Hunting Technology Hamsters
from the they're-everywhere dept
The latest Thomas Stewart column at Business 2.0 makes a great point that many people seem to ignore: most technology processes have “hamsters”. That is, a process that should be automated or should work more efficiently than it does, but is not, just because that’s the way it was set up. Anyone who’s worked at any technology company can probably name half a dozen of those “hamsters” from where they worked. The “magic process” in the black box was really a couple of guys frantically doing data entry or something like that. He names a bunch of situations that involved these hamsters, and then makes a great suggestion. Instead of laying off everyone or having people sit around twiddling their thumbs during this economic lull, why not have them go out and find some hamsters to get rid of?
