“You Can’t Say That!” – The MidnightDBA Comprehensive Response

We here at MidnightDBA have many many thoughts and opinions, and many many means to release them into the wild.  We use these means liberally to spread goodwill, cheer, silliness, ire, critique, righteous fury, and whatever else we choose. Over the years, we’ve gotten several versions of one particular message: “You can’t say that!”

Here, at long last, is our comprehensive* reply.

Contents:

• “You Can’t Say That! They’ll sue you!”
• “You Can’t Say That! It’s slander!”
• “You Can’t Say That! It reflects badly on us!”
• “You Can’t Say That! It’ll cost you business!”
• “You Can’t Say That! People won’t like you!”
• “You Can’t Say That! It’s impolite!”
• “You shouldn’t say that! <fill in the blank>”
• But what about “Don’t be a dick“?
• There are things we really can’t say

“You Can’t Say That! They’ll sue you!”

Laws differ from country to country, so I can only speak for life here in the U.S. with any degree of accuracy: We don’t really say anything sue-able. I don’t want to get too First Amendment-y on you, because oh my god how annoying are people who say something horrible online and then shout “MAH CONSTITUSHUNAL RIGHTS” the second anyone calls them on it?

Anyway, being sued or formally quashed actually is a legal matter, and so freedom of speech  is applicable here. We don’t incite imminent lawless action, violate copyright, or use untruths to harm others. We don’t say anything that’s outside the purview of the grand old First. What we say are opinions and truths as we honestly experience them.

So no, they’re not going to sue us. Not successfully, anyway, because when I say “CompanyX did a terrible job on their product-or-event”, that’s an opinion. When I say “THIS guy plagiarized THAT guy”, it’s a true and usually provable fact. And so on.

…advocacy of unpopular ideas that people may find distasteful or against public policy are almost always permitted.

“You Can’t Say That! It’s slander!”

No, it’s not. If I said in all seriousness, for example, “Adam Machanic tortures baby llamas in the course of his SQL performance testing,” that would be slander…technically it’d be libel, because this is printed media. Anyway, that statement is completely untrue, and it would likely harm his reputation if anyone were to take it seriously.**

Note that both of those elements – the untruth, and the potential for harm – have to be in place for it to qualify as defamation.  It’s not slander if you did something stupid, or bad, and the news of it (or our comments about it) harm your business or your reputation. If you make a product that doesn’t work, a book that’s factually inaccurate, or a gesture that’s not usually seen in polite company, we don’t slander you when we talk about it.

Also note that this is a subcategory of “they’ll sue you!” So, double-no.

“You Can’t Say That! It reflects badly on us!”

This is also known as the “you’re gonna get kicked out” objection.

We work for clients and companies, and we are members of professional organizations.  We’ve never had a client/company take issue with things we say on our blogs (and show and etc.), largely because we don’t publicize who we work for. You can sometimes find out, sure, but we don’t name names, and I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Every so often, we have had individuals in a couple of our organizations take issue with something we’ve said or written. Sometimes it’s a comment on a hiring company, or a vendor, or some in-SQL topic that rubs somebody the wrong way.  Simply speaking:

1. The opinions expressed by the MidnightDBAs are ALWAYS those of the individuals, and not those of any associated group or company.  Most folks recognize that. Points 2-4 below are deeply secondary to this, the most important point.
2. We go out of our way to separate our clients and organizations from our stream-of-opinion media (see #1, above). Have you ever seen us name a company we work for on the show? Nope. If something is applicable to the topic at hand, we’ll talk about it. When it’s appropriate, we fuzz out the names.
3. You can’t please all the people all the time, and that’s fine. This is especially true about people who express their views quite a lot (as we do).
4. At the end of the day, any given group we’re in has the right to ask us to shut up, ban us from communications, or outright kick us out. It’s not ideal, of course, but the Northern Hemisphere Chamber of Cat Jugglers (or whomever) has its own rights, right? Of course right.

“You Can’t Say That! It’ll cost you business!”

This is sometimes known as the “burning bridges” objection.

I haven’t yet had a company meet and interview me, read my blog, watch my show, and then turn me down. It’s absolutely possible that some head hunter or CIO decided not to talk to me based on what I’ve said, of course…the world may never know.  I do know of peer consultants who won’t recommend me for work, either because of the show, or a critical blog, or whatever similar offense-related reason***.  Technically, I am losing work because I “say that”.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten dozens of contacts and several gigs directly because of my blog, my show, and my direct style. Sean has, as well.  We’ve made a reputation of telling the truth, and people appreciate that. We have one enthusiastic supporter who owns a technology company, employs us periodically, and recommends us heartily…and he comes to the shows whenever he can. Being forthright and honest, both positively and critically, has gained us business.

As for burning bridges: They’re not bridges we have anyway. If we don’t like an organization and wouldn’t do business with them anyway, it’s not a critical bridge. We don’t go out of our way to nitpick and present exposes on anyone for any reason, of course. But if Billy DBA asks me if CompanyX was a good company to work for, you can bet I’ll answer him honestly.

Sean’s mission statement: “If it comes between offending a company and doing right by my fellow DBAs, I’m going to tell the truth about what I know.”

“You Can’t Say That! People won’t like you!”

See “You can’t please all the people all the time, and that’s fine“, above.

A bunch of people don’t like us. A bunch of people do. I like hanging around with the ones that do. The ones that don’t, I don’t see all that often.  It’s a great system, and beats junior high six ways to Sunday. I highly recommend it.

“You Can’t Say That! It’s impolite!”

This isn’t one of our biggest concerns. But I’ll address it more thoroughly, just for you.

This usually comes up when referring to Microsoft, quite honestly…or occasionally, with a well-loved vendor who’s done something for the community.  Look, I like Microsoft overall. I like this vendor and that one overall. But they’re not hosts, nor heroes, nor saints. They’re companies, and that means a few things:

• We don’t owe them anything. We already buy their products and talk about them, teach people about them for free, and evangelize for them. We also make my living off of them, and we’re glad for that. Nowhere in that relationship does a kiss and a thank-you bottle of wine factor in.
• You can’t actually hurt a company’s feelings. A company doesn’t have feelings, it has stockholders. A company is made of people, and some employees/owners who feel ownership in the place might take criticism to heart. I get that. But that’s a non-issue. If you’re a big enough grownup to have a job, make decisions, and execute them…own the damn decisions. You can apply the “can’t please all the people” philosophy to your own job too, guys.
• Good works over here don’t excuse screwups over there. We can (and will) praise you here, there, and back again for the brilliant work you did on ScanTronAuto5000, VendorZ. But when you ship ScanTronAuto6000 without a damn reflux capacitor****, you’re going to hear about it. Again, own it.

“You shouldn’t say that! <fill in the blank>”

If you’re of the “sure, you can say anything you want, but you shouldn’t say it, for reason X,” then I applaud you at the very least for your clarity of thought and basic understanding of the early bits of the Bill of Rights. But the responses above still apply. We’re grown-up humans, which means “should” is a personal decision, and not subject to heavy parenting.

But what about “Don’t be a dick“?

If you read this far and don’t know us well, you might have the impression that we just LIVE to criticize, vent, rant, bestir, and enrage. In point of fact, I’m a pretty positive person. In point of fact, Sean’s a really friendly guy.

In point of fact, we tend to get most angry at major injustices, massive unnecessary foul-ups, shoddy products, intentional obtuseness, egregious laziness, tightassery, intolerance, and the like.  You know, mostly those same things that get YOU all in a rage. We’re just far more conscientious about writing those things down, because we want to tell it to the masses*****.

We don’t troll. We don’t attack people personally. We don’t make things unnecessarily difficult. We aren’t, in short, dicks.

There are things we really can’t say

And they are:

• Untruths: We’re not allowed to lie. While I’m sure it ever-ever happens, we really do have a core value about honesty.
• Anything covered by NDA: Well, duh.  We take this very seriously, because revealing things covered under a non-disclosure agreement has legal and business repercussions. It’s a bad idea, so don’t do it, kids.
• ….that’s about it.

Our philosophy isn’t the same as everyone else’s. Otherwise, I would have never felt the need to write this, what will ultimately be our pat response to any further “You can’t say that!”-style commentary. And that’s fine…the opinions expressed here aren’t necessarily those of the management, the employer, the reader, or of anyone else on Earth or in the cosmos.

That’s the whole point, don’t you think?

Happy days,
Jen McCown
www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen

Footnotes:

*We certainly hope it’s comprehensive. If not, we can always add more later.

**Satire, mind you, is another matter entirely…you can say whatever you want there, because the nature of satire makes it pretty obvious that you mean something very different from the actual words…but then, we’ve never had anyone confuse any of our actual satire with reality.

***No offense taken, guys. Do business the way you think best.  

****That’s right, I said “reflux capacitor”. You don’t think a software product would have a flux capacitor, do you? Silly nerd…

*****Think of us as the DBA Daily Show.