Taking the initiative is a desirable trait
Leading the Way

"maddog" describes how forging your own path can sometimes lead to better results than simply following instructions.
Often, the first step in consulting is to interview, and be interviewed by, the client to see if a best fit exists. During a recent interview with a potential client, I spoke of some of my lesser known exploits and, after a while, the interviewer smiled and said, "You initiate things on your own … you do not wait to be told to do things. I like that." I found it interesting that he was the first person in a long time to pick up on what I believe is a desirable trait in an employee.
Back in about 1989, I was a Product Manager for the Ultrix-32 operating system from Digital Equipment Corporation. The company was distributing Ultrix-32, a bare-bones Unix system, on three TK50 tape cartridges. The TK50 was at that time a Digital proprietary streaming tape cartridge called "Digital Linear Tape" that held approximately 95MB of data. Each cartridge cost about US$ 100 to purchase and manufacture, so the entire distribution cost about US$ 300 to make, and we sold the distribution for US$ 1,200.
At that time, CD-ROMs were starting to make their way into the computer industry. In those days, if you wanted to master a CD-ROM in a hurry (a week turnaround time), it cost about US$ 100,000 to do the master, then US$ 5 each for the first 1,000 CDs, and the costs went down rapidly after that.
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