How to tell if a techie is a fraud
- TAGS:John C. Dvorak, Vivek Kundra
- IT TOPICS:Government & Regulation
John C. Dvorak is causing a stir with his blog posting that asks Is US Chief Information Officer (CIO) Vivek Kundra a Phony?
Dvorak raises many points. One has already been debunked, that about a college degree. Om Malik was told by the White House that Dvorak was "highly inaccurate" but he doesn't go into which specific points are accurate and which are not.
For me, the most interesting aspect is what made Dvorak look into Kundra in the first place. As he explains:
I first suspected something was fishy about this fellow by listening to him on CSPAN where he simply did not sound like someone who studied computers or technology. His common referrals to Twitter and Google Docs as some sort of high-tech breakthroughs and a way to save money and empower the public stemmed from pure cornball pop culture and the blogosphere, not from computer science or Information technology. During one of his testimonies before a Congressional committee he even talked about the future being something like the Star Trek holodeck. His clichés and commentary was that of a 18 year-old blogger who just got their first Macintosh.
Does it take one to know one? Do you need to be a techie to get a feel for whether another person is truly a nerd? Â
Last year I suggested a test question and three possible responses. The question is about backup, something that should be a priority to any good techie. Â
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