4 7 10
Like people? You don't have to be a cruise director to be an effective IT professional. Politeness and patience aren't a quality of liking people, they're simply common sense when dealing with others, although there are limits to how patient anyone can be expected to be when faced with discourtesy on the part of those we are supporting. Liking people isn't really part of the equation.
As a developer and system administrator, I have to say that the 'multi-tasking' paradigm is getting a bit more than old, and personally, I'm more than sick of it. Multi-tasking is more than often the expectation by management & HR types that the entire world mold themselves into clones of the distracted, "half-there" management class to which these folks often belong (apparently including the author)... a virtual impossibility considering the focused output we're asked to deliver. (Although... I *do understand the impetus to promote such an idea as "critical", since it's a very good way to get 120% output for 80% of the pay, if you can convince enough people that it is "the way things work" that it becomes the normative)
Regarding #10. If you expect people to be on call 24/7/365, you're deluding yourself and doing a disservice to the profession and eventually to your company(s). I get emergency situations, but as SOP? In my opinion, It smacks of aristocratic leanings in the present management class. In the "good old days" your grandparents must have told you about affectionately at some point, they were often called "house slaves" and "indentured servants", and at least in my not so humble opinion, we don't need a rebirth of that world, thanks. My opinion is that we should encourage resistance to and repudiation of that particular international school of management goal whenever and wherever possible or face permanent re-entry into a very ugly future that resembles a very old world we only recently escaped in the past ~100 years. Technology was designed to free humanity from slavery, not create a new class of "mentat" slaves.
