Sociocorpus

All jobs in the World are some combination of three basic jobs.: geekery, wrangling and bitching. Actually, there is only one job: geeking and wrangling your way out of bitching.

Geekery
All jobs require domain knowledge. It does not only apply to computing. It applies to building, opera singing and housework. In each case, particular knowledge is required to do the job properly. Which kinds of fastenings work best with particular materials. The historical and cultural context of a song. The cleaning product that is most effective for each surface. And why.
Wrangling
Domain knowledge doesn’t make things happen. Engaging and organising people, resources, and yourself, does. Managing materials, staff and contractors. Getting to the front of the stage and relating with the audience. Vacuuming without unplugging the vacuum cleaner. Wrangling is mainly learned though experience.
Bitching
Bitching requires neither technical knowledge or leadership. You do it so that geeks and wranglers don’t have to.

Roles at OnlineGroups.Net
We are typical. Michael is Geek and I’m Wrangler. We both do plenty of each other’s job, and a fair bit of bitching, but we specialise. Alice recently joined us to do ’support’ (you can’t write ‘bitching’ in a job ad). But her job is really to geek and wrangle herself out of bitching. No-one likes doing it, you don’t learn much and it’s not worth much. But if you systemise and automate enough, there’s hardly any to do. Our strategy is to sell high value services, systemise them and sell lots, and then give them away, growing new people up through those layers.

One of my new year’s passions is to be gentle with my body. If you use a computer a lot, and want to be gentle with your body too, use the mouse with your left hand. It hurts less. I am about to present two compelling reasons for this. I believe they are irrefutable (please tell me, if you think you can refute them). And it only takes a day or so to switch. I can go both ways now, but use my left hand far more than the right, even though I am right-handed.

Mouse and Keyboard in the Right Place

You use your Right Hand More on the Keyboard than your Left
Most keyboards have navigation keys, and a numeric keypad. Because these almost always protrude to the right of the keyboard, the right hand gets to operate these (and ‘backspace’), as well as its share of the alphabetical character keys. If you use your right hand for the mouse as well, your poor right hand is dashing all over the place, while the left sits idle. Give your left hand a share of the work. You can’t move the navigation and numeric keys, but you can move the mouse.

Mouse a Long way to the Right

There is More Room for the Mouse to the Left of the Keyboard than to the Right
If you like to have the alphabetical keys equally easy to reach by your right and left hands, the navigation and numeric keys already stick out to the right, leaving a mousepad sized gap to the left. If you use the mouse with your right, you must reach even further to the right.

Keyboard to the Left