You Are As Good As You Say You Are. Now Give Me What I Want.

Some of the things that I need to do at work fall in the category of things that are viewed as contemptibly low priority by the most advanced members of the technical staff. For example, one thing that I do is to provide some pretty basic technical information to beginning grad students. While grad students tend to be less flaky than the clowns from the Calculus Circus, many of them are still young and have limited experiences. Some people think that we should just say RTFM instead of helping them -- especially instead of having someone on staff whose job duties include helping people instead of doing "real science." But that is the way that things go.

So now I need help from one of the most challenging people on the team. Someone who thinks that he is awesome and amazing and is always right. And for a purpose that he almost certainly thinks is stupid.

Of course my strategy is: What you are doing is by far the most important part of this project. And you are a uniquely qualified expert whose work on this essential component is instrumental in moving things forward. If I can let everyone know about your innovative and visionary progress on this problem, then they will have immense respect for our team. Please send me a CV and an abstract.