However, I have had a hiring manager decide to hire me, only to have the offer dropped under mysterious circumstances.
Yes, that would irritate me. And I agree that the not-so-good applicants would be more likely to sue - which is probably why I wouldn't!:)
But in the situation you experienced I probably would write a letter to the company's CEO; strictly factual and unemotional but pointing out that his corporation was probably in breach of employment law and therefore open to being sued. That should give the bad HR guy a sleepless night or two. I agree that they shouldn't be allowed to just get away with it.
If I have a very positive interview for a job I'd be great at, and don't get an offer, that may have absolutely nothing to do with my abilities, either real or perceived.
That's true. I once had a very positive interview, but I could read the lead interviewer like a book. He was thinking "This guy's better than I am. If I hire him he'll be a threat to me." It was written all over his face. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't offered the job.
But I didn't sue. I didn't even care. I'm 65, I've been programming commercially for 25 years, and I've been kicked in the balls by life so often that I doubt that I could ever be fairly accused of making any false assumptions of fairness! Life IS unfair, period.:)
What I'm saying here is that a confident and entrepreneurial programmer will either so dominate the interview as to blow all ageism out the window, or he will conclude that the company wasn't worth working for anyway and therefore probably isn't worth the further waste of his valuable time and money suing them. And if he doesn't do one or the other, then he probably wasn't a good choice for the company.
If he's got ideas, enthusiasm, experience and stickability, well... why doesn't he use them and get on with the next project, move, or interview? I kinda feel that if an engineer has to resort to the courts to secure his income, then he's dropped out of the race anyway.
If the over-40 has to resort to legal action, he has just proved he wasn't up to the job anyway. If he can't convince you that he has the ideas, the enthusiasm, the experience, and the stickability to get the job done, how will he ever inspire that confidence in your customers?
If this vessel is located just 40 miles from the English coast it is not in international waters. Anything found within 200 nautical miles of the British coastline belongs to the British Crown. All finds within that limit must, by law, be reported to the UK Receiver of Wrecks, who alone decides who gets to keep what. In practice his decision is based upon his estimate of the historical and archaeological significance of the find, though a finder is normally financially compensated for anything the Receiver decides to keep. If a treasure hunter removes artefacts without the permission of the Receiver he is guilty of theft from the British Crown; he can expect to be dealt with according to law, and if he is not a British subject he can expect to face extradition to stand trial. US judges have no jurisdiction to make orders concerning either the territory or the property of the British Crown.
One would have thought that a company set up to go international treasure hunting would have taken the trouble firstly to acquaint themselves with these elementary legal realities; unless of course they foolishly imagined that they could get away with ignoring them!
How's about this for a bunch of nested conditionals, taken from a UK Act of Parliament:-
"Subsection 6 of Section 23"
"Subsections 2 to 6 of section 21 of this Act shall apply to an appeal in pursuance of the preceding subsections, as they apply to an appeal in pursuance of subsection 1 of that section, as if for the references in subsections 2 and 3 of that section to paragraph B of subsection 1 of that section, there were substituted references to paragraph B of the preceding subsection for the references in subsections 3 and 5 of that section to the relevant place, there were substituted references to the land on which the tree is situated."
And in England, towns are one thing, cities are another. I live in a town, not a city. (But I'll buy the book. For some reason, I can program anything well except web sites.)
The fat lady hasn't finished singing yet. McKinnon now has 14 days in which to appeal the decision in the UK High Court, which has never yet been afraid to overturn the decisions of politicians.
"How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?"
I build-in closed-loop reality-check calculations at key points all over the sheet. Thus if Column X should equal Row Y, I simply make sure it does.
(No-brainer surely? Or have I missed something?)
In my experience, the managers who object most to their programmers telecommuting are those who don't understand the need to be able to think hard, and to concentrate upon a complex problem for hours - or days - at a stretch without distraction, because they themselves have never done it. Any company run by such people is therefore unlikely to be worth either investing in or working for.
I appreciated the joke in the first 50 ms.:)
Being serious again, some colleagues also did research on TV news bulletins. They interviewed people at their front doors just seconds after a news broadcast had finished, to see what they could recall of the half-hour they had just watched. The results were basically 'zilch'. I can't remember the exact numbers now, but it was something like 40% could remember one item, and went down from there. It was quite sobering.
Which reminds me of a comment made by a prominent advertiser a few years back. He admitted in a public speech that 50% of advertising money is wasted. "The problem is" said he, "nobody knows which 50%".
It was forty years ago so my memory for detail is a little fuzzy. However, one I do remember was an ad for baby products which carried a photo of a pretty model holding a baby. First impression of the ad suggested to its target group (mothers) that the model wasn't holding the baby's head properly, and that impression immediately prejudiced them against the product. We changed the photo and the ad worked.
No, it's correct. Forty years ago I spent a year assessing peoples' reactions to press ads for market research purposes before the ad was run. I used a 'tachistoscope' to increase their exposure to the ad progressivly from 10 ms upwards, and a team of experienced interviewers questioned the subjects at each stage, asking them what they had seen and what it brought to their minds. Initially they saw nothing, but perception began at about 20 ms. Now, what they perceived at such a short exposure time did not necessarily bear much resemblance to what was actually in the ad, but it certainly conditioned their response to the ad afterwards. It's a phenomenon familiar to psychologists. This market research was sold to large companies for real money, because by means of it we were able to prevent a few marketing disasters.
FWIW my own practice is to comment every line, then add a summary at the end of each minor and major section of code which tells the reader what that section does. That way he can scan quickly through the summaries and get a feel for how it all works before diving in at line level. Putting all those summaries at the same point on the screen so that he can move from one to another by just hitting also helps a lot (but assumes that screen configs are all the same of course).
Slashdot Mirror
It's like the original Forum of Greek polises (polisi? poli?)
Poleis, actually. That's the first time I've ever gotten to use that particular bit of useless knowledge. Thanks!
Poleon actually. It's genitive.
"Can an extended discussion of useless knowledge ever lead to a useful conclusion?" - Discuss.
Yes, that would irritate me. And I agree that the not-so-good applicants would be more likely to sue - which is probably why I wouldn't! :)
But in the situation you experienced I probably would write a letter to the company's CEO; strictly factual and unemotional but pointing out that his corporation was probably in breach of employment law and therefore open to being sued. That should give the bad HR guy a sleepless night or two. I agree that they shouldn't be allowed to just get away with it.
All the best.
That's true. I once had a very positive interview, but I could read the lead interviewer like a book. He was thinking "This guy's better than I am. If I hire him he'll be a threat to me." It was written all over his face. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't offered the job.
But I didn't sue. I didn't even care. I'm 65, I've been programming commercially for 25 years, and I've been kicked in the balls by life so often that I doubt that I could ever be fairly accused of making any false assumptions of fairness! Life IS unfair, period. :)
What I'm saying here is that a confident and entrepreneurial programmer will either so dominate the interview as to blow all ageism out the window, or he will conclude that the company wasn't worth working for anyway and therefore probably isn't worth the further waste of his valuable time and money suing them. And if he doesn't do one or the other, then he probably wasn't a good choice for the company.
If he's got ideas, enthusiasm, experience and stickability, well... why doesn't he use them and get on with the next project, move, or interview? I kinda feel that if an engineer has to resort to the courts to secure his income, then he's dropped out of the race anyway.
Just my two cents' worth.
If the over-40 has to resort to legal action, he has just proved he wasn't up to the job anyway. If he can't convince you that he has the ideas, the enthusiasm, the experience, and the stickability to get the job done, how will he ever inspire that confidence in your customers?
If this vessel is located just 40 miles from the English coast it is not in international waters. Anything found within 200 nautical miles of the British coastline belongs to the British Crown. All finds within that limit must, by law, be reported to the UK Receiver of Wrecks, who alone decides who gets to keep what. In practice his decision is based upon his estimate of the historical and archaeological significance of the find, though a finder is normally financially compensated for anything the Receiver decides to keep. If a treasure hunter removes artefacts without the permission of the Receiver he is guilty of theft from the British Crown; he can expect to be dealt with according to law, and if he is not a British subject he can expect to face extradition to stand trial. US judges have no jurisdiction to make orders concerning either the territory or the property of the British Crown.
One would have thought that a company set up to go international treasure hunting would have taken the trouble firstly to acquaint themselves with these elementary legal realities; unless of course they foolishly imagined that they could get away with ignoring them!
How's about this for a bunch of nested conditionals, taken from a UK Act of Parliament:-
"Subsection 6 of Section 23"
"Subsections 2 to 6 of section 21 of this Act shall apply to an appeal in pursuance of the preceding subsections, as they apply to an appeal in pursuance of subsection 1 of that section, as if for the references in subsections 2 and 3 of that section to paragraph B of subsection 1 of that section, there were substituted references to paragraph B of the preceding subsection for the references in subsections 3 and 5 of that section to the relevant place, there were substituted references to the land on which the tree is situated."
Well, I hope that's clear to everybody!
And in England, towns are one thing, cities are another. I live in a town, not a city.
(But I'll buy the book. For some reason, I can program anything well except web sites.)
The fat lady hasn't finished singing yet. McKinnon now has 14 days in which to appeal the decision in the UK High Court, which has never yet been afraid to overturn the decisions of politicians.
"How are Slashdotters coping with the proliferation of spreadsheets in the face of greater legal accountability and auditing?" I build-in closed-loop reality-check calculations at key points all over the sheet. Thus if Column X should equal Row Y, I simply make sure it does. (No-brainer surely? Or have I missed something?)
In my experience, the managers who object most to their programmers telecommuting are those who don't understand the need to be able to think hard, and to concentrate upon a complex problem for hours - or days - at a stretch without distraction, because they themselves have never done it. Any company run by such people is therefore unlikely to be worth either investing in or working for.
"None of my close friends give any credit to creationism or ID," Perhaps you should choose your friends more carefully? Ian
I appreciated the joke in the first 50 ms. :)
Being serious again, some colleagues also did research on TV news bulletins. They interviewed people at their front doors just seconds after a news broadcast had finished, to see what they could recall of the half-hour they had just watched. The results were basically 'zilch'. I can't remember the exact numbers now, but it was something like 40% could remember one item, and went down from there. It was quite sobering.
Which reminds me of a comment made by a prominent advertiser a few years back. He admitted in a public speech that 50% of advertising money is wasted. "The problem is" said he, "nobody knows which 50%".
It was forty years ago so my memory for detail is a little fuzzy. However, one I do remember was an ad for baby products which carried a photo of a pretty model holding a baby. First impression of the ad suggested to its target group (mothers) that the model wasn't holding the baby's head properly, and that impression immediately prejudiced them against the product. We changed the photo and the ad worked.
No, it's correct. Forty years ago I spent a year assessing peoples' reactions to press ads for market research purposes before the ad was run. I used a 'tachistoscope' to increase their exposure to the ad progressivly from 10 ms upwards, and a team of experienced interviewers questioned the subjects at each stage, asking them what they had seen and what it brought to their minds. Initially they saw nothing, but perception began at about 20 ms. Now, what they perceived at such a short exposure time did not necessarily bear much resemblance to what was actually in the ad, but it certainly conditioned their response to the ad afterwards. It's a phenomenon familiar to psychologists. This market research was sold to large companies for real money, because by means of it we were able to prevent a few marketing disasters.
Much grateful thanks for the interesting Perlin link.
FWIW my own practice is to comment every line, then add a summary at the end of each minor and major section of code which tells the reader what that section does. That way he can scan quickly through the summaries and get a feel for how it all works before diving in at line level. Putting all those summaries at the same point on the screen so that he can move from one to another by just hitting also helps a lot (but assumes that screen configs are all the same of course).