Geek at Play

Bad hearing

Just now I was heading over to the other side of the building to hit the restroom and one of our recruiters was going in the same direction, about 4 steps behind me. As I opened the secure door between halves of our office he inexplicably muttered “Gracias, Mua’dib”.

Immediately my brain went into overdrive. I got the Dune reference right away; that was easy. But why throw in the Spanish? Was there some parody floating around that he was quoting? Was he just being goofy because I share a first name with the guy who played the Quizat Haderach in the first movie adaptation of the book? What the hell? I hate it when I miss a reference!

Well, it was simpler than that. Not long ago our company suffered the common occurence of an unauthorized person wandering around the cube farm during business hours. It generally really freaks people out. They might be a common crook looking for a laptop to bolt with, or a sexual preditor following a girl from our company. It can be horrifying. So, once the incident is over, humor plays an important role in returning the office culture to normal. People deny their coworkers entrance claiming to have never seen them before. People ask their boss, “Hey, do you work here?” The most common joke is to demand proof of employment.

Glenn had mumbled, and I had mis-heard, “Got some ID?”. I’m a colossal dork.

Horrifying

I find the recent revelations about EA’s labor pracitices to be utterly horrifying while at the same time making me say, “Duh!” This is how the software industry was and is built. Geeks have special tendancies that make them (1) geeks and (2) highly exploitable. Give a software geek a hard question and he won’t sleep until he’s solved it. Give an art geek a curious vision and she will eschew human contact until she has drawn it in excruciating detail.

This is what a geek is, people! A geek is a person with a borderline unhealthy obsession with a particular topic. It only takes a marginally intelligent manager to see the benefits of filling a cube farm with such creatures. Let them wear jeans, bring in shitty pizza once a week and watch your empire grow.

This is really one of those places where capitalism falls down. When you hire an exempt employee a battle begins. On one side is basic human decency, on the other is your own desire for fame, fortune and advancement. Should you be a “people manager” and send your strung-out programmer home because he lacks the sense to know when to call it a day? Or should you grab the productivity gain opportunity and promise more in less time to your Corporate Evil Overlord?

I think it’s fairly apparent what should happen, and what does. It will likely continue, too, now that the threat of outsourcing looms over the increasingly anemic technical job market. Witness the most highly educated slave-class in history!

No confidence

We’re all supposed to be excited that we get all our HR benefits on-line now. That we have the convenience of doing our elections or allocating our 401k’s via a web interface. I can’t completely complain. It beats the hell out of dealing with multiple forms, finding the right person to hand them to, and waiting much longer than should be needed. But, wow. Without exception the benefits and 401k sites that I’ve experienced are the most frightening sites I’ve ever encountered. They are ages behind in design and layout with an almost indecipherable navigation system. They break. They throw errors. Heck, they even require me to type in my SSN to identify myself (isn’t that illegal now?!).

Case in point: my current employer (which otherwise rules) has a new contract broker organizing our benefits. You can’t complete your elections if you are using Mozilla, Firefox, or IE under Windows XP SP2. If you’re a geek, you probably already guessed the reason: their site uses unrequested popup windows. Yeah, popups. You know those things for which there are dozens of programs designed to stop them because the whole entire universe hates them? Apparently these people didn’t notice this trend. What kind of mickey mouse people do they have building these sites? I’m supposed to trust them? Eek.

Good weekend

Man, I had a heck of a weekend. I’m still trying to get my head around it. It involved everything I could imagine that could be packed into a weekend, done along side my two best friends. There was drinking, football, drinking, food, dancing, drinking, and even some nudity. Did I mention the drinking? I guess it is sort of justified due to the occasion for the GR visit (I’m not putting those details here, if you don’t know, it isn’t relevant to you).

But with all the partying and running around, the most amazing moment had to be on Sunday night. We’d met tdeb at Founder’s for a beer and were heading back to Kirk’s place in the bitchin’ PT Cruiser I’d rented (not by choice). We pretty much all freaked out looking up into the sky and saw the Nothern Lights going crazy. It was insane. We ended up standing outside in 34-degree weather staring into the sky until our necks were sore and hands numb. What an amazing thing to witness.

Heck of a weekend.

Go Jon!

I gotta say that this is really damn cool. I copied this off of the sfgate.com for posterity. Do you think that mainstream news is losing credibility? Oh, hell yeah. At least with Jon Stewart you know when he’s lying because he does it in a funny voice.

Update: my friend Mike pointed out the followup question today which also makes me laugh.