Being An Expert

In my job, in my current role, I am considered a Subject Matter Expert.  I understand how and why things break, and I help my company and our customers to try and avoid breaking their equipment in the future.  So when I saw this link that Dr Desert Flower posted on The Face Book on my "timeline" there, it made me laugh so hard that I had tears in my eyes.  It is both hilarious AND extremely sad, at the same time, due to it's accurate representation of most medium and large sized companies, and how the organization views its Subject Matter Experts. (link HERE in case embedded video fails)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

 I can empathize with the light blue shirted expert, completely.  This applies to science, technology, engineering, software, literally ANY field where knowing how to do your specialized-skill-required job & doing it well is never apparently as important as the metrics and directives given by those who have no idea how how the job could be done, how hard it would be to do it, if it is even possible, or that they even know what they want.

"Perpendicular to what?"  
"To...  to....  (shuffling papers hurried and nervously...) to everything!"

While the video is 7 and a 1/2 minutes long, it is truly worth watching to get the full impact.  For those who are experts in their fields, who have mad skills at being able to do, invent, discover, repair, develop, you will probably both laugh, and cry.  For those who barely have a grasp on what they're supposed to do in their job, or those who manage other people whose expertise is far greater than their manager's, or for those who just get by daily on BS, politics, and ball washing skills... well... they'll probably just be confused as to why anyone with a clue would see this video as both funny and sad.

If you found this video as poignant and relevant as I did, I encourage you to please comment here (or send me an email, if you're afraid to comment publicly) as to what was your favorite line (or lines) in this marvelously performed sketch.

My lunch break is over...   back to solving problems...

(Yesterday, the video had a million hits.  Today, it has nearly 3 million)