Social Climbing

You cannot have failed to notice EMC's hiring assault on the blogosphere; especially anyone who is blogging on the wonderful world of V. It seems that EMC are aiming to get hold of some of the top talent and who can blame them? But apart from bolstering their technical resource, what else are they up to?

I wonder if some of Chuck's recent blogs give us some insight into what EMC are up to? If you strip away the EMC related rhetoric, you really end up with a compelling vision of a service oriented view of IT. There is actually very little to disagree with; even you if don't really believe in the Cloud; much of what Chuck's blog espouses what many of us have been trying to work too for years. 

So why the hiring spree? Well another common theme in Chuck's blog is that the technology to enable this change is really here and there is nothing stopping us embracing this apart from our own prejudices, either corporate or personal. It is simply a matter of psychology.
Although, the real life situation is more complex than this; there is more than a grain of truth in this. 

And I suspect EMC is actually no different; yes, EMC have some people with vision and a real desire for change but is this as prevalent as Chuck would like us to believe? My experience would suggest that EMC is changing but not as fast as people like Chuck want/need it to.
So what better idea than to hire in people who have already embraced the vision; dot them throughout the organisation and enable them to be change-bringers.

 The blogosphere is full of people with this vision and this is another example of EMC grasping social media and turning it to their advantage; also, think of the money that they are saving? Recruitment is an expensive game; by careful targeting, EMC are saving themselves a whole bunch of money.

 I hope this doesn't impact some of the excellent independent voices that we have but I can only applaud EMC for their boldness and congratulate those new hires on their new jobs.