Wow. A blog posting an image of a Twitter post. That's like uberspam.

I think that companies ought to hire just the Ruthlessly Honest Dick, and let its product users become evangelists. If you're good enough, shouldn't that just happen?

Thanks for being a ruthlessly honest dick.

How about make something good enough that the ruthlessly honest dick can be the evangelist.

This seems to be Apples strategy.

I didn't want to explicitly say Apple, but yeah. That's what I was thinking. Once your dick has nothing to say, he's an evangelist.

Disclaimer: I'm an evangelist.

So I think the problem is that some horrible sales shills are using my job title. I wish they would stop, or die. Either way.

The concept of evangelism (in terms of the word) is someone who believes in something telling others about it. For the stuff developer tools that I evangelize at Yahoo! I only do it if I believe it's worthwhile. I say that as a developer.

The problem comes when people aren't really evangelists. They have no problem screwing over what they are supposed to be passionate about by lying to people who can spot them a mile away. Developers aren't your average chump.

While I don't expect this to be true for lots of companies I hope our evangelists are honest and knowledgeable. If we are ever any other way I'd love to hear about it so I can fix it. The last thing an evangelist should be is someone who drinks their own company's cool aid and doesn't know about the outside world.

As crass as that may sound- its very true. When 'evangelists' start throwing around crazy ideas and plans at cocktail parties, it leaves the people on the ground who are actually working on a product dumbfounded

Q: What's the difference between a computer salesman and a used car salesman?

A: The used car salesman knows when he's lying.

I've never worked at a place where a person like this is acceptable. I've been told too many times that I was too negative when in fact I was just being realistic.

Same thing, and I view that as a big flaw in how a lot of companies think. Constructive criticism should be rewarded, partly because it's useful, partly because it's a lot harder to be constructive than a lot of people think.

It holds true in all fields, too. Creative writers open to criticism are always better than writers who refuse to listen to criticism. The best creative writers are the ones who take criticism, then explain why they did what they did, and possibly educate the critic as to a part of writing. I had a teacher who defended Joyce like that to me, once, and it did me worlds of good.

my boss calls this being brutally honest, his business is ran this way - he always has the toughest questions but it makes you produce better things and be prepared for questions,

I absolutely love Merlin's Twitter name, I just can't decide why.

"Hotdogs, ladies!" just sounds hilarious.

He can hire the Ruthlessly Honest Dicks that getrealordie.com advertises by public pillory of their cover letters.