whatever it is that you have been assigned or volunteered for, and your credibility will be in the basement before you can say “I’m on it.” Hey - any idiot can sign up for something and then work to get it done ahead of schedule. What takes real guts is signing up, telling everyone that you’re making great progress, and on the day it’s due just quietly leave the office or sign out without telling anyone. Definitely make sure you leave without putting anything in the Slack channel about how you’re going to be late on your deliverables.
Pictured: You, sneaking out the back door and never looking back.
In fact, this one is especially effective if combined with your new trick of blaming other people from up above. When someone calls you out on having not done your work, just blame the rest of your team for not being clearer about what was expected of your or say that it’s a major software vendor’s fault because they didn’t make the documentation consumable in audiobook format.
For bonus points, when called on about why you didn’t submit something that was due, provide false evidence that you really did do it. Maybe a picture of your dog eating your laptop or something. It worked in high school, right?
In All Seriousness - Credibility Is Currency
One of these days, I’m going to get around to writing a multi-part series on the importance of trust in technology. I truly believe it’s the most important thing that anyone in IT can bring to the table. Once you erode that trust, once you jeopardize that credibility - it’s awfully hard to rebuild it. I’ve seen brilliant technologists torpedo their roles because they didn’t think about the impact to their credibility of doing some of these things. They went from being incredibly in-demand and influential in their organization to being “managed out,” because no one in the office would (or could) trust them.
While the prose of this post may have been a bit of a tongue-in-cheek satire, the point I’m trying to make is incredibly important. At the end of the day, it’s up to you to build or maintain your credibility. Above all else, treat it like the precious commodity it is, because it’s truly the currency of an IT (or likely any) career.
Questions for Reflection:
Which of these tactics do you think would erode your credibility faster?
If you wanted to improve your office credibility, what could you do?
Why did I bother to write reflection questions for a satirical post?
