> designing a human process around pathological cases leads to processes that are themselves pathological.
Very true.
I remember, back when I was still interested in helping companies succeed, one “interview” I had.
I mentioned that I had this ginormous portfolio, packed with dozens of highly relevant, finished, tested, well-documented, well-designed open-source projects, a decade of checkin history, of tens of thousands of lines of code, hundreds of pages of documentation, dozens of articles on various sites, where I walk through my design philosophies and processes, in detail, teaching modules, etc.
The “interviewer” told me that they were not going to look at it, because “I could have faked it.”
My jaw dropped.
If I could fake that, then you should hire me immediately, at three times your offered salary.
I’m pretty sure that the decision had already been made, not to consider me (because eld), and this was their way of chasing me off. They weren’t going to waste the half hour or so, that it would take to do a quick review of my work.
It worked a treat. I couldn’t hang up, fast enough. I won’t go where I’m not wanted.
The other explanation, is that they actually believed what they said, which would mean they were completely insane.
Maybe they didnt hire you since you sound very eccentric (as in euphenism for strange) with those big words.
Hopefully I dont break the site rules for pointing this out, but interviews are a game to weed out people who are difficult to manage. And people who show any unusual flair are considered difficult to manage by lots of managers.
And yes, some eccentric people with whom I worked were awesome, but there were also lots of eccentric people who were not (combination of "exceptionalists" and "insufferable").
> Maybe they didnt hire you since you sound very eccentric (as in euphenism for strange) with those big words.
SRSLY? You are saying "big words," On HackerNews? This venue is the Home of The Big Word. I can't hold a candle to some of the eloquence that regularly appears here. I pretty much write in the vernacular.
BTW: I am "strange." You got it in one. I've become quite happy about that, and so has pretty much everyone I've worked with, over a long career, in many diverse teams.
But you ... might want to browse around my work ... just a bit ... before deciding you know about me. I make it very easy to check my work. Unlike most folks around these parts, I'm extremely open about who I am, and how to find out about me. Helps me to stay away from the Dark Side of The Force. I'm also not particularly interested in working for anyone else, ever again, so I'm not really about trying to be diplomatic. If some chap in a crown is running about, starkers, I'm likely to point it out.
It's kind of amazing that we regularly resort to sending up insults, hereabouts, without taking just a couple of minutes to see if they have a landing pad, first.
> The other explanation, is that they actually believed what they said, which would mean they were completely insane.
It's not that insane? Like, how hard is it to clone some substantial, but lesser known, project and edit the committer to yourself? Edit the name too to something that you buy a domain for. It wouldn't hold in court, but a hiring manager in a rush won't ever be able to figure out if you did that or not.
Did you look at the portfolio? It's linked in my profile. Over 40 repos (single-source), dozens of articles (also single-source), etc.
It would be mighty hard to fake, and even a quick shufti will tell you that. My code and my writing has a very distinctive style.
It was -quite literally- the equivalent of a little kid, sticking their fingers in their ears, singing "lalalalaaaaaa-I-can't-hear-yoooouuu-lalalalaaaaaa."
Sadly, the StackOverflow Story will be going the way of the dodo, soon, so I'll have to rebuild it, manually. Pain in the ass. Since I'm no longer bothering to look for work, it won't be a priority.
I'm quite serious - if someone starts with doubting this kind of claims in general, your portfolio isn't really designed to be obviously authentic. I see blog posts on your company's website that don't attribute you personally. Same for the apps in App Store. Basically until you moved your writing to Medium, just 3 years ago, you seemed more concerned with promoting your venture than yourself.
I'm even worse at this - you'd be hard pressed to find anything of value attributed to my name since I left academia. I even don't host most of my code at Github. At least I won't be surprised by somebody not trusting my portfolio ;)
Actually, I’m moving away from Medium. When they started paywalling my writing (of course, without any recompense to me, but I don’t actually care), it was sort of a “pull-up.”
I’m not at all interested in competing with hungry kids. I wanted to keep busy, and make just enough to keep the lights on, and some insurance. I probably would have cost half as much as most folks.
I wasn’t expecting to be fawned over or flattered, but the flat-out, unapologetic disdain, made it clear that the industry is no longer a place I want to be.
I found some folks that wanted to do stuff that interested me, and I’ve been working with them, for free. They seem happy with my work, and I’m quite happy, working with them.
Also, and this is neither here, nor there, all my Git commits are GPG-signed.
Very true.
I remember, back when I was still interested in helping companies succeed, one “interview” I had.
I mentioned that I had this ginormous portfolio, packed with dozens of highly relevant, finished, tested, well-documented, well-designed open-source projects, a decade of checkin history, of tens of thousands of lines of code, hundreds of pages of documentation, dozens of articles on various sites, where I walk through my design philosophies and processes, in detail, teaching modules, etc.
The “interviewer” told me that they were not going to look at it, because “I could have faked it.”
My jaw dropped.
If I could fake that, then you should hire me immediately, at three times your offered salary.
I’m pretty sure that the decision had already been made, not to consider me (because eld), and this was their way of chasing me off. They weren’t going to waste the half hour or so, that it would take to do a quick review of my work.
It worked a treat. I couldn’t hang up, fast enough. I won’t go where I’m not wanted.
The other explanation, is that they actually believed what they said, which would mean they were completely insane.