| Great article with a lot of good points. Enjoyed the read. Having said that though, the first paragraph or so made be choke. In the "hypothetical" case of Mike, who after being layed off from Microsoft finds himself a little shocked that his "skills and experience" are not valued in the real world ... well, its really hard to have any sympathy for him. Hiring on merit is one thing, but there also has to be some weight added for a candidate's integrity (or total lack thereof, as in this case.) These Microsoft folk will never understand how much damage they have done, and how deep the resentment against them runs. Its not even worth trying to explain to them. For another example, lets consider the hypothetical case of "Gavin". Gavin is someone with brilliant skills in say - early childhood learning, adminstration, media relations and marketting skills. He applies for a job as a senior admin at a childcare centre. The application is rejected !!! Gavin is appalled at this blatantly unfair treatment, so decides to investigate further and marches into the office to demand an explanation. Anyway, as it turns out, Gavin proudly made full disclosure on his CV about a number of recent highlights in his career, including filming and marketting child pornography, collecting healhly organs from child donars for resale in the Middle East, and also the collection and hiring out of particularly talented children to both the Catholic Church, and the Freemasons. "Gavin" sees these activities as mere expressions of his brilliance in the fields required. He is at a complete loss as to why all the staff / parents in the childcare centre are "discriminating" against him, and some are even casting unfair daggers in their eyes. He cant understand why ???? Perhaps they are just inferior to him. I dont see this as being any different at all to the hypothetical "Mike" situation. Seriously - Fuck Mike ! To anyone recently layed off from a job at MS, who thinks they can jump bandwagons onto the next "trendy" thing in software, I think the most humane thing to do would be to tell them the rotten truth right up front .... "Just Fuck Off, and get as far away from software dev as you can. Get a job pluckng chickens, or collecting broken glass, or whatever pays the bills ... but whatever you do, keep the fuck away from our computers. You are NOT wanted here, and we all have excellent reasons to hate your guts with a passion and intensity that you are too selfish and narrow minded to ever comprehend." .... but they would still think this was unfair ! Ridiculous. |