Well, you know, when pro gaming tournaments have a history of doing things like rewarding players with strippers (e.g. Babbage's CPL 2000), it's no wonder they want to separate the males from the females. Not even in American football, which has always objectified women, is it appropriate for anyone to hire women to prance around topless at *official* events (Janet Jackson notwithstanding). It just makes everyone involved look like a bunch of pathetic weenies who don't get laid often enough (if at all).
I would love to see women competing with men directly in pro gaming tournaments, but I think the sport definitely needs to do some growing up, on the way.
You know, when I left high school, in 1990, I wanted to major in Computer Engineering, but UMCP didn't even have a program in it. I ended up spending two years in Electrical Engineering, and then transferring into Computer Science when I decided that I really wanted to be programming. The programming we did in EE classes really wasn't cutting it (Mmmm, Fortran and QuickBASIC, NO THANKS!). Today, I'm doing game development for the PlayStation 2, so I guess a Computer Engineering degree might've been more useful than my Computer Science degree in the end, but I'd like to think that I made up for some of my practical educational shortcomings by doing embedded systems programming at UMCP's Space Systems Lab, while I was in school.
I think the funniest moment in my academic career was when my undergrad advisor started railing on me about my grades, and asked "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?"
I was heavily caffeine addicted in college, and had to quit about a year after I graduated, when I started having a myriad of health problems, including scary heart palpitations, urinary tract irritation, and even changes in my breast tissue. Because of the withdrawal headaches (and anyone who has ever been properly caffeine addicted KNOWS that these are absolutely brutal), you really can't mess around with doing anything halfway. Cold turkey is best. It'll be agonizing for a couple of days, and then you'll feel much better. Your body will get used to not having caffeine, and you won't need it to stay awake anymore -- even for those late nighers.
Alot of people can't believe that I'm a programmer and I don't drink caffeine. It's actually kind of funny seeing how desperate everyone else seems, when you've broken your own chain. When caffeine addiction is no longer a foregone conclusion to you, the excuses that others make for their obsessive pursuit of it start to sound a bit farcical. "I'm a programmer! I NEED caffeine!" they will rail. It's just not true.
Now, if only I could convince my local restaurants to carry decaf iced tea... Damn it!
I was DEEPLY introverted for the first twelve years of my life. It was a great challenge to even get me to leave my own bedroom, because I was quite content to bury myself in a book or some project, and not be bothered by people.
Then, when I hit my teens, I turned inside-out. Now, I go stir-crazy if I stay in too long, and have to go out to public places. Now, I'm energized by being around people, and feel terrible if I miss a party.
If introversion is hard-wired, then what the heck happened to me? Maybe it was just teenage girl hormones.:-)
What I find funny about this whole argument is that rampant consumerism has always been a major theme in "The Sims." There's a cheerful, optimistic 1950's-like fetish for household appliances. Just look at this game. It's all about the accumulation of material wealth. I need a better sofa. I want a food processor. Why don't I get the bigger TV?
Among the cynical, chintzy fake brand-names, the humerous product descriptions, and the never-ending pursuit of money, so you can buy more things, product placement, frankly, fits right in. In fact, if anything, I'd say that it's an ideal venue for it!
Technical interviews demonstrate how well someone can handle a technical interview. Exams demonstrate how well someone can take an exam. Neither of these things is that useful.
There are three crucial things you need to find out:
Can this person learn quickly and independently? What is far more important than what she knows now is what she is capable of knowing, at some critical moment in the future. Specialists become obsolete when you move on to new technologies, but your fast-learners will be good forever.
Can this person communicate effectively on a technical level? The candidate shouldn't get tongue tied, but you also want to avoid someone who is going to storm out of meetings in a huff, or someone who becomes intolerable when you engage her in discussing her favorite holy war. Some people think that you don't need social skills to be a good programmer. For any environment involving more than one person, these people are wrong.
Does this person enjoy programming? This sounds like fluff, but it isn't. Most people who enjoy programming are addicted to a little high they get with each small success. They learn new things on their own time. Their heads are filled with programming ideas. They may be a little stimulus-hungry (always wanting new, different problems to tackle), but they're always going to have a better intuition for the work than someone who is just going through the motions. The guy who is passionate about programming is going to be the one who pulls your bacon from the fire at the 11th hour, when you think that all hope is lost.
DO ask for demos of working apps from previous jobs/schools. If they don't have anything working to show, they can't take a project, even a simple one, cradle to grave. You want self-starters who don't need constant supervision.
I'm afraid that demos of working apps from previous jobs or schools are often simply not going to be available, no matter how good a programmer is.
My job at school had me writing embedded systems software. I'm sorry, but I can't haul a 50 foot neutral buoyancy tank into your office for a demonstration. Or how about my telco billing system? Nope. Can't demo that. Secret defense systems? No way! Nitty gritty systems programming projects for an ISP that has gone through two acquisitions since then? Nope. Proprietary intranet for an up-and-coming services company? Not a chance, babe.
Between clearances, non-disclosures, and the impracticality of emulating some operating environments in your office, I think that's it's more than a little unreasonable to expect demonstrations of working projects.
Moreover, if someone does manage to show you a demonstration of previous work, there's no way of knowing how much the person sitting in front of you actually contributed to the application in question. It's possible that all of his code was ripped out and refactored, and that his ineptitude pushed the project three months past its deadline.
Hey, are you implying that all true geeks are really ugly behind those glasses? Shoot! The gig is up. You've figured me out! Guess it's time for me to power down my linux boxes, put on a tight dress, and go hit a Euro-trash club with the other beautiful people.
Believe it or not, lots of geeks are good-looking behind those glasses. Some are downright stunning. The difficulty is dragging them out of their cubes, networking closets, and underground lairs long enough to clean 'em up. It's not ugliness that makes us geeks; it's... well... being geeky that makes us geeks!
DAOC is a game, and all of its money and items merely pieces in the game. Mythic owns the game, and can make any rules they want about how that game is played. If you don't like it, you always have the right to leave. No amount of "work" gives you any right to break the rules.
Suppose I invite you over for chess. I've been inviting you over for chess at my place for ten years. You've invested ten years in playing chess at my house. Yet, after all those years, no matter how many times you've won, and no matter how hard you've worked, do you have any entitlement to my chessboard or its pieces? Hell no!
If I were a judge, I'd dump the case like a cheating boyfriend.
Years ago, a Tier I ISP was born, in a tiny office, above a Chinese restaurant, in the town where I went to high school. Sometime around the same span of years, another Tier I ISP emerged on the opposite coast of the US. Both of these companies have long since been swallowed up by bigger fish, so their names aren't important, but they were two of the early seeds that eventually grew into the vast sea of kudzu that I call "The Old Geek's Network."
Many of the early employees of these two ISPs (including people I went to high school and college with) also played MUDs. As time passed, many of their online friends in other parts of the country (and even in *other* countries) gravitated to these two hubs, like matter accreting into a planetoid. As the years passed, we have scattered to different companies, but rarely alone. Almost all of us work with someone we know.
So, yes, we hang out together at cookouts, parties, pool, and everything else. But, then, my company would be like that, even if I didn't bring friends here. We're a pretty friendly company!
If people want to go to school only to learn skills that will be useful for the first ten years of their career, they should go to a trade school, vocational program, or community college. They have no business going to a University. Universities are for learning to be critical thinkers, with an understanding of the world, and how we came to be where we are today. A well-balanced education gives us a more holistic view of how things work.
Even from an employment perspective, a well-rounded education is useful and meaningful. My current employer benefited substantially from my diverse knowledge when we were a startup with a very small staff, and unlike many companies founded around the same time, my company is still here, and is growing.
We were taught in art theory class that Art is "recto ratio factibilium" or "The right making of the thing to be made." When developers program for money, we have to make sacrifices in the quality of our work to meet deadlines and sometimes hairbrained requirements. When developers program for free, we have the rare luxury of making things right.
I could have ditched college. I was an exceptional programmer. I stuck with it, though. A college degree is a sign that you can stick with something, and see it to the end. A four-year degree is usually a sign that you know about some things outside the narrow little geek universe of Slashdot and Ain't it Cool News. It's also a sign that you may have learned some theoretical things that have the potential to still be useful in ten years, and not just whatever you picked up in Learn Java in 30 Days. I am one of the people out there considering programmers for jobs. I do take these things into consideration. In fact, I've worked for a couple of Beltway Bandits that were degree only. Don't think that nobody cares about degrees anymore. That patently isn't true.
I had friends who didn't finish school. Some of them wasted away in sysadmin jobs for years, eventually hopping to the hot new.com that came along, only to have it disintigrate out from under them. Some of them ran off to California, only to find out that the brass ring they were chasing was far more elusive than they expected.
I knew someone who didn't finish school, and stuck around in the same place for long enough to get a so-called "Engineering" position. Do you remember Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction? You know, the guy that cleaned up after you, when you did something stupid? That was me. I was the one who had to go in and rescue the company from his godawful amateurish mistakes. Occasionally, this required re-engineering the entire thing from the ground up. I can't even begin to go into how much money was wasted because he was being trusted to know what he was doing in a position where he clearly didn't. His lack of solid engineering skills and specific knowledge about some of the technologies he was employing (such as relational databases) would not have been quite such a disaster if he weren't paranoid of the trained individuals who could actually help him overcome this obstacle (such as the DBA).
Certainly, educated people can end up in the same situation as the guy described above. I provide it mostly as a cautionary tale. Don't be this guy. If you're not going to get an education (and hell, even if you are), know when to ask for help, and know when you've bitten off more than you can chew. Otherwise, you'll end up dodging out of your company when everything goes to hell in a handbasket and you don't want to deal with the fallout.
Also, whether you get an education or not, for God's sake, make an effort to become well-rounded. This society is becoming too culturally impoverished as it is without the new up-and-comers not even knowing their own geek heritage. Can you tell Fritz Lang from Friz Freling without looking them up? Remember, you can be a geek, and still learn about the world. Besides, well-rounded geeks are more attractive!
You don't have to violate your EULA. You don't have to waste your talent making an emulator for somebody else's game. At the WorldForge Project we're currently developing our next-generation server, STAGE. This is open-source. This is Free. This is all about making it possible for you to make the game you want to make. And... it's all perfectly legal.
I understand that the folks in your project are probably too far along at this point to consider taking another path (and one that will take alot of time; no instant gratification here), but when you're ready to stretch your wings and expand beyond the limitations of your current project, we will still be here, and you're welcome to drop by!
Do you watch The People's Choice Awards? I don't. And if the Oscars turned into The People's Choice Awards, I would stop watching them, too. They're the "Academy" Awards for a reason. Without the Academy making the decisions, it would be something else, entirely.
Understand that because of their specialized natures, participation in OpenSource projects is limited, to some degree, by competence. If you don't know how to do <insert necessary skill here>, you have no useful way to contribute to the project, and thus, can't. Sure, a few idiots who know just enough to be dangerous -- but not enough to be helpful -- get contributions in there on occasion, but their stupidity eventually gets optimized away through iterative improvement. Eventually, both despite and because of the free and open nature of the environment, enough skilled, talented people get their hands on the project to make it good.
There is no iterative improvement in an awards show, so I really don't see how the model that makes OpenSource so good can be applied here. Just letting the public vote, with no barrier to entry, and no iterative improvement, results in The People's Choice Awards. And to that, I say, no thanks.
You know, I read this article when it went up...
on
A Profile of Coders
·
· Score: 1
And I couldn't stop thinking that, even though I've been programming since I was about 9, as a woman, I couldn't fit the profile even if I wanted to. Worse yet, being an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs, I must be doomed to one day become management. God help me!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you know, when pro gaming tournaments have a history of doing things like rewarding players with strippers (e.g. Babbage's CPL 2000), it's no wonder they want to separate the males from the females. Not even in American football, which has always objectified women, is it appropriate for anyone to hire women to prance around topless at *official* events (Janet Jackson notwithstanding). It just makes everyone involved look like a bunch of pathetic weenies who don't get laid often enough (if at all).
I would love to see women competing with men directly in pro gaming tournaments, but I think the sport definitely needs to do some growing up, on the way.
You know, when I left high school, in 1990, I wanted to major in Computer Engineering, but UMCP didn't even have a program in it. I ended up spending two years in Electrical Engineering, and then transferring into Computer Science when I decided that I really wanted to be programming. The programming we did in EE classes really wasn't cutting it (Mmmm, Fortran and QuickBASIC, NO THANKS!). Today, I'm doing game development for the PlayStation 2, so I guess a Computer Engineering degree might've been more useful than my Computer Science degree in the end, but I'd like to think that I made up for some of my practical educational shortcomings by doing embedded systems programming at UMCP's Space Systems Lab, while I was in school.
I think the funniest moment in my academic career was when my undergrad advisor started railing on me about my grades, and asked "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?"
"Um, is that a trick question?"
I was heavily caffeine addicted in college, and had to quit about a year after I graduated, when I started having a myriad of health problems, including scary heart palpitations, urinary tract irritation, and even changes in my breast tissue. Because of the withdrawal headaches (and anyone who has ever been properly caffeine addicted KNOWS that these are absolutely brutal), you really can't mess around with doing anything halfway. Cold turkey is best. It'll be agonizing for a couple of days, and then you'll feel much better. Your body will get used to not having caffeine, and you won't need it to stay awake anymore -- even for those late nighers.
Alot of people can't believe that I'm a programmer and I don't drink caffeine. It's actually kind of funny seeing how desperate everyone else seems, when you've broken your own chain. When caffeine addiction is no longer a foregone conclusion to you, the excuses that others make for their obsessive pursuit of it start to sound a bit farcical. "I'm a programmer! I NEED caffeine!" they will rail. It's just not true.
Now, if only I could convince my local restaurants to carry decaf iced tea... Damn it!
I was DEEPLY introverted for the first twelve years of my life. It was a great challenge to even get me to leave my own bedroom, because I was quite content to bury myself in a book or some project, and not be bothered by people.
:-)
Then, when I hit my teens, I turned inside-out. Now, I go stir-crazy if I stay in too long, and have to go out to public places. Now, I'm energized by being around people, and feel terrible if I miss a party.
If introversion is hard-wired, then what the heck happened to me? Maybe it was just teenage girl hormones.
Maaaaaan, now I'm regretting that I didn't submit an entry. There are no women on the team! How depressing.
Among the cynical, chintzy fake brand-names, the humerous product descriptions, and the never-ending pursuit of money, so you can buy more things, product placement, frankly, fits right in. In fact, if anything, I'd say that it's an ideal venue for it!
There are three crucial things you need to find out:
I'm afraid that demos of working apps from previous jobs or schools are often simply not going to be available, no matter how good a programmer is.
My job at school had me writing embedded systems software. I'm sorry, but I can't haul a 50 foot neutral buoyancy tank into your office for a demonstration. Or how about my telco billing system? Nope. Can't demo that. Secret defense systems? No way! Nitty gritty systems programming projects for an ISP that has gone through two acquisitions since then? Nope. Proprietary intranet for an up-and-coming services company? Not a chance, babe.
Between clearances, non-disclosures, and the impracticality of emulating some operating environments in your office, I think that's it's more than a little unreasonable to expect demonstrations of working projects.
Moreover, if someone does manage to show you a demonstration of previous work, there's no way of knowing how much the person sitting in front of you actually contributed to the application in question. It's possible that all of his code was ripped out and refactored, and that his ineptitude pushed the project three months past its deadline.
Believe it or not, lots of geeks are good-looking behind those glasses. Some are downright stunning. The difficulty is dragging them out of their cubes, networking closets, and underground lairs long enough to clean 'em up. It's not ugliness that makes us geeks; it's... well... being geeky that makes us geeks!
Suppose I invite you over for chess. I've been inviting you over for chess at my place for ten years. You've invested ten years in playing chess at my house. Yet, after all those years, no matter how many times you've won, and no matter how hard you've worked, do you have any entitlement to my chessboard or its pieces? Hell no!
If I were a judge, I'd dump the case like a cheating boyfriend.
Years ago, a Tier I ISP was born, in a tiny office, above a Chinese restaurant, in the town where I went to high school. Sometime around the same span of years, another Tier I ISP emerged on the opposite coast of the US. Both of these companies have long since been swallowed up by bigger fish, so their names aren't important, but they were two of the early seeds that eventually grew into the vast sea of kudzu that I call "The Old Geek's Network."
Many of the early employees of these two ISPs (including people I went to high school and college with) also played MUDs. As time passed, many of their online friends in other parts of the country (and even in *other* countries) gravitated to these two hubs, like matter accreting into a planetoid. As the years passed, we have scattered to different companies, but rarely alone. Almost all of us work with someone we know.
So, yes, we hang out together at cookouts, parties, pool, and everything else. But, then, my company would be like that, even if I didn't bring friends here. We're a pretty friendly company!
If people want to go to school only to learn skills that will be useful for the first ten years of their career, they should go to a trade school, vocational program, or community college. They have no business going to a University. Universities are for learning to be critical thinkers, with an understanding of the world, and how we came to be where we are today. A well-balanced education gives us a more holistic view of how things work.
Even from an employment perspective, a well-rounded education is useful and meaningful. My current employer benefited substantially from my diverse knowledge when we were a startup with a very small staff, and unlike many companies founded around the same time, my company is still here, and is growing.
We were taught in art theory class that Art is "recto ratio factibilium" or "The right making of the thing to be made." When developers program for money, we have to make sacrifices in the quality of our work to meet deadlines and sometimes hairbrained requirements. When developers program for free, we have the rare luxury of making things right.
I had friends who didn't finish school. Some of them wasted away in sysadmin jobs for years, eventually hopping to the hot new .com that came along, only to have it disintigrate out from under them. Some of them ran off to California, only to find out that the brass ring they were chasing was far more elusive than they expected.
I knew someone who didn't finish school, and stuck around in the same place for long enough to get a so-called "Engineering" position. Do you remember Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction? You know, the guy that cleaned up after you, when you did something stupid? That was me. I was the one who had to go in and rescue the company from his godawful amateurish mistakes. Occasionally, this required re-engineering the entire thing from the ground up. I can't even begin to go into how much money was wasted because he was being trusted to know what he was doing in a position where he clearly didn't. His lack of solid engineering skills and specific knowledge about some of the technologies he was employing (such as relational databases) would not have been quite such a disaster if he weren't paranoid of the trained individuals who could actually help him overcome this obstacle (such as the DBA).
Certainly, educated people can end up in the same situation as the guy described above. I provide it mostly as a cautionary tale. Don't be this guy. If you're not going to get an education (and hell, even if you are), know when to ask for help, and know when you've bitten off more than you can chew. Otherwise, you'll end up dodging out of your company when everything goes to hell in a handbasket and you don't want to deal with the fallout.
Also, whether you get an education or not, for God's sake, make an effort to become well-rounded. This society is becoming too culturally impoverished as it is without the new up-and-comers not even knowing their own geek heritage. Can you tell Fritz Lang from Friz Freling without looking them up? Remember, you can be a geek, and still learn about the world. Besides, well-rounded geeks are more attractive!
I understand that the folks in your project are probably too far along at this point to consider taking another path (and one that will take alot of time; no instant gratification here), but when you're ready to stretch your wings and expand beyond the limitations of your current project, we will still be here, and you're welcome to drop by!
Understand that because of their specialized natures, participation in OpenSource projects is limited, to some degree, by competence. If you don't know how to do <insert necessary skill here>, you have no useful way to contribute to the project, and thus, can't. Sure, a few idiots who know just enough to be dangerous -- but not enough to be helpful -- get contributions in there on occasion, but their stupidity eventually gets optimized away through iterative improvement. Eventually, both despite and because of the free and open nature of the environment, enough skilled, talented people get their hands on the project to make it good.
There is no iterative improvement in an awards show, so I really don't see how the model that makes OpenSource so good can be applied here. Just letting the public vote, with no barrier to entry, and no iterative improvement, results in The People's Choice Awards. And to that, I say, no thanks.
And I couldn't stop thinking that, even though I've been programming since I was about 9, as a woman, I couldn't fit the profile even if I wanted to. Worse yet, being an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs, I must be doomed to one day become management. God help me!