Dear Jim,

I'm much smarter than you are, and you'd damn well better hire me.  In 
return, I promise to control my ego for at least a few months, and I'll 
pretend that your pathetic ideas actually have merit.  I'll scurry off, 
redesign the entire system so that it works, and then maintain silence when 
you claim that it was a team effort when I'm around, or that it was "just a 
few ideas" when you think I can't hear.

After that, I'll get surly and hostile and refuse to honor your brainless and 
inept requests, instead putting up an endless succession of weak and whiney 
reasons why they can't be done.  I'll also carp and bitch behind your back to 
my coworkers about how stupid you are and how screwed up the company is for 
not realizing the truth and putting me in charge. 

A year or so later, burned out and weary, I won't really care any more.  I'll 
happily follow as you, grasping a now guttering torch of stock options and 
early retirement, lead us all down into the pit of failure. I'll do everything 
you say, and promise I won't contribute at all to the intellectual basis of 
the project, guaranteeing its stillbirth.  Even though my mind brims over with 
solutions to endless problems, you won't have to deal with them because I'll 
never volunteer them.

By the end of the second year, the project will be in disaster-recovery, 
the company will hang by a thread, and they'll be screaming at you even in 
your dreams.  I'll be a convenient scapegoat, and you can paint a huge 
target on my back as the team of security guards escort me to the door 
with my box of star trek figures and family photos.  I'll be on the 
street looking for a new job, management will have fallen for your 
story hook, line and sinker and the Chairman of the Board will 
personally thank you for cleaning house.  

You'll be the golden boy of the company!

Whaddaya say? 




Attr: AjD for the idea.