I don't mind an interviewer wanting to make sure I know what I say I do. In fact, I've walked away from offers specifically because I didn't think that the company made a reasonable effort at ensuring I did (I figure if they don't really try to figure it out on me, they probably haven't on anyone, and these are the folks I've got to work with).
I've done programming assignments as part of the interview. They're annoying, and I don't like doing them... but the ones I've had to do have also been reasonable. They really just wanted to get a feel for how I worked, how I solved problems, what my code style was. Typically, they weren't so much about the actual software I wrote for them, but rather, the discussion about it that we had afterwards. I don't mind this so much... though warning me that I'll have to do something along these lines so I'm not blindsided with it when I get there is always appreciated.
I've had a couple of companies have me take written tests. Those are a bit more irksome, because there's no back and forth on them. I get no real benefit from it at all, because I don't get to discuss with them. I don't consider them entirely unreasonable, so long as the material is relevant to the job... but I also don't consider them a very good technique for gauging talent (especially since it eliminates discussion), so it does tend to lower my interest a bit.
Almost every interview I've ever had has had a verbal test portion, where they question me (or sometimes grill me). I love these. A lot of people simply can't write a good question (one of my problems with the written test), so you get an opportunity to clarify what they're really after. The back and forth discussion tells both sides of the table a lot about the other, so everyone gets a better idea of what they're looking at. The discussion aspect gives them a much better idea of how you think and arrive at an answer, which are far more useful things to know in my opinion.
Not to mention the fact that this discussion gives you a good idea of what it's going to be like working with a person on a technical problem. And that strikes me as good stuff to know no matter which side of the table you're on.
The ones I HATE are the technical screens that are farmed out to third parties. I've had to do a few of those, and they've universally been administered by nontechnical college kids who have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject they're quizzing you about. Give a right answer but not use the right keywords? Wrong answer.
I've had enough bad experiences with those that I won't do them any more.
Also, please, for the love of God, don't make me do the same technical test over and over again. I interviewed with one company that did that to me. First round, we did a technical test. Second round, some new people... same technical test (okay, different test, but all the same conceptual points) so they could watch me go through it all again. After the third iteration, I politely declined to go on to a fourth.
I don't mind them grilling me. Frankly, I love it... it's not fun to go through, but I'm looking for a new place I'm going to enjoy working, and that means people who are good at what they do. I figure most of my potential coworkers had to go through the same process, so if it's one that makes me feel confident in their abilities, I'm good with going through it.
That was pretty much my experience. I was so excited about Hellgate that I couldn't see straight. I hit their site all the time, had a few of their backgrounds in my wallpaper rotation, read every bit of info I could get on it.
I got tapped for their last round of testing right before they released. I was excited as hell at first, but I guess it wasn't that big a deal in retrospect... seems like everybody I know got in on it.
Anyway, I played the game in beta, and hated it. I know it was a beta product, but with only a few days until release, I expected something a lot more polished and a lot less buggy.
I thought for a while I'd probably just hold off and pick it up when the price came down a bit, but the more time went by, the less interested I was.
Sad to see them go, because I was so excited about what they were doing... but considering how they delivered, I guess that's how it goes.
Absolutely... it's the experience that drives me to or from the theater.
When I go into the theater, my shoes stick to the floor, my seat is almost invariably worn out to the point of discomfort (and I have to try not to think about what filth might be in the cushions), and then I get to try to watch the movie while people run their mouths, talk on their cell phones, and shine laser pointers at the screens.
Thanks... but no thanks. My home set up isn't anything nearly like a home theater, and falls well short of the ideal theatergoing experience... but the ideal theatergoing experience is a myth as far as I can tell. I can actually enjoy the movie at home, and for bonus points, it's far, far cheaper. It was frustrating as hell waiting for the movies I wanted to see at first, but now that I'm months behind the curve, it's not so bad.
Your totally reasonable attitude in considering and accepting counterpoints, then offering interesting counterarguments of your own confuses and frightens me. What's the world coming to?
I got back into arcades in a big way in college. There was one across the street from the campus laundromat, and I blew a fair chunk of my paycheck each week playing Tekken while I waited for my laundry to finish. Graduated college, got a job, moved off, and started hitting "real" arcades at the mall. The machines are all poorly maintained and almost never function correctly. Why in the hell would I drop quarters in them? I can't play them.
I really only save in.doc format when I'm trying to make things convenient for others who may wish to read it and may not use OpenOffice. And even then, I only offer it as an alternative format in addition to the native OpenOffice format, and I generally include.pdf,.txt, and.html versions of the doc as well.
As a side note (and not particularly relevant, I guess), I use OpenOffice extensively at home, and love it. But I don't use it at work because it and Word don't play nicely together with the community documents that our team maintains. I'm not sure which of the programs is actually to blame, but given that OO.o is the odd man out at work, I have to use Word to update the docs so they don't get mangled. D'oh:(
Seconded (thirded?). I only got around to discovering Foxit when Adobe's server was down for several days and I couldn't get a copy of reader to save my life. I was pleasantly surprised to find it not only worked perfectly, but it was snappier and didn't constantly throw up modal dialogs asking me to update. No way in hell Adobe's reader touches my PC any more.
Finger printing is the limit for me... I've turned down two jobs in the past that required I be finger printed. Both companies seemed appalled that I would turn them down for something so "petty". One of them seemed to understand when I explained that I felt the measure was a severe violation of my personal privacy and decided to wave the need for the finger printing. I this was a smaller company though, I would suspect any company of reasonable size with those kinds of policies in place wouldn't have the flexibility to bend the rules like that.
That's pretty much my experience. I've declined offers over invasive checks before, but in cases where there's a reasonable explanation for the request (SEC regulations, or hell, just a reason that makes sense) things are different. There's no harm in asking why they want this kind of info. After they tell you their reason, you can decide whether you think it's a fair cop and go from there.
Re:Things like this are easy to fix.
on
Google's Evil NDA
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· Score: 5, Informative
I've modified the NDA at two places I've worked, and modified the non-compete and copyright assignment forms at *every* job I've worked at. I've even discussed the changes with the hiring manager. Yet I still worked for those companies.
Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself. It will probably even earn you some respect.
I received a job offer a year and half, maybe two years ago. I was extremely excited after the interview; the team was talented, the product was cool, they were using tech I wanted to play with. Along with the offer came a paper they needed me to sign to give them permission to do a background check. Cool.
When I read the background check, I was concerned. In addition to the totally normal stuff (making sure I graduated when I said I had, worked where & when I said I had, etc), and the stuff I don't really like but is becoming pretty normal (checking my credit history and driving record), the document also explicitly granted them the right to do research to determine who my friends, family, and neighbors were, and to interview them to find out about me. Not only that, but the document explicitly granted them this right forever.
I contacted their HR department and asked about it, because it seemed pretty unusual. They told me that it was required. I asked why. Nobody could tell me. I asked if there was some government agency that required it or some such (not out of the question given the type of work they were doing), and was told no, but not to worry about it, because they weren't ever going to actually use the right.
So I crossed it out, initialled it, signed it, and sent it back.
They came back the next day with a fresh copy of the doc saying no dice. They wouldn't budge. So I politely thanked them for their time and declined the position. They started dialing numbers up higher, and then their HR guy started calling me to "negotiate" by insinuating a lot of insulting things about me. I lost my temper and told the HR guy (not exactly rudely, but far more directly than was appropriate) exactly what I thought. I wish I'd been more tactful about it now, but I'm glad I brought light to it.
On the up-side, everyone with whom I had direct contact went back to their desks, checked their paperwork, and expressed some concern over realizing that they'd signed the exact same invasive agreement. So maybe I helped out over there a little in the end.
They contacted me again a few months later about the same job, apparently unable to fill it. I'd love to say it was because they were getting screwed by their agreement, but there's no way to know. The job used a slightly unusual skill set, and wanted pretty advanced knowledge of it, so they may have just been unable to find someone else qualified.
Short story extremely long, I've also found that they'll generally negotiate. Not always how you want, maybe, but if they want you, they'll do what they can.
I've seen a few posts about being in a position of needing the job, and it's true, sometimes you're in that boat. But I've never had anyone retract an offer when I asked about something I had a problem with. There's never any harm asking, and if they won't budge, well... then you can decide if you're hungry enough to live with the agreement.
Ideally people would switch to local plants and save water. Alas that's about as likely as people not wanting dyed clothes (dying eats loads of water) or makeup, or any of the other things that we use to display our prosperity.
Amen. I've been letting the local stuff take over for a couple of years now. I'd love to say it was some altruistic spasm on my part, but in truth, I'm just lazy. It's worked out quite well in the long run though.
Our lawn hasn't been watered since I moved in, and I let the grass get a bit longer before I cut it. The local grass has started taking over and doesn't require any watering. There's a guy down the street whose yard looks like a green carpet, and it's gorgeous, but he's constantly out there working on it and watering it. Mine looks pretty good now (it looked like hell the first two years, though), and while his starts to look burned during the watering bans, mine just keeps on trucking.
A couple of my neighbors have taken notice and started asking me what I did to my lawn. I just tell them to stop working so damn hard on the yard and it'll sort itself out:)
Change is best done gradually, and by co-opting people.
Machiavelli says otherwise. Of course, if they were true Machiavellians, we'd get one Slashdot story (and some dupes:P ) on a shit ton of unpopular changes, and then years of occasional niceties doled out. Instead, it's just lather-rinse-repeat cycles of pissing people off...
Much better for their careers if terrorists are portrayed as driven by some kind of insane freedom-hating bloodlust. This way they're more like earthquakes, and who can stop earthquakes? No one.
God damned freedom-hating earthquakes.... what's their problem, anyway?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had this experience with the game. Really neat concept, fascinating AI... and absolutely horrendous to play. I despised this game. I tried to give it to a coworker's kid, and he gave it back. I vowed that the next time I had an urge to buy a game Molyneaux had anything to do with, I'd give a friend of mine $10 to kick me in the nuts instead. Just as much fun, and cheaper.
Well after the Penny-Arcade comic, and reading a few other posts on Mr. Thompson, I tried to email him at his comcast address (I found it on stopkill.com). Sadley, my emails were bounced back. I wonder why? It said comcast pulled his account - wonderful. If anyone out there knows the email address of this individual so I can chime in on his crusade, it would be wonderfully abliged.
Voila. Dug up the link on PA's site. Credit to them for handling the thing as well as they have.
Eventually the knowledge will be passed along to the younger generations.
Passed off to who? I've been working here four years, and I'm still the fresh meat. Who the hell is hiring these days? I've seen precious little of it, and haven't read about any more than I've seen.
Personal note: I say these things as a man who went through something similar. I graduated High School with honors, got scholarships to college to study engineering, then found it exceedingly harder than I had ever imagined school could be. I matched Mr Kern's 2.7 GPA my first semester. I endured for a few years before Engineering school kicked my ass, and I flunked out. Not just the engineering program, but college entirely.
And I moped.
Then, six months later, I decided I was going to finish what I started, and I worked for three years just to earn enough money to pay my way back to finish college. Three years after I re-enrolled, I graduated with a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering.
Right on.
My experience was pretty similar, though perhaps not quite so extreme. I started out in Computer Engineering. I sucked at it. I busted my ass, worked outside of class, did homework into the wee hours, and generally made myself miserable, and still did poorly. I neglected my other coursework trying to pass my engineering courses. Eventually, I was so depressed and mopey over the whole thing I just sorta gave up. The only class I even went to toward the end of that semester was my programming course, because it was fun. I got a.2 that semester, which damn near ended my academic career.
That was at the end of my second year in the program. I'd been frustrated the whole time, but stuck it through thinking if I beat my head against it long enough, something would give (I was right... it was me that gave). I'm reasonably bright, so public school had let me skate for 12 years. I was unprepared for something I simply could not do if I applied myself enough.
At the end of that semester, I quit chasing engineering. I finally realized that not only could I not do it, but I didn't really want to. I didn't like it. I liked my programming courses. I changed my major to Computer Science. I started getting good grades. I found theory that was really interesting to me, and practice I could actually do. It was hard, too, but my head worked the right way to get it.
Did engineering fail me? Fuck no. I failed engineering. I am not an engineer. My head doesn't work the right way for it. The weed out course that whipped my ass did exactly what it was supposed to do... weed me out. I didn't wash out because I wasn't willing to work... I washed out because that academic disclipline wasn't for me.
Schools have their problems, but I don't think that tough courseloads are responsible for any perceived decline in fresh engineers. I'd say it's more likely that piss poor treatment of techies of various sorts in the business world are making the field less attractive, so people who aren't sure what they want to do are looking elsewhere. God knows my dad wouldn't recommend any of us to follow in his footsteps these days, after what his company did to him and his friends.
I touch type too, but I think it would be nice. Just think of all the special special characters, the ones that can't be reached with just shift. I can type a bunch of them with the option key (and option-shift) on my Mac, but it would be great if I could see what I was doing instead of hitting every key and deleting the characters I don't want.
Err... that's pretty much what I meant when I said I could see it as being useful, and a good selling point. I just don't personally need it, and would find the other far more entertaining since I don't.:)
I think it would be incredibly badass if, when you press down on the shift key, the lowercase letters change to capital letters, and the numbers change to special characters, etc.
I guess I'm weird, but although that occurred to me, too, I didn't get that excited about it. I mean, that's a really great feature and I think it would be a good selling point... but I'm not that interested in it personally. I already know all the shortcuts & such for the programs I use every day, and I touchtype, so I don't really need the letters.
The application of this thing that really got me excited was the thought of taking a background image, breaking it up into 144 or whatever little pieces, and mapping it across the keys, so I have a keyboard background to go with my desktop background.
Yeah, it's silly and pointless... but how freaking cool would it be?
Personally, I don't do anything unnatural to my food. No other animal cooks their food, so I don't cook anything I eat, or eat anything that I didn't pull from the ground or kill with my bare hands.
Also, I eat it without utensils, since no other animal does that, and I don't prepare anything I eat - I just pull whatever I want from the carcass right there. My backyard is starting to stink a lot, since I don't bury anything I kill since animals don't.
I'm with you, man. Thank God cats bury her shit, or my yard would REALLY stink.
That step was Anakins last chance to resist. The difference is that Luke stops short and refuses to fight.
It drives the Sidious to start killing Luke and it gets Vader to recognize and correct his mistake years later.
I didn't really see it that way. The way it seemed to me, Vader fell with a thousand little tiny stumbles, and each step along the way of his descent, he looked at what he'd done and though, "Fuck... there's no turning back now." And lo and behold, his buddy Palpatine would get him to do something just a little bit worse next, so he felt even more helpless to escape. Never pushed him hard enough to buck... just enough to mire him down a little worse, and depress him enough that he could be made to do something a little nastier next time.
He knew his mistake the whole time, even as he was making it. He just didn't see a way out. And later, hell... he didn't even want a way out.
With the death of his wife and supposed death of his unborn child... the things he cared for enough to be driven to the dark side to begin with... he simply didn't have anything to motivate him toward redemption. What did he have to live for, or to give a damn about? Everything he valued had been stripped away from him, including the things he valued above all else. Hell, I'd fuck the galaxy up in that situation if I had the ability, too.
Enter Episode VI. He's known for a while that his kid(s) are still alive. Now one of them's put in a situation that's exactly analogous to his own from years before. Vader may have been a bad actor in his youth, but he's no idiot. He can't fail to recognize the situation. He has to have realized over the years just how much his master has lied to him, and now he's in Dooku's old role... on the outs so Darth Jerk can get a new and better apprentice.
Sonny boy makes the right decision that daddy couldn't. This is the fabled straw for that poor soon-to-be-paraplegic camel. Vader struggles with this for a while. Between the fact that he does in fact now have someone to give a damn about again and the fact that he recognizes himself in his son's corrected version of his own drama from years ago, he's able to break himself loose from that mire and Do the Right Thing (TM).
He was built for his final decision from the very beginning, after all. Anakin was always more than willing to sacrifice himself for those he was loyal to. Hell, it's how he became Vader...
And now I'm rambling. What was my original point again?
This is sorta in the same vein as something that occurred to me a while back. I got caught in one of the layoffs. I lucked up and managed to get signed on with another very good team after about three months of searching. This was about three years ago.
I'm still the newest guy in our office. We haven't hired in three years. As far as I can tell, there's tons of other teams in tons of other companies in the same position.
We don't exist in stasis... each of us is still learning, gaining experience, and getting better. But there's no fresh grads coming in to do the grunt work. We're getting really topheavy, as are, I imagine, many other groups.
I have no idea how this is going to play out. Eventually, hiring will start up again, I suppose, but we're going to be missing the middle chunk. Our crazy-experienced people will have moved on, and we'll have become the experienced guys... but we never really cut our teeth mentoring the newbies, because they weren't there.
Sure, that'd sort itself out... but there's going to be some growing pains, I think.
Alas... I've mocked someone for being a dumbass only to be proven a dumbass myself
I'm not sure who modded me insightful for this, but damned if it isn't the funniest joke I've seen in ages. Even if it is a backhanded insult, you have to admire the subtle beauty of it:)
Slashdot Mirror
This. Yes. Thank you.
If your algorithm don't got Mojo Nixon, then your algorithm can use some fixin'.
This is my new favorite post ever.
I've done programming assignments as part of the interview. They're annoying, and I don't like doing them... but the ones I've had to do have also been reasonable. They really just wanted to get a feel for how I worked, how I solved problems, what my code style was. Typically, they weren't so much about the actual software I wrote for them, but rather, the discussion about it that we had afterwards. I don't mind this so much... though warning me that I'll have to do something along these lines so I'm not blindsided with it when I get there is always appreciated.
I've had a couple of companies have me take written tests. Those are a bit more irksome, because there's no back and forth on them. I get no real benefit from it at all, because I don't get to discuss with them. I don't consider them entirely unreasonable, so long as the material is relevant to the job... but I also don't consider them a very good technique for gauging talent (especially since it eliminates discussion), so it does tend to lower my interest a bit.
Almost every interview I've ever had has had a verbal test portion, where they question me (or sometimes grill me). I love these. A lot of people simply can't write a good question (one of my problems with the written test), so you get an opportunity to clarify what they're really after. The back and forth discussion tells both sides of the table a lot about the other, so everyone gets a better idea of what they're looking at. The discussion aspect gives them a much better idea of how you think and arrive at an answer, which are far more useful things to know in my opinion.
Not to mention the fact that this discussion gives you a good idea of what it's going to be like working with a person on a technical problem. And that strikes me as good stuff to know no matter which side of the table you're on.
The ones I HATE are the technical screens that are farmed out to third parties. I've had to do a few of those, and they've universally been administered by nontechnical college kids who have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject they're quizzing you about. Give a right answer but not use the right keywords? Wrong answer.
I've had enough bad experiences with those that I won't do them any more.
Also, please, for the love of God, don't make me do the same technical test over and over again. I interviewed with one company that did that to me. First round, we did a technical test. Second round, some new people... same technical test (okay, different test, but all the same conceptual points) so they could watch me go through it all again. After the third iteration, I politely declined to go on to a fourth.
I don't mind them grilling me. Frankly, I love it... it's not fun to go through, but I'm looking for a new place I'm going to enjoy working, and that means people who are good at what they do. I figure most of my potential coworkers had to go through the same process, so if it's one that makes me feel confident in their abilities, I'm good with going through it.
Just, you know, do it right.
I got tapped for their last round of testing right before they released. I was excited as hell at first, but I guess it wasn't that big a deal in retrospect... seems like everybody I know got in on it.
Anyway, I played the game in beta, and hated it. I know it was a beta product, but with only a few days until release, I expected something a lot more polished and a lot less buggy.
I thought for a while I'd probably just hold off and pick it up when the price came down a bit, but the more time went by, the less interested I was.
Sad to see them go, because I was so excited about what they were doing... but considering how they delivered, I guess that's how it goes.
When I go into the theater, my shoes stick to the floor, my seat is almost invariably worn out to the point of discomfort (and I have to try not to think about what filth might be in the cushions), and then I get to try to watch the movie while people run their mouths, talk on their cell phones, and shine laser pointers at the screens.
Thanks... but no thanks. My home set up isn't anything nearly like a home theater, and falls well short of the ideal theatergoing experience... but the ideal theatergoing experience is a myth as far as I can tell. I can actually enjoy the movie at home, and for bonus points, it's far, far cheaper. It was frustrating as hell waiting for the movies I wanted to see at first, but now that I'm months behind the curve, it's not so bad.
Your totally reasonable attitude in considering and accepting counterpoints, then offering interesting counterarguments of your own confuses and frightens me. What's the world coming to?
I got back into arcades in a big way in college. There was one across the street from the campus laundromat, and I blew a fair chunk of my paycheck each week playing Tekken while I waited for my laundry to finish. Graduated college, got a job, moved off, and started hitting "real" arcades at the mall. The machines are all poorly maintained and almost never function correctly. Why in the hell would I drop quarters in them? I can't play them.
As a side note (and not particularly relevant, I guess), I use OpenOffice extensively at home, and love it. But I don't use it at work because it and Word don't play nicely together with the community documents that our team maintains. I'm not sure which of the programs is actually to blame, but given that OO.o is the odd man out at work, I have to use Word to update the docs so they don't get mangled. D'oh :(
Seconded (thirded?). I only got around to discovering Foxit when Adobe's server was down for several days and I couldn't get a copy of reader to save my life. I was pleasantly surprised to find it not only worked perfectly, but it was snappier and didn't constantly throw up modal dialogs asking me to update. No way in hell Adobe's reader touches my PC any more.
That's pretty much my experience. I've declined offers over invasive checks before, but in cases where there's a reasonable explanation for the request (SEC regulations, or hell, just a reason that makes sense) things are different. There's no harm in asking why they want this kind of info. After they tell you their reason, you can decide whether you think it's a fair cop and go from there.
Don't be afraid to stand up for yourself. It will probably even earn you some respect.
I received a job offer a year and half, maybe two years ago. I was extremely excited after the interview; the team was talented, the product was cool, they were using tech I wanted to play with. Along with the offer came a paper they needed me to sign to give them permission to do a background check. Cool.
When I read the background check, I was concerned. In addition to the totally normal stuff (making sure I graduated when I said I had, worked where & when I said I had, etc), and the stuff I don't really like but is becoming pretty normal (checking my credit history and driving record), the document also explicitly granted them the right to do research to determine who my friends, family, and neighbors were, and to interview them to find out about me. Not only that, but the document explicitly granted them this right forever.
I contacted their HR department and asked about it, because it seemed pretty unusual. They told me that it was required. I asked why. Nobody could tell me. I asked if there was some government agency that required it or some such (not out of the question given the type of work they were doing), and was told no, but not to worry about it, because they weren't ever going to actually use the right.
So I crossed it out, initialled it, signed it, and sent it back.
They came back the next day with a fresh copy of the doc saying no dice. They wouldn't budge. So I politely thanked them for their time and declined the position. They started dialing numbers up higher, and then their HR guy started calling me to "negotiate" by insinuating a lot of insulting things about me. I lost my temper and told the HR guy (not exactly rudely, but far more directly than was appropriate) exactly what I thought. I wish I'd been more tactful about it now, but I'm glad I brought light to it.
On the up-side, everyone with whom I had direct contact went back to their desks, checked their paperwork, and expressed some concern over realizing that they'd signed the exact same invasive agreement. So maybe I helped out over there a little in the end.
They contacted me again a few months later about the same job, apparently unable to fill it. I'd love to say it was because they were getting screwed by their agreement, but there's no way to know. The job used a slightly unusual skill set, and wanted pretty advanced knowledge of it, so they may have just been unable to find someone else qualified.
Short story extremely long, I've also found that they'll generally negotiate. Not always how you want, maybe, but if they want you, they'll do what they can.
I've seen a few posts about being in a position of needing the job, and it's true, sometimes you're in that boat. But I've never had anyone retract an offer when I asked about something I had a problem with. There's never any harm asking, and if they won't budge, well... then you can decide if you're hungry enough to live with the agreement.
Amen. I've been letting the local stuff take over for a couple of years now. I'd love to say it was some altruistic spasm on my part, but in truth, I'm just lazy. It's worked out quite well in the long run though.
Our lawn hasn't been watered since I moved in, and I let the grass get a bit longer before I cut it. The local grass has started taking over and doesn't require any watering. There's a guy down the street whose yard looks like a green carpet, and it's gorgeous, but he's constantly out there working on it and watering it. Mine looks pretty good now (it looked like hell the first two years, though), and while his starts to look burned during the watering bans, mine just keeps on trucking.
A couple of my neighbors have taken notice and started asking me what I did to my lawn. I just tell them to stop working so damn hard on the yard and it'll sort itself out :)
Machiavelli says otherwise. Of course, if they were true Machiavellians, we'd get one Slashdot story (and some dupes :P ) on a shit ton of unpopular changes, and then years of occasional niceties doled out. Instead, it's just lather-rinse-repeat cycles of pissing people off...
God damned freedom-hating earthquakes.... what's their problem, anyway?
I'm glad I'm not the only one who had this experience with the game. Really neat concept, fascinating AI... and absolutely horrendous to play. I despised this game. I tried to give it to a coworker's kid, and he gave it back. I vowed that the next time I had an urge to buy a game Molyneaux had anything to do with, I'd give a friend of mine $10 to kick me in the nuts instead. Just as much fun, and cheaper.
Sue me (or have Jack do it). It's Monday.
Voila. Dug up the link on PA's site. Credit to them for handling the thing as well as they have.
Passed off to who? I've been working here four years, and I'm still the fresh meat. Who the hell is hiring these days? I've seen precious little of it, and haven't read about any more than I've seen.
And I moped.
Then, six months later, I decided I was going to finish what I started, and I worked for three years just to earn enough money to pay my way back to finish college. Three years after I re-enrolled, I graduated with a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering.
Right on.
My experience was pretty similar, though perhaps not quite so extreme. I started out in Computer Engineering. I sucked at it. I busted my ass, worked outside of class, did homework into the wee hours, and generally made myself miserable, and still did poorly. I neglected my other coursework trying to pass my engineering courses. Eventually, I was so depressed and mopey over the whole thing I just sorta gave up. The only class I even went to toward the end of that semester was my programming course, because it was fun. I got a .2 that semester, which damn near ended my academic career.
That was at the end of my second year in the program. I'd been frustrated the whole time, but stuck it through thinking if I beat my head against it long enough, something would give (I was right... it was me that gave). I'm reasonably bright, so public school had let me skate for 12 years. I was unprepared for something I simply could not do if I applied myself enough.
At the end of that semester, I quit chasing engineering. I finally realized that not only could I not do it, but I didn't really want to. I didn't like it. I liked my programming courses. I changed my major to Computer Science. I started getting good grades. I found theory that was really interesting to me, and practice I could actually do. It was hard, too, but my head worked the right way to get it.
Did engineering fail me? Fuck no. I failed engineering. I am not an engineer. My head doesn't work the right way for it. The weed out course that whipped my ass did exactly what it was supposed to do... weed me out. I didn't wash out because I wasn't willing to work... I washed out because that academic disclipline wasn't for me.
Schools have their problems, but I don't think that tough courseloads are responsible for any perceived decline in fresh engineers. I'd say it's more likely that piss poor treatment of techies of various sorts in the business world are making the field less attractive, so people who aren't sure what they want to do are looking elsewhere. God knows my dad wouldn't recommend any of us to follow in his footsteps these days, after what his company did to him and his friends.
Err... that's pretty much what I meant when I said I could see it as being useful, and a good selling point. I just don't personally need it, and would find the other far more entertaining since I don't. :)
I guess I'm weird, but although that occurred to me, too, I didn't get that excited about it. I mean, that's a really great feature and I think it would be a good selling point... but I'm not that interested in it personally. I already know all the shortcuts & such for the programs I use every day, and I touchtype, so I don't really need the letters.
The application of this thing that really got me excited was the thought of taking a background image, breaking it up into 144 or whatever little pieces, and mapping it across the keys, so I have a keyboard background to go with my desktop background.
Yeah, it's silly and pointless... but how freaking cool would it be?
Also, I eat it without utensils, since no other animal does that, and I don't prepare anything I eat - I just pull whatever I want from the carcass right there. My backyard is starting to stink a lot, since I don't bury anything I kill since animals don't.
I'm with you, man. Thank God cats bury her shit, or my yard would REALLY stink.
It drives the Sidious to start killing Luke and it gets Vader to recognize and correct his mistake years later.
I didn't really see it that way. The way it seemed to me, Vader fell with a thousand little tiny stumbles, and each step along the way of his descent, he looked at what he'd done and though, "Fuck... there's no turning back now." And lo and behold, his buddy Palpatine would get him to do something just a little bit worse next, so he felt even more helpless to escape. Never pushed him hard enough to buck... just enough to mire him down a little worse, and depress him enough that he could be made to do something a little nastier next time.
He knew his mistake the whole time, even as he was making it. He just didn't see a way out. And later, hell... he didn't even want a way out.
With the death of his wife and supposed death of his unborn child... the things he cared for enough to be driven to the dark side to begin with... he simply didn't have anything to motivate him toward redemption. What did he have to live for, or to give a damn about? Everything he valued had been stripped away from him, including the things he valued above all else. Hell, I'd fuck the galaxy up in that situation if I had the ability, too.
Enter Episode VI. He's known for a while that his kid(s) are still alive. Now one of them's put in a situation that's exactly analogous to his own from years before. Vader may have been a bad actor in his youth, but he's no idiot. He can't fail to recognize the situation. He has to have realized over the years just how much his master has lied to him, and now he's in Dooku's old role... on the outs so Darth Jerk can get a new and better apprentice.
Sonny boy makes the right decision that daddy couldn't. This is the fabled straw for that poor soon-to-be-paraplegic camel. Vader struggles with this for a while. Between the fact that he does in fact now have someone to give a damn about again and the fact that he recognizes himself in his son's corrected version of his own drama from years ago, he's able to break himself loose from that mire and Do the Right Thing (TM).
He was built for his final decision from the very beginning, after all. Anakin was always more than willing to sacrifice himself for those he was loyal to. Hell, it's how he became Vader...
And now I'm rambling. What was my original point again?
I'm still the newest guy in our office. We haven't hired in three years. As far as I can tell, there's tons of other teams in tons of other companies in the same position.
We don't exist in stasis... each of us is still learning, gaining experience, and getting better. But there's no fresh grads coming in to do the grunt work. We're getting really topheavy, as are, I imagine, many other groups.
I have no idea how this is going to play out. Eventually, hiring will start up again, I suppose, but we're going to be missing the middle chunk. Our crazy-experienced people will have moved on, and we'll have become the experienced guys... but we never really cut our teeth mentoring the newbies, because they weren't there.
Sure, that'd sort itself out... but there's going to be some growing pains, I think.
I'm not sure who modded me insightful for this, but damned if it isn't the funniest joke I've seen in ages. Even if it is a backhanded insult, you have to admire the subtle beauty of it :)