A man buys a map of his own backyard from a world traveler and he does it so his neighbors will believe the fence is in the right place. He knows where the fence belongs and he built the fence with his own hands and he has lived on that dirt for forty years but his word is not enough for the people on the other side of the bushes.

He needs a signature from a man who has crossed oceans and climbed peaks and seen the edges of the world. The traveler comes and he walks the perimeter and he looks at the grass and he writes down the exact same measurements the owner gave him.

He charges a thousand gold pieces for the paper and he leaves. Now the neighbors are quiet and the fence is holy and nothing has changed except the owner is poorer and the traveler is gone. This is how the big firms work in the rooms where the lights never turn off and the coffee tastes like burnt beans and everyone is afraid of being the one who makes a mistake.

The Shield of the Instructor Badge

Pierre J.P. is a man who knows about the fear of the road. He sits in the passenger seat of a small car with a second set of pedals and he watches young men try to look like they are in control. He tells me that some students do not want to learn how to drive and they just want to be seen with the man who has the instructor badge on his chest.

They think the badge is a shield and they think if they hit a pole while he is in the car it is his fault and not theirs. They are buying the stamp of the professional to cover the fact that they do not know how the clutch works and they do not care.

I started to write an angry email to the board about this very thing and I got three paragraphs in and then I deleted the whole thing because it felt like screaming at a wall. You cannot tell people they are buying ghosts when the ghosts are the only thing that makes them feel safe.

The Brunel Insurance Policy

In the middle of the nineteenth century there was a craze for building railways across the hills of England and everyone wanted to get rich. The people with the money did not know a piston from a plum but they knew the names of the great engineers.

They would pay a man like Isambard Kingdom Brunel a fortune just to put his name on a piece of paper that said the tracks would hold. Brunel was a genius and he built wonders but often he never even saw the ground where the tracks were laid.

He had young men do the work and he had them draw the lines and then he signed his name and the investors felt their hearts stop racing. They were not buying a better track and they were not buying a faster engine and they were buying the right to say that if the bridge fell down it was not their fault. It was the fault of the man with the top hat and the big cigar. The name was the insurance policy and the paper was the proof that the owners were serious men.

The Ritual of the Sharp Suits

We do this now with the technology that runs the office and we do it with the software that counts the people. A leader sits at a desk and he knows he needs to upgrade the server and he knows he needs to buy licenses for his workers. He looks at the numbers and he sees that he has sixty people who need to get into the system from home.

He knows he needs sixty seats. But he cannot just go out and buy them because someone might ask why he spent the money. He might be right and he might be wrong and if he is wrong he is alone. So he calls the firm with the glass office and the sharp suits and he tells them to find the truth.

They spend three months and they talk to everyone and they draw circles on a board and they give him a report that says he needs sixty seats. It costs more than the seats themselves but now he is protected.

The Sociology of Walking Through Doors

The real work is always smaller and it is always quieter than the report says it is. When you have to manage a Windows Server and you have to get people connected you just need the keys to the door. You do not need a three hundred page book that explains the history of doors and the sociology of walking through them.

You need to know if you should get a User CAL or a Device CAL and you need to get them and you need to get back to work. If you have people who use five different machines then you buy the license for the person and if you have one machine that twenty people use in shifts then you buy the license for the machine. The math is not a mystery and it is not a secret and it is just a bit of logic that a person can do on a napkin.

Bypassing the Song and Dance

I see people go through the same dance when they look at the Microsoft versions. They wonder if they should stay on 2019 or move to 2022 or wait for 2025 and they ask the consultants and the consultants say it depends. It always depends. It depends on the billable hours and it depends on the next quarter.

But the tech is just the tech and the licenses are just the licenses. If you go to the

RDS CAL Store

you can see the numbers and you can use the calculator and you can see the price without the song and dance.

You can have them in fifteen minutes and the whole thing is done before the consultant has even finished his first slide about the future of the cloud. It is a strange thing to realize that you can just be right without paying someone to tell you that you are right.

The Right to be Wrong

The fear of being alone with a decision is what keeps the big firms in business. If a manager buys fifty licenses and the project fails he is the one who wasted the budget. But if he hires the firm and the firm says to buy the licenses and then the project fails he can point to the report and he can say he followed the best advice in the world.

He is buying the right to be wrong without being blamed. It is a tax on courage and it is a tax on truth. We have built a world where the brand of the expert matters more than the expertise itself and we have made the stamp the most valuable part of the deal.

“The car only cares about the physics of the road and the friction of the tires. The road does not see the instructor badge and the road does not care about the certificate in the glove box.”

– Pierre J.P.

Pierre J.P. told me once that the hardest part of his job is not teaching a kid how to park a car but teaching a kid that the car does not care who is watching. The car only cares about the physics of the road and the friction of the tires. The road does not see the instructor badge and the road does not care about the certificate in the glove box.

If you turn the wheel too late you hit the curb and it does not matter if the best teacher in the country is sitting next to you. The office is the same way and the server is the same way. The software does not care if a prestigious man signed the plan for the deployment. It only cares if the license key is valid and if the configuration is correct.

We spend so much time looking for a blessing that we forget we already have the power to act. We treat the consultant like a priest who can turn a simple purchase into a holy strategy. But when you strip away the branding and you take away the leather-bound folders you are left with the same facts you started with.

You have a server and you have users and they need access. You can buy the status or you can buy the solution. One of them lets you sleep at night because you have someone to blame and the other lets you get the job done because you have the tools you need.

There is a sort of peace that comes from stopping the search for legitimization. It is the peace of the man who trusts his own eyes and the man who knows his own yard. When you stop buying the stamp you start seeing the waste.

The Rebranded Spreadsheet

I remember a time when a company I worked for spent forty thousand dollars on a study to see if they should move their data center. The internal team had already done the work and they had a spreadsheet that showed it would save them money and they had a plan to do it over a weekend.

The board said no and they said we need an outside perspective. They hired a firm and the firm sent two people who had never been in a data center before and they took the internal team’s spreadsheet and they changed the colors and they put it in a fancy template.

They presented it to the board and the board clapped and they said this is the kind of vision we need. They moved the data center using the same plan the internal team had made. The only difference was the forty thousand dollars that was gone and the three months of time that was lost.

Drive Your Own Car

We are all hungry for someone to tell us we are doing fine and we are all afraid of the dark. But the light from a big name firm is just a flashlight that you paid for with your own money. It does not show you anything you cannot see with your own lamp.

If you know you need the RDS CALs and you know the version and you know the count then you are already the expert. You do not need to borrow the status of a stranger to make your decision real. You just need to put the key in the lock and turn it.

The road is there and the car is ready and the only thing left to do is drive. You can wait for the man with the badge to tell you it is okay to go or you can just push the pedal and see where you end up.

Most of the time the road goes exactly where you thought it would and the fence is right where you put it and the server works just fine. The truth is usually simple and the truth is usually free and the truth is usually right in front of you if you are willing to look at it without a branded filter.

The big names will always be there to sell you the stamp but you are the one who has to live with the fence. Choose the tools that work and leave the ghosts to the people who are too afraid to stand alone.