Storage Monkeys

I liked this one too - but why so short this time?

Who did the theme music?

I don't know why I noticed this time around but I really wanted to count the "uhs". There was a lot of them!

Putting a storage guy out front of the data center strategy development team (or whatever HP is calling his role) makes a lot of sense to me because the storage industry has become the focal point of the "virtualized datacenter cloud of happiness". Servers are a declining commodity who's footprint has been displaced by storage. Network is impacted similarly with all of the virtualized aggregated links (think 10GB or unified fabric) and various other technologies that simply means doing more with fewer ports. From a simple human perspective: It's far easier for a storage guy to accept the transition of global IT direction because his niche is moving up, not declining (in a physical sense). If I'm a pure HP server guy who is seeing fewer units go out the door each year I might be less inclined to really embrace the bigger strategy because of the emotional attachment to the kind of change my level of expertise is experiencing. Maybe that's an over simplification but just think of all the people you know that resist change even though the end result will bring great gains.

Also, I don't think Non compete agreements have much place outside of realm of development and engineering. I can understand a company not wanting a person to take intimate knowledge of a widget over to a directly competing company. Marketing and management of people, though, doesn't seem like a very good use of non compete enforcement. Everyone takes a bit of the previous employer on to the next one. There was a movie about a guy that hired himself out and was formatted each time he left the company. If I remember right it was a bad movie and all of the bosses died by the end. Really that's all the evidence needed to show how bad most non competition contracts are.

Finally, the shorter time format works well.

Hope that wasn't too long winded,

Chris

I also wondered why it was shorter. I guess different people are going to have a different expectation for podcast lengths. As long as it flows well, keep it going without exhausting it.

Non-competes suck, but in most states they are worthless. I've broken two non-competes in my time and have never had a problem. Often times it costs more company more money trying to enforce them than any potential damage that could be done.

The Audio/MP3 icon show episode 2 in the status bar, but actually takes me to episode 1 on podbean.

Chris: The bumper music was made by Marc Farley... another one of his many talents.

I used the in-browser-player button, and that worked well. Thanks for updating the link.

I've been busy, and didn't have full attention to devote to the podcast, but I enjoyed both episodes, and am very happy that the show exists. Keep up the good work.

[RC]

While I agree 100% on the principle of non-competes that was spoken about in this podcast but the one thing that wasn't spoken about was the fact that the day Donatelli signed that piece of paper he gave his word. Not he is re-negging on that word... seems to bring into question his morals.

You know... if he's got questionable morals then he'll fit in nicely at HP

I have forgotten how many posts I had read over the past couple of weeks regarding Donatelli and non-competes.

The readers who participated in the discussions almost universally focused on the nature of non-competes. Many people clearly feel non-competes are evil and unnecessary. Perhaps they are right, but I could argue that lease agreements and marriage covenants are evil and unnecessary as well. All three are voluntary conditional agreements which we are free to decline and look elsewhere.

As far as I am aware, Steve, you are only the second person to acknowledge that "Donatelli signed that piece of paper and gave his word". An agreement is an agreement after all. It's sad that most people simply choose to ignore that fact.