How to denigrate an entire profession

A couple of days ago, I posted a story called "Why does the media love Apple and trash Dell." In an honest attempt (really) to explain a gap between the reality and perception of Dell's tech support, I somehow managed to denigrate the noble profession of news reporting and blogging.

What I was trying to say was that the media - as an industry - generally covers what will get them the most eyeballs, since that's how the companies (not the individuals, mind you) get paid by advertisers.

Of course, I never meant to imply that the industry as a whole or individual writers sacrifice integrity for eyeballs. I've had a long, long relationship with the media and that's simply not the case.

Glad I cleared that up. And as an added bonus, I thought I'd provide a little entertainment. Here are some of my favorite CEO quotes on the subject of denigrating professions (or something like that):

"Our industry is made up of geniuses that act collectively like idiots."

That was Bob Bailey, the recently retired CEO of PMC-Sierra, at Semico Summit 2004. I don't recall what Bob was referring to, but it was probably the dot-com bubble-bust. Anyway, I knew what he meant, but I could see some individuals perhaps taking it the wrong way.

Here's Jerry Rogers, former CEO of Cyrix - the now essentially defunct microprocessor company - opining on the competency of his sales group:

"We've got more salesmen now than we've ever had before. We've got so many salesmen that I think they're out there bouncing into each other and getting lost. I don't think they know where the customers are, so maybe we should sit here and draw maps for them."

And more of Jerry's kind words, this time about marketing:

"Those limp &%$#*s in marketing don't know what the hell they're doing."

And then there's my favorite Bill Gates quote:

"Let's face it, the average computer user has the brain of a Spider Monkey."

This one, by Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux, doesn't denigrate a profession, just an entire company:

"Microsoft isn't evil, they just make really crappy operating systems."

You know, I think I'll close with a good one by Steve Jobs:

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. ... But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth."

I hope the network executives didn't take that the wrong way.