The fence king

My favorite fairy tale is one that is hardly known in English, because it is about a bird named "Zaunk?nig" in German. You would translate "Zaunk?nig" with "fence king" which is a strange name for a little bird. The story explains why.

Once upon a time, all the birds gathered together to determine who of them should be their king. The owl said that king of the birds should be who could stay awake longest. The duck demanded the best swimmer to be the majesty. But finally they decided that the highest flying bird should get the crown. And up they went. The sparrow flew up fast, but lost his strength after 40 meters. The dove followed, but could go no higher than 60 meters.

Then the eagle started and with its big wings easily made it to 300 meters. Looking down with its eagle eyes seeing how the little birds scrambled to get above 50 meters, it decided to call it a day and begin the descent. But the fence king who had been hiding in the eagle's feathers sensed this, got up, and flew 10 meters higher than the eagle.

Once it came back down, the birds were already celebrating the eagle as their new king, and when the fence king told them about his title, the other birds became angry and picked around on it so it had to hide in fences from that time on. But if you listen well, you hear it singing "the king, that's me, the king, that's me"

Whoever works in IT maybe feels reminded of some wisdom here:

• the highest flyers are not the big, but the intelligent
• you are sitting on shoulders of giants. Know to use them
• if you win, others will be jealous and pick around on you
• it's more important to win the heart of the birds, err, customers, than to show off some record metrics. People won't care how much you know until they know how much you care. If you do this well, you won't have to say that you are the king. People will already know.