Entries Tagged 'fun' ↓

YOU, yes YOU! can be a programmer and still be ridiculously good looking!

You’re a developer and like what you do, but never quite felt like you fit the mold. Sure you are slightly bemused by the semi-nerdy reference here or there, but you could never quite buy into the full depth and breadth of geekitude that seems to come attendant with the job. To stay current and bad-ass, you need to stay on top of the new technology and best practices and engage the tech community on the web, but is it really worth suffering through the 133t IM-speak, WOW fan fiction, or shitty homemade anime? Subtract out those social liabilities and you are left for the most part with the boring, monotone (written monotone even!) code posters with their foo / bar / baz examples of how to overoptimize some academic jerk-sort algorithm applicable only in string theory super-manifold physics, a field which yields decidedly *no play*.

I mean, come on, you’ve actually *got* game with the ladies, you can pick your own clothes, work a room, hotwire a car, defuse a bomb. Are you alone afloat in a lifeboat of despair in a sea of jack-assery? Who can you identify with on the web in these trying times? The answer is the man who singlehandedly changed the internet as we know it, Justice Gray. 

*** For the uninitiated, Justice Gray is an Edmonton-based leading .Net developer, .Net convention speaker, influential opinion maker, paradigm-challenger and lady killer. From the outset he has championed the suave, charismatic, virile and pithy route as a fast track the top of the industry, and has largely pulled it off. Read on to learn his tricks of the trade…

A mentor to shake you out of your career doldrums has arrived …

Justice Gray is North America’s favorite metrosexual software consultant and he’ll be the first one to tell you so. He brazenly boasts to be "a seething cauldron of rampaging masculinity. A fighter! A brother! Your secret lover!" …. And he’s right.

Alright Mike, what did this guy do that’s friggin’ awesome? He some sort of guru? Did he orchestrate some awesome HACK? Are you being remunerated for writing this?

The answer is this: He staked his claim on the development world as someone who was over the top and didn’t give a crap.

Somewhere along the line , Justice Gray decided he was going to write posts people might actually want to read, and others that they probably weren’t cool enough to read. He’s written informative tech posts that don’t suck such as his seminal "My Grandmother And.." series. He’s talked about tricks and techniques for staying ahead of the game, book reviews, and started viral memes which wormed their way through the ether. From witty bombast blogger, Justice has become a full blown Dude, now making the conference-presenting circuit and dancing dangerously close to that tier of blogger / consultant / opinion makers that have been getting snapped up by Redmond in rapid succession these days (Hanselman, Conrey, Haak, etc).

What can YOU learn from Justice Gray?
I’ve never met the guy but wanted to give a shout out on my blog, urging people to check out his style. What better way than with an interview? So get off your mouse-ass, go poke around his site, then come back here and read:

12 Questions with Justice Gray:

vs.

MD :"Justice Gray"? What kind of name is that? What are you some sort of superhero or something?

JG : Yes, a *sexual* superhero.  As for "what kind of name is that", considering how many hostesses worldwide have told me it’s an awesome one, I’m inclined to agree.  Maybe you should try going through life with a name like Justice and see what it does for your seduction success ratio!

MD: <sychophant>Your metrosexual bombastic blog persona certainly stands out in the otherwise tedious world of tech blogs.</sychophant> Was there ever a concern that having an over-the-top blog would hurt you professionally? Do you "forget to mention" it to clients, potential mistresses, parole officers, etc?

JG : You mention the "metrosexual bombastic blog *persona*" as if that’s *assumed* - that’s actually who I really am (just ask my wife).  It’s the Justice Gray that initially meets with clients and is a little "dialed down" that is the assumed persona, and once my relationship with a client is a little more entrenched it gets a lot more bombastic - I’d say it gets more metrosexual as well but that’s not something I hide at any point.  =)   I like things better that way, and judging from my ability to avoid being out on the streets begging for change - okay, fair enough, to avoid doing that as my sole source of income - my clients do as well.

My experience has been that companies also prefer someone who is authentic even if they seem a little "out there".  Now, there’s important caveats here - there’s still the normal decorum and tact one has to use in everyday conversation.  Being authentic means *nothing* if you’re authentically an @$$hole; no one wants to work with you.  I can think of a couple blogs I have read where I knew the person was being open and speaking their mind, but doing so in such a way that I was concerned that said person would be a cancer in a group of developers with me.  That’s not the kind of reaction I’m looking to engender.  I think there are enough developer slap fights out there where guys who never got laid in their lives figure their big call to manhood is to have a flame war in someone’s comments thread. 

Clients get lied to often, either by:
a) passive-aggressive, non-confrontational nerds who try to avoid confrontation and thus also avoid telling them what needs to be said
b) good talkers with absolutely no technical credibility whatsoever

Having someone on their side who doesn’t treat them like idiots because they haven’t spent their lives tinkering in machine language is a pretty big bonus, an even bigger bonus if that someone isn’t trying to exploit their lack of technical ability to make a buck charging $700 to add a value to a drop-down field.

Anyway, this blog has made me so many great friendships and opened up so many different opportunities I can’t possibly say being myself on the internet was a bad idea.  Then again, you’re talking to a man whose ex-girlfriend used to throw dictionaries at his head so my ability to determine "bad idea" may be suspect. 

(As an aside, the only time being "myself" got me in trouble was several years ago, when I was at large company X and co-wrote a technical design document that was later rejected for being "unprofessional" by one of the project managers at the time, despite him not being attached to the development project.  Fast-forward 5-7 years later, I’m being interviewed by you about why I’m so awesome, while he is now unemployed.  Guess that’s a lesson for everyone).

From a blogging standpoint, it’s also far more important to be authentic than it is to be dull as dishwater.  Seriously, 90% of the technical "writers" out there have forgotten the writing component of technical writing.    Most blogs out there just aren’t memorable; they say the same things everyone else is saying and they use the same canned generic templates as everybody else.  What makes you *different*?  If you have something to say, you should say it in a way that people will remember, otherwise you’re just filling up space.

MD: You seem to be transitioning from blogger / consultant into the ranks of the presenters / tech evangelist. Is this a path you considered all along and see part of career development or did this just "happen" (like say, pregnancy)? Do you think this is a standard progression that other metrosexual consultants should consider?

JG : Yike. 

This is an interesting question, and I will admit I had a bad case of the twitches when I first read the part about transitioning into the presenter/technical evangelist role.  This is mostly because I think the current presentation circuit (at least .NET-wise) is at least 70% fraudulent.

A lot of the so-called "presenters" out there are out there talking about technology concepts they barely understand, putting together half-baked, ill-prepared "demos" that are barely anything more than surface-level explorations into technology and even worse, showing off poor practices when they’re up there.  When you are a presenter, I feel that you are an example to people and some will hold you up as a way to do things better.  Many .NET presenters out there present simply because they like getting a paid vacation somewhere and a hotel - not because they’re actually helping the community in any way.   I had a meeting with INETA themselves where it was indicated that many speakers simply *refuse* to speak at venues other than big-name cities because "the speaker wants a holiday, and going to [x] doesn’t qualify as a holiday for them".   Look, I won’t lie - it does look good on your resume if you are doing presentations, because many people assume that because you are presenting on something at a local or even national level, you are a de facto "expert" in that technology.  But there are a lot of charlatans out there who, through the code examples they demonstrate and their lack of *knowledge* of any sort of best practice are anything but experts.  People fall all over themselves to latch on to a "hot new tech piece" so they can have a speaking gig for the next 6 months.  And trust me, though I am an attention whore, I have *nothing* on a lot of the people in the circuit who think it’s impressive to offer up a self-written 3-10 page bio telling people how the world thinks they’re a pioneer. 

Half of the presentations I see are so out of the realm of "real-world" that the only use they might possibly have is an ego-stroke to the presenter.  That’s unfortunate because it doesn’t help our industry very much.  Ideally, people would not be presenting out of desire to market themselves but more out of a desire to help the community and by extension, our industry, become better. 

I’m sure to some people that the rush of "celebrity" that comes from speaking or whatnot is intoxicating, but as I have said to friends before, it’s really akin to being the best singer at your high school.  And let’s say you eventually get that Microsoft MVP, or you get that exclusive speaking engagement at the hot conference - is *that* really going to make you happy?  Or are you going to find yourself wanting?  And in the end, does it make your industry better or just your resume? 

*ahem*…all right, off of my soapbox….

I’m not sure if I considered tech evangelism/presenting as part of my career development; it certainly wasn’t something I thought was inevitable.  Part of this has to do with my perception that in many cases the route of tech evangelism is where programmers go to die.  ;)  This is entirely dependent on the person, however; there are some tech evangelists out there who are probably about 5-10 years away from having worked on a "real-world" solution, but there are also evangelists who still attempt to build applications or be involved in open source. 

I think it is definitely an arena to consider, provided you’re doing it for the right reasons.  Another path to consider, however, is that of an agile coach or almost development coach; I’ve performed this role at a couple of startups and I’ve found that being able to pair up with someone on an extended basis is a much easier way to have someone else learn and get inflamed with passion for the industry.  Presentations are a fantastic way to maybe get someone thinking about bigger issues but how much is a newbie to *mocking* really going to take away in an hour, for example?

MD: How do YOU stay on top of the unending deluge of new tech stuff constantly coming down the pike to retain your mack-daddy status? Google reader, particular sites, podcasts, tips from MS insiders?

JG : I feel the need to clarify that my mack-daddy status is simply part of my genetics and isn’t influenced by my knowledge of technical matters.  I don’t want your readers obsessively poring over "The Art of Computer Programming" simply thinking that’s *all* that is needed to become a
MASTER
SEDUCER~!
such as myself.  That being said, I don’t stay on top of it all - I pick and choose based on what I’m personally passionate about and what is technically relevant.  I subscribe to a large number of blogs (I’m not as big on podcasts, though any podcasts that mention me personally are always worth my time) and even my Twitter feed is pretty helpful when it comes to keeping up on discussions. 

On a normal morning, what I will do is go through Google Reader and quickly skim all of the articles.  Anything that either:
a) is written by a friend of mine
b) something that looks potentially interesting

I file under a list called "Saturday Stuff" in Backpack.  Then (surprise) I take some time out of my day on Saturday to read those articles and whatever books are in my pile to read. 

It helps that I’m a fairly fast reader and can get through a technical book in a fairly short amount of time…
 

MD: That does bring up the question of whatever happened to your infamous "Make Yourself A Better Dev in 6 Months" post…

JG: …sigh. It’s honestly not abandoned!  =)  I know it looks like it given that only 3 or 4 of those books have actually been reviewed by me.  I know Hanselman and Franklin were wondering "How does he have time to code?" but that was the easy part, actually, given how I had scheduled my time.  However, about 2 months after making that post I also took on some coaching work and some new opportunities came up career-wise that I absolutely couldn’t pass up.  Then of course I was called up to present at DevTeach and that took a large portion of my time as well - it was clear something had to give, and my wife and I did not want it to be our marriage, so…;) 

I will be resuming my reviews soon as well as going on with some isolated posts discussing pieces of the books themselves.  Hopefully within the next month or so.  I have to announce the winner of the "What Justice Gray Means to Me" contest first (yes, a winner has been decided) and then we’ll get back to business.

MD: From your posts its clear that you have some non-technical books that have shaped your productive, time / career management side, ex Beyond Code. Hit me with a list of non-purely-tech books you think tech workers should read to not be such insufferable dweebs.

JG : The *most* influential book for me career-wise was definitely "The 7 Habits of Effective People".  No other book changed my thinking (and eventually my life) as much as that one did.  Other books that have shaped me include:

• Arnold Schwarzengger’s "Encyclopedia of BodyBuilding" (seriously, yes, this influenced me career-wise)
• Napoleon Hill’s "Think and Grow Rich". 
• Robin Sharma’s "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" (you have to push past some of horrid dialogue )
• The Bible, by various
• Mindfulness in Plain English, Henepola Gunaratana
• Any of the Harrington on Hold ‘Em books

I would be remiss if I did not also give special note to "Getting Things Done" by David Allen - I have had pretty much a "zero inbox" count for the last 4 years and benefited immensely from it!

MD: Tell me a joke I probably haven’t heard.

JG : Donald Belcham.

MD: You’re a prolific blogger, and have mentioned before the concept of career security over job security. Do you consciously schedule time to blog or does it just happen as it happens? How do you have the time to write these posts all the time? Really. Must be nice.

JG : I do try to lay out some time for blogging and I keep a list of ideas written down in Backpack when I have a topic I feel is worth consideration.  I try to be responsible to my clients and not spend their money blogging - now, in my case I’m getting up somewhere between 3-5 AM so that I can have time for everything else I want to do; not everyone feels the same way. I often wondered how Atwood actually had the time to post all the time until I found out he was a "tech evangelist".  I carve out the time from my schedule because I enjoy the community interaction that comes with it; the sacrifice of an extra 30-60 min every couple of days is definitely a worthwhile trade-off for the experiences I have had.

MD: Ever since my Vic-20, Commodore 64 & 128, and Amiga, I’ve been a windows guy. Are you just frontin’ or do you really use a Mac as your daily machine as your blog would lead one to believe? As a .NET guy what do you get out of running a mac, is it more than just a glorified log-in screen to running Visual Studio in parallels? Is there some sexual component to this?

JG : I use a Mac all the time.  To be honest, I wanted a Mac for the last several years but it was only upon them running Intel that I was able to justify the switch, since I did want to be able to do development work off of the machine and while I love Rails, my current contracts are all .NET-based.  I love the user experience of OSX, especially when compared to Vista.  I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And let’s be real here - *everything* I do has a sexual component to it!

MD I’m a big time tools fiddler, Hanselman’s list is like crack. What non-obvious tools do you use that you can’t live without?

JG : A short list would have to include:

• Lancome Eye Serum
• American Crew Forming Cream
• Nivea For Men’s Energizing Gel
• The Morning Scrub Invigorating Exfoliant from Johnson & Johnson (ridiculous quality for its price - wakes up my face like nothing else)
• Eternity for Men

The above 5 are pretty much my license to GET LAID.  Seriously, I normally end up dodging bras and panties being thrown at me just trying to leave my apartment building, let alone walking down the street to my office.

In addition, I *would* have included

• charm
• wit
• fantastic shirts
• ridiculous good looks 

but I believe your criteria was "non-obvious".

There’s always the off chance you were asking about technical tools, in which case the biggest one most recently has been the "Remember the Milk" extension for Gmail.  I can’t remember who pointed this out to me but it’s awesome.  I was never really a fan of "Remember the Milk" (Backpack works just fine for most of the things I want to track) but having it integrated into Gmail makes it a completely different experience to me.

MD: What are some tips you give to new metrosexual developers to distinguish themselves from the crowd?

JG: Be yourself, above all else.  I know this may sound a little bit hippie to some people, but we are all unique and have unique spins to put on things.  You have a voice no one else has - your own!  If you try to conform yourself to what you think will either get you a job, a Microsoft MVP, or a slot on the presentation circuit you will inevitably find that there’s no longer any "you" left in your blog. 

Now, you *did* say "new *metrosexual* developers", so to them:

To you, the socially balanced, the well-dressed, the technically credible: you are the only hope for the software development field to pull itself out of the stereotypical abyss of social retardation and insular incestuousness.  You are future leaders of software developers, and (if you so choose to be) the leaders who will guide, shape, and inspire the entire industry in the years to come.

And to everyone else, *please* stop wearing those Microsoft polo shirts or launch T-shirts in public.  That’s just embarrassing!

MD: (Paraphrased James Lipton ripoff question): What profession other than your own would you like to try?

JG : Male stripper, strategy consultant, karaoke singer.  Preferably something that can combine all three for the best of both worlds!!

MD: What didn’t I ask that you want to self-aggrandizingly answer here anyway?

JG : The *only* man in the software development field with better hair than I have is Calgary’s Terry Thibodeau.  *#@&#ing guy.  No, I’m not jealous in the least.

You’ve read this far. You’ll have my many thanks if you give this post a Digg / DZone / Delicious or whatever. Thanks, brotha!

As always, air your grievances or add your pithy wisdom! ADD A COMMENT!

This is an old post from old blog but google keeps sending people here so I figured I’d backfill it in.

This email was sent my last company’s company-wide distribution list by a disgruntled employee, one day after his termination. This has become a treasured document to all those who received it and now I’ve elected to share it with the world. Only names have been changed.

I defy anyone to produce a better post-termination email than this.

From: “Jack Mixfeld”
To:
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 7:56 AM
Subject: Why I was fired: a morality tale.

> Ladies and Gentlemen:
>
> Yes, this is a long letter. However, Carl Sagan once pointed out,
> “Extra-ordinary claims require extraordinary proof,” so I have decided to
> write the exposition in the detail it deserves. All will become clear.

> Please bear with me.
>
> On the last day of my training period, Tom Smith, the VP of
> Recruiting, took me into his office, shut the door, and told me I was
> fired. This just happened this last Friday, June the 23rd. It is worth
> noting Mr. Smith’s markedly little regret in performing this action; most managers hate
> nothing more than taking away a man’s livelihood.
>
> Needless to say, I was awfully curious as to why I had just been
> given the hatchet. He proceeded to explain, raising the following
> issues:
>
> i. In his words, the IT department charged that I needed “excessive
> handholding” with regards to finding my way around the systems here.
>
> Hmmm.
>
> For one thing, I was told when I was hired for this position in Los
> Angeles that I would be flown to Connecticut and put up in resident
> lodgings; careful perusal of the website to which I was directed to
> get my itinerary, Sunday evening before flight-time (I had to get
> ready and get packed in an awful hurry to make my Monday start-date,
> you see, so I never managed to look at it beforehand) revealed no
> further instructions with regards to where I was supposed to report,
> come Monday morning.
> This struck me as little matter for concern, as I hardly thought
> that anyone would go to such trouble and then leave me hanging. As it
> happens, I flew out and arrived late Sunday night to find… nothing.
> Nothing at the hotel, no further instructions in e-mail… no listing
> for COMPANY NAME in the local phone book. I phoned/e-mailed all
> contacts to request further instructions. Nothing. (I was later told
> that I was sent via overnight mail such instructions. I never and
> still have not received them.)
> As such, no one contacted me until Monday afternoon, so I missed
> orientation day. If there was some sort of standard rule about
> interfacing with IT folks, I wasn’t told.

> For another thing… no observation really means anything unless one
> has a basis of comparison. How much asking for help is construable as
> desire for “handholding” in the highly situational local corporate
> culture?
> At another programming job I have held, I was assigned a mentor who
> was deliberately, by company policy, left out of the loop of employee
> evaluation (this was standard); there, and at my last position, at
> Symantec, I actually managed to get hidings from my superiors for
> *not* asking for help. So how, then, was I expected to behave? And why
> tell me not to step over a line until after I’d done so?
>
> Read on, Constant Reader. It gets *more* tenuous.
>
> ii. Shockingly, I had included in one of my training modules, as an
> example of a Usenet post (or something like that; quite honestly, it
> was such a trivial task that I don’t remember what the demand for it
> was), a random post from talk.euthanasia that had a reference,
> including URL, to a pornography site.
>
> I can only answer such a charge with a resounding “so what”. No
> actual prurience or obscenity was in the article itself. Mr. Smith
> said that the grounds for concern about such a matter was that I might

> happen to offend the daylights out of a client with such a reference.
> I would say that that’s a classic pigs-might-fly purely hypothetical
> situation, with deucedly little basis in fact.
> If I was the father of a young child, would I be unqualified to work

> for this company on the grounds that I might badger my clients to
> brush their teeth, or take their vitamins? I mean, *really*.
>
> iii. I was also cited in this conversation as repeatedly ridiculing
> the training area’s library.
>
> Mr. Smith further explained that this company has not the time or
> resources for a librarian or more books or what have you, reminding me

> that the stated mission here is to create great systems first and
> foremost.
> I cannot quarrel with the mission, as it is… was… mine as well…
> but
> his admission of the library’s inadequacy does not give him more
> authority so much as less excuse for making this kind of “how dare you

> impugn our library” statement.
>
> In my defense I would largely state that the library is… well…
> ridiculous. It is a loose, shambling collection of assorted books, in
> theory grouped according to subject but in fact simply piled on the
> shelves by pure whim. This by itself wouldn’t be a problem, save for
> that in the training handbook we’re told to consult numerous
> specifically named books in which to research the answers to the
> questions we’re supposed to address in our modules. With every module
> about seven or eight books are cited that we’re supposed to peruse.
> One is lucky to find even one in that library… and many of the
> queries in the modules were sufficiently obscure such that the answers

> were unlikely to be found in any other source material.
> We were told to do our research on the Internet. That is, quite
> simply, even more of a laugh. However useful the net may be, I have no

> confidence whatever in the veracity of whatever happens to be written
> on somebody’s web page (at least a book’s pages have to go through an
> editor or publisher of some sort)… and since I was expected to
> produce in an awful hurry, I was more or less forced to fill out the
> answers to the module questions with whatever I just happened to find.

> Some of us trainees even had a good laugh over questions for which
> nobody could even find a halfway-plausible answer (e.g. “What is an
> outrigger?”).
> An unmanned library is okay. A disorganized one is tolerable. A
> hopelessly inadequate one for performing required tasks is not.
> You see… I was a “trainee”. Status of “trainee” implies a
> “trainer”; other folks were luckier, I think, but my assigned mentor,
> Matt Jones, was in Minneapolis, and I had contact with him only via
> two phone calls and a series of e-mailed letters. The point is that,
> ironically enough, for all the trouble to which was went to bring me
> across the continent, I would have been much better equipped to
> complete the training if I’d stayed in Los Angeles. I was in contact
> with others mainly through phone and e-mail anyhow, and if there’s a
> single technical bookshop anywhere in the entire state of Connecticut,
>
> it’s
> a secret well-kept from our community. (Useful books could sometimes
> be had from Barnes & Noble and Borders, but the specialist is so often

> more useful than the general practitioner for our sort.)
> Hardly did I go out of my way to defame our sacred library. I just
> happened to make one facetious remark (among others, to other people)
> to the IT department, however… but I’ll get to that, too, in a
> moment.
> By the by, it seems worth mentioning here that this company’s ad
> that I found on the net and answered in early May promised a laid-back

> corporate culture… a promise that was renewed unsolicited by Dave
> Serafini when he first spoke to me on my first day. Can you say
> “cognitive dissonance”?
> Anyhow…
>
> iv. I was having a conversation with Sean Fournier, one of the
> aforementioned IT folks, when he mentioned I could use the library.
> “Library?” I said. “You call that loose pile of books a ‘library’?
> What university did you go to?”
>
> I was being rather less than serious in making that remark, as
> should be fairly obvious from context. I never heard about this remark
> again until Mr. Smith cited it as grounds for my unceremonious
> dismissal.
>
> That implication is… well, gloriously silly. The notion that I am
> rude and/or unprofessional would come as a surprise, if not grounds
> for raucous laughter, to anyone else who knows me.
> At Symantec, many folks have an office nickname. Mine was “Mister
> Spock”.
>
> I was *that* habitually calm and professional… and routinely
> ridiculed for it, just as I have been at other places where I have
> worked. As such, since techies are so often wiseacres, and since this
> company actually advertises itself as being a bit less serious, I
> decided to apply the “when in Rome”
> rule.
>
> Many thanks to Sean Fournier for, instead of having the least little
> chat with me about this, adhering to the time-honored
> “TEEEEEEEEEEACHERRRRR!!!
> HE’S PICKING ON MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” policy.
>
> Talk about handholding. (N.B., Fournier, this is what a *real*
> insult looks like.) Colleagues are well-advised to bring their
> beverage of choice with them whenever attempting contact with Mr.
> Fournier; it’ll be handy for rinsing out the dustbunnies from their
> mouths after their profuse kissing of the carpet at his feet.
>
> v. On my next to last day, as I sat minding my own business and
> scouring one of my Java texts, I was confronted by some haughty black
> chick about the jeans I was wearing. (Someone mentioned her name to
> me, but I’ve forgotten. The local grapevine will gladly fill you in,
> I’m sure, if you really care. Check local listings.) Our conversation
> went something like this:
>
> Her: “Friday is casual day. Then you can wear jeans and sneakers.
> The rest of the time you’re supposed to be wearing business casual.”
>
> Me: “You’re kidding me.”
>
> Her: “No.”
>
> Me: “I have some slacks at the corporate apartment. Do you want me
> to drive back and get them?”
>
> Her: “No. Your dress is not appropriate.”
>
> Me: “You’re not kidding.”
>
> Her: “No.”
>
> Me: “Okay.”
>
> True to form for the standards of professional conduct so loftily
> upheld at COMPANY NAME, this confronting of yours truly was done
> right in front of all the other trainees.
>
> I wasn’t told. A dress code is something with which I would never
> have had a problem — in fact, I have a serious tendency to overdress
> for work — but no one said anything. This is the only tech shop at
> which I’ve ever worked in which there was more of a dress code than
> “You must be wearing a shirt.”
>
> But that’s not the bad part. Flashforward back to my conversation
> with Mr. Smith. He said that she said that I said, “You’re shitting me.”
>
> Now, I never swear at work. I hardly swear at all beyond the
> occasional “bloody hell” picked up from having read too much verbiage
> authored by Brits. I pointed this out to Smith. He replied, “That’s
> what she said.”
>
> My, my.
>
> For mercy’s sake let’s put aside, for a moment, the non-argument of
> Mr. Smith’s rebuttal. This little incident occurred in a whole roomful of
> witnesses who could have confirmed my nonfoulness of mouth. Yet, here
> it is being cited as basis for termination. No trial, no jury, no
> appeal.
>
> I have never known a person I’ve met in the bowels of a corporation to ever,
> ever admit he was wrong and reverse a decision, no matter how
> inaccurate the information upon which the decision was based later
> proved to be. I am reminded of that scene in the movie _Little Big
> Man_: “Your miserable life is not worth the reversal of a Custer
> Decision.” Nonetheless, that sort of blind faith in a person just
> because s/he’s in authority is something I would have stood in line
> not to see again, even if I was unharmed by it (once you discount my
> profound visceral disgust at the sight, of course).
>
> Some of you may have read Harlan Ellison’s accounts of some of his
> nastier encounters with antiSemites. To paraphrase him: don’t pity me.
> I’ll get another job. Pity *them*.
>
> Mr. Smith did not, I’m sure, present his grievances with me in
> exactly this order. By the time, however, that all of the ones
> mentioned here came to light, I told him I’d heard enough. I quite
> honestly didn’t want to feel obligated to rebut even sillier quibbles.
>
> You might have noticed that all five points have little to nothing
> to do with pace or quality of work. I would further like to point out
> that I e-mailed Mr. Jones daily, sending him updates on my progress
> and enquiring for his opinion of my pace; I never received an
> unfavorable word from him.
>
> Indeed, I received no warning whatever, from anyone, that my fate was
> being sealed. I might not have gotten the Java application done on
> time as described in the module… but considering that I’d been asked
> to learn Java in four days, I feel I can say that with a clear
> conscience. If there exists a man who has gained a sure hand with Java
> in four days, I want to work for him.
>
> I was UPS’ed the pink slip the next day. All that is stated there
> under reasons for dismissal is two words: “unsatisfactory
> performance”. I can see why no one dared to elucidate further. I, on
> the other hand, am happy to have the honor myself.
>
> Many thanks to Mr. Smith, et al. for raising the bar of fear and
> paranoia in modern corporate culture to new levels. Twelve days into
> the job, 14-hour days, satisfactory progress, no real political faux
> pas (you have to have a boss or a client for those, and I never had
> either)… and still fired without warning. Hoo boy. All that time and
> trouble to send me to Connecticut
> — company car, company housing, all expenses paid — all blown,
> before I had a chance to return them even one cent on their
> investment.
>
> I don’t generally like to be this crass… but there’s really not a
> nice way to say this — the thesis of this piece — and it’s
> well-supported by the facts at hand.
>
> COMPANY NAME is a Mandatory Ass-Kissing Employer. Period.
>
> Heaven knows this isn’t the only such company. I was hoping that I’d
> never end up working for one again… mainly because I work for high-tech firms.
> High-tech and… well, basically stupid ways to run a business…
> don’t mix. However, to quote my favorite line from Shakespeare’s _The
> Merchant of Venice_, “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in
> vain.” In a perverse sort of way, I rather enjoyed the experience;
> it’s so often pleasantly bizarre to witness up close such massive
> parallel cluelessness.
>
> Those of you who are capable of doing something useful for a living
> are hereby advised to update you resumes and run for your professional lives.
> Those of you who think this is all just sour grapes are advised to put
> my theory to the test, although I’d bet my whole next paycheck that no
> one will dare. Even if you are confident that you’re so marvelously
> gifted and profitable that no one would dream of getting rid of you
> needlessly, you ought to be reminded that, if you hang around
> coprophages long enough, those same bad habits tend to rub off on
> you… and brown-nosers have a universally bad reputation for good
> reason. Also, one should consider that many supposedly decent people
> are total authority whores, who will automatically assume that your
> termination will be justified no matter how wildly not so it may be.
> Remember how the FBI and the BATF managed a 90% approval rating from
> the American public for their conduct in the Waco affair, even though
> even the most favorable interpretation of events is that they spooked
> a group of religious loons so badly that they burned themselves to
> death?
>
> Did I mention that a disproportionately high percentage of trainees
> were folks who were freshly out of college? Are you aware,
> furthermore, that many companies like to hire inexperienced people
> like that, just because such young folk can be abused, yet be unaware
> that they’re *being* abused?
> You saw the pictures of the child labor used in the mills in the 19th
> century in history class, did you not?
>
> You will probably not keep your job here unless you regularly
> tongue-kiss your masters’ buttocks with unrestrained emotion. No other
> explanation fits the facts, I’m afraid. And it’s not hard to find a
> better employer, especially if you’re a techie.
>
> If you’ve read this far, thank you for your kind attention. I hope
> you’ve enjoyed reading this as much as certain other people didn’t.
>
> Good day, and godspeed.
>
> Fondest regards,
>
> Jack Mixfeld