--- title: "Emperors don’t come cheap" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2010/5/8/emperors-dont-come-cheap.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2010/5/8/emperors-dont-come-cheap.html" published: "2010-05-08T07:19:24" updated: "2010-05-08T07:19:24" tags: ["Agile"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "“Sorry” I replied in a polite email. “Maybe next year, when budgets allow for this”. It was addressed to the organizer of TechEd US, which was to be in New Orleans this year. Man, I would have loved to be in new Orleans…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Emperors don’t come cheap By Roy Osherove May 8, 2010 In [Agile](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile) **Historical article** · Originally published May 8, 2010; technical details may be outdated. “Sorry” I replied in a polite email. “Maybe next year, when budgets allow for this”. It was addressed to the organizer of TechEd US, which was to be in New Orleans this year. Man, I would have loved to be in new Orleans this year, but, I guess these guys only understand one language – and I won’t be their puppy any more. You see, they wouldn’t pay for my business class flight to TechEd from Israel. Me– the great emperor of unit testing?! travelling coach for 12 hours? No thanks. I have better things to do! And this is after last year, they only invited me to have _one_ talk throughout the conference. _one talk_. After the year _before_ I was on the top ten speakers list of that conference?! No sir! They did give it a good try, though. They said they can pay up to 4,000$ per flight cost for me, and that they only found a flight at about 5460$. “Unacceptable” I told them when they asked if I would pay the difference. And that was that. Goodbye teched. As I closed up gmail, wondering if I should have told them that I found a similar flight at 4,300$, and came back to the living room, I told my wife, all full of myself “I just canceled teched”. “Oh good” she said. Not even looking at me as she tried to feed our one year old. “did you tell them you need to cancel because you already have another flight that month and your wife won’t let you travel more than once a month anymore?” “Yeah right” I said. Just what I need – for people to realize I’m totally whipped. I still need an ounce of dignity. “I told those bastards that if they want me they have to make an effort. People like me don’t come cheap, you know?” “You’re an idiot for not telling them the real reason.” She handed me the baby.  “What if they found a flight that matches their budget? How would you have gotten away from that engagement?” . She put on “Lost” on the media center and sat next to me. I did not reply. ## More in Agile [All posts in Agile](https://osherove.com/blog/category/agile) - May 25, 2010 ### [JustMock and Moles – A short overview for TDD alpha geeks](https://osherove.com/blog/2010/5/25/justmock-and-moles-a-short-overview-for-tdd-alpha-geeks.html) - May 25, 2010 ### [TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors](https://osherove.com/blog/2010/5/25/teched-israel-2010-may-only-accept-speakers-from-sponsors.html) - Mar 24, 2010 ### [Introducing QuickUnit](https://osherove.com/blog/2010/3/24/introducing-quickunit.html) - Mar 19, 2010 ### [Code excavations, wishful invocations, perimeters and domain specific unit test frameworks](https://osherove.com/blog/2010/3/19/code-excavations-wishful-invocations-perimeters-and-domain-s.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/