A victory

Working at Zillian is like living in one of those action movies where there's no villain; the slopes of Everest, or a runaway train, or the harsh landscape of Mars, is enough to provide drama. So here is my primal scream of "still alive" victory: that best engineer who was denied promotion, who I sweated out a comprehensive appeal for with the help of many others, was approved by the appeals committee on Thursday and, unless lightning strikes in the form of an executive overturn within the next few days, will be promoted to my level.

This is huge for my team and, unequivocally, could never have happened without me. For once I really did something. I found out yesterday morning, and spent the entire day in delirious celebration. My engineer gets his due, and, well, nobody will be concerned now about their chances of growing to staff level under me. This can't hurt my standing in the eyes of the new bossboss, either.

Between this, doing some actual email catch-up last week, and having a confirmed new hire starting in January to shore up my down-by-one logging config team, it feels like a streak of difficulties at work is at last turning around.

I raise my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world!

( P.S. Why I'm just fine posting this on LJ )

Would YOU pass along a friend-of-friend to the rest of your friends?

I had a somewhat fascinating conversation this week about the limits of friend-favors and social networks. It was a conversation with my friend RF, and it took place in the context of this linear social network. All connections are social connections but all parties are in the same industry:

JI -- RF -- DY -- (DY's other friends)

And the paraphrased conversation was like this.

RF: (was angry that DY wouldn't introduce JI to her friends in a certain industry segment, after saying she might or would.)
Me: Hmm, how sad, DY is not doing unpaid labor quite as you'd hoped. Maybe you should hook JI up with a headhunter, who does this stuff for a living.
RF: Whaaa? That's a little bit mean. JI isn't even looking for a job, she just wants to make connections.
Me: Wow, so even less potential payoff for DY. Yeah, I can't say that's my scene either. Too much effort, no reward.
RF: I feel it's not about effort, but about DY not wanting to look stupid in front of her friends in case JI isn't very smart.
Me: I, also, would not wish to risk even a smidge of my professional reputation on referring someone I had not met.
RF: Here is the letter JI wrote about what she was looking for. (Letter).
Me: Yeah, I wouldn't pass that along to my friends either. I really, really, wouldn't. No way. That letter makes JI look like a whole lot of work.

We talked some more, and it became clear that, for me and maybe for DY, that extra degree of social separation is an absolute killer. I would personally have talked to JI, as a favor, in DY's place, but without having met her there is no way I'd risk annoying the rest of my professional-friend network.

Likewise, I'm pretty sure I would not meet up with a friend of a friend of a friend. There's too little linkage there. A FoF who turns out to be annoying can be restrained a bit through the friend in the middle, but beyond that it's no better than a random stranger. And I have to focus my energy/time somehow. And my professional reputation is precious, and has taken me a long time to earn.

RF would have made the introductions, though. He would have seen it as a reasonable friend-favor, and would not have seen it as a risk to his professional reputation to pass on an unknown to his friends. That last point interests me, because I don't see why we would differ on that point; could be a gender thing, or a confidence thing (correlated), or something else I'm not seeing.

Would you have done it?