Quirky Engineers Gone the Way of the Dinosaur?

Milican writes "I think its time we ask our fellow Slashdotters, 'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.' Read this article on Embedded.com and decide for yourself." I think this article didn't describe someone really 'quirky' though - it was someone who didn't really want to work.

Comments

Weird co-workers

[eusdlwy]

A pretty normal co-worker of mine once told me of a software engineer he had worked with at a previous company. This engineer would write software and during the debugging process hold a conversation with his hand concerning the problem at hand. The best part was, his hand (he) would talk back to himself in the voice of Donald Duck.

The same guy was also said to have hit a deer with his car on the way to work one morning. The next day he came to work with a home-made "cow catcher" like contraption (imagine the front of locomotive) welded to the front of his car to avoid any further damage due to auto-deer collisions. The big problem with this "solution" was that the contraption was so heavy, every time his car hit a bump in the road, the front end would scrape the pavement and send off sparks.

Anyone have weird co-worker stories to share?

Re:Weird co-workers

[The Panther!]

One of my office mates was an interesting fellow. He had a real problem making eye contact with people, loud noises, or physical contact. I wouldn't call him a guru, exactly, but competent I suppose. It's hard to call someone a guru when they largely remind you of a squirrel. For kicks, a coworker would sneak up behind him and scream AHHHH!! just to watch him go white and literally run out of the room.

Another guy was a neat freak. He knew exactly the precise angle of every object on his desk. A coworker would screw with him by rotating his stapler 180 degrees. Every morning the ritual was to watch him rearrange everything into precise order. He couldn't work unless everything was perfect.

And then there's the really freaky people that you only hear about in whispers... like the guy who would walk around in socks mumbling calculus to himself, drinking beer and eating reeses pieces at noon, and while drunk, getting naked in front of the security guard because he forgot his identification in his office and she wouldn't let him in... best that we don't think about that too much!

Re:Weird co-workers

[AssFace]

I worked with a Russian dude (well, he was from Odessa, which I don't think is Russia anymore... if it ever was - I'm retarded with geography... among other things), and he was by far one of the more painful people I have had to share an office with. he would spend the entire day doing the following pattern 1) sit down at his computer, and disconnect the ethernet cable, 2) unplug the phone and plug the computer modem into it (which he must have brought from home since there was no need for them at work) and then he'd dial up into... somewhere, 3) then he'd sit there and slowly click on things which looking at C++ code and mumbling, then he'd go "aaaaahhhhhh" then unplug the modem, and plug the phone back in, from which 4) he'd call someone and talk for an hour in russian - loudly, then 5) he'd hang up and mumble and then go outside and smoke, then come back in and get a coffee - then repeat the whole process.
The only three times I saw a change from this were 1) I came back into our office and he had his tower workstation on the side, was standing on it and pulling with his hands trying to get the cover off - not understanding why it was so hard. 2) he was trying to get a desk drawer open and he was using all fo his weight pulling like he was on a strong man show on espn pulling a truck - I told him that the drawers had a lock mechanism where you had to pull the bottom one out slightly and that would disengage the top one - I didn't know why, but it worked. he nodded, turned back around and then proceeded to pull with all his bodyweight again, but this time in many large jerking motions, which dragged the desk about the office. and then 3) the glorious day he was fired for not ever getting anything done.

The fact that I had to be near him all the time (he was annoying in many ways, the above was the humorous parts) made me consider quitting, so I'm glad that he was fired first.
But I left the company I was at prior b/c I worked with a girl on a project who was by far the most painful person in the world. There were many things I couldn't stand, but again, the ones that are funny are what stick out - she was a documentation person, and that somehow entitled her to always carry an open felt pen around with her. Fine. Except she also had some weird condition where when she talked she shifted her weight all around and waved her hands as if she were casting a spell on you - in the process you'd have to dodge the pen or it would mark all over you - she on the other hand never dodged her own waving hands - so she had pen marks on her neck, hands, forehead - or anything else that got in the way. They moved her desk in her office one day and there was an odd half moon patter on the wall from below where the desk was - we pondered it for a bit and then cam to the conclusion that while seated her legs flailed about and left marks all over the wall. Those things alone are just odd - but she was terrible painful in every respect which made any conversation with her resulting in you pondering to yourself if a swift blow to her throat would kill her or just shut her up for a bit, or if you took your own pen and jabbed yourself hard enough in the stomach if the resulting injury would be enough to get out of the conversation.

good times.

now I just work with a bunch of guys that don't speak english very well and smell bad. but most of them do good work (one doesn't seem to understand that you can't name all functions "function1" so it makes debugging his code interesting.

Re:Weird co-workers

[mons]

I had a co-worker who didn't beleieve in numbered versions of a file so instead of save something like "file_2_3.xxx" , "file_2_4.xxx",
he saved as "this_is_the_one.xxx", "this_is_the_one2.xxx","this_is_the_REAL_one.xxx", "final_version.xxx", "the_absolutelly_final_version.xxx", "forget_the_rest_this_is_the_one.xxx", "forget_the_rest_this_is_the_one2.xxx" and so on, we defined that as the Morales Notation.

Re:Weird co-workers

[jockm]

Well it's so nice to see the torture that is the hallmark of high-school can extend to the work place...

Re:Weird co-workers

[Grab]

Current job: Tempting, but some of them might recognise themselves, and my website is shown in my ID! :-) Ah what the hell... Our top engineer is _seriously_ hot on damn near everything. He also has a long, flowing white beard which would put Gandalf to shame. But the kicker - he dresses monochromatically. By which I mean every item of clothing (every visible one, anyway - the rest I don't want to know ;-) is the same colour, including his socks and sandals. He has two sets of these, one in pillarbox red and one in light blue. But by god, does he ever work!

Previous job: Another genius type. Bulgarian. He worked with ear defenders on bcos he said the rest of the office were too noisy. When he got a few new ppl in the office, he said this wasn't good bcos of the negative ions - his ioniser could cope with a few ppl, but more than that would cause problems. :-) When stuck, he'd go outside, walk up and down a while talking to himself, then almost run inside and type frantically. But he's the only guy I've ever known who could knock out several hundred lines of code and have it work perfectly first time, every time - he got very annoyed one day when the compiler spotted a syntax error in his code!

Neither are exactly normal humans, but when the sh*t hits the fan, you're damn glad they're on your side! :-)

Grab.

Guru Uniform?

[tshoppa]

I'm not sure that I fully appreciate the characterization of your typical engineering guru having a big beard, long hair, and enormous belly.

But what else would be a "guru uniform"? I could wear a slide rule on my belt, but I suspect most slashdotters wouldn't even know what the 18-inch-long implement was for.

Re:Interview?

[pauljlucas]

Have you seen a picture of Alan Cox? He takes care of quite a bit, however.

It's all in the beard.

[Nindalf]

Guru (gu'ru): from ancient Hindi guy (guy) and uru (beard) literally "guy with a freaky big beard." Modern meaning: guy with a freaky big beard (generally bad personal hygiene habits add. imp.).

You say quirky, I say quirky

[cruelshoes]

We once had this contract UNIX guy,who insisted on be called Obi-wan, actually I didn't even know his real name. His van would be in the parking lot, even when I got there early, but he would roll out of the back of it about 5 mins after 8 everyday in a cloud of smoke. But it didn't matter because he had mad skillz and could acomplish in a day what it would take the rest of us together a week. So I say, call him Obi-wan, make sure not to take lunch in the back of his van and enjoy the show.

Re:Not true of course

[kirkb]

I read slashdot for hours at work, and play tons of chess online. Unfortunately my boss hasn't reciprocated by offering me a huge paycheck yet. Are you guys looking to hire another "guru"?

About B.O.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny, I once knew I guy who stunk so bad nobody could stand to be in the same room with him. He'd come in, everyone would find excuses to leave. He was a very abstract sort of guy, very bright, usually distracted, he never caught on.

One day, his roommate blew up at him, yelled "You stink! Why can't you shower like everyone else?!"

...and then he did. Never stunk after that. Made lots of friends afterwards.

It's easy not to know what a problem it is. It takes a lot to get people to honestly point out your flaws.

Do the world a favor! Insult a geek today!

Re:Motivation is all

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking about Richard Stallman here, let's be honest. The description was perfect.

Re:Quirky-ness not always appreciated

[The Cat]

We didn't see or hear anything from ZZ for a couple of years after that. One day we had a big project that wasn't going well and our manager hired a consulting company to come in and help straighten things out. He asked for their best man. As you've probably guessed, the engineer who showed up was none other than ZZ himself. He had taken a year off to motorcycle across Asia before joining the consulting company. He was making 3 times what he was before. Our manager had to grit his teeth and refer to ZZ as "Mister ZZ" (ZZ insisted) until the project was completed.

(Wipes tear from eye) *sniff* That was beautiful... ;)

Re:Question for *you*

[Magumbo]

...don't have the first clue about how (or even why) one would go about implementing a RAID array in the real world.

ATM machine.
PIN number.
RAID array.

It's all about redundancy, baby.