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vsagarv.posterous.com

14 pointsPraveens27 comments

I was going to flag this but actually I'm upvoting so that people can see how bloody awful this is.

If you can point out which part of the post is bloody and which part is awful, I will send a new manuscript in triplicate, for your proof reading and editing, Sir.

I didn't know there existed humour-vaccums in the HN space time continuum. I prescribe one page of Wodehouse with your morning coffee and two strips of Dilbert before bed.

In this case bloody was an adjective on awful, so we'll just go with awful. I think the posting does your company and your country a disservice.

Firstly, it makes your company look like it's run by people who are sexist because you decide to explicitly bring up two actresses and having sex with them in a job posting. This makes me wonder what the working environment would be like. In the posting you might have got away with "Would you rather spend time with Angelina Jolie or Linus Torvalds?" but you went with asking whether I'd rather have a threesome sexual encounter with those two actresses.

Secondly, the posting doesn't do much to tell me why your company is interesting. You mention some characteristics of the application in the part you term SEO but you don't mention specifics such as datastorage platform or programming language.

Thirdly, since you are in India and I don't have much experience of India a job posting like this on the front page of Hacker News makes me wonder whether this sort of sexist imagery is normal in India and that doesn't attract me to the place.

Lastly, this isn't a question of humour. Whenever sexist, racist, homophobic imagery is used in the computer industry a common retort from the people who use it is that the people 'offended' need to get a sense of humour. How funny would it be to you if I posted a job posting that made it clear that I was biased against Indians?

One of us is having a bad day :) You may not actually mind talking to me normally, if we met across the street. But that's just the optimist in me speaking.

And one of us is refusing to read & discuss the portion of the post that is actually interesting for an engineer.

I am not so hugely popular to do be able to disservice to my country with a short post on HN. Since we are on the subject of countries, I hope you are not from the US. Because, my friends there have an awesome HQ (hint: they actually laugh heartily watching Colbert Report and Daily Show).

You have a fertile imagination, I agree, but in the eagerness to call me names, you've let a word slip: s/imaginary/imagery

Can I post this exchange to the readers of DNRC ? Can't keep so much fun to ourselves, can we?

At the risk of speaking for someone else...

> You may not actually mind talking to me normally, if we met across the street.

He didn't say anything about you personally, just the posting.

> And one of us is refusing to read & discuss the portion of the post that is actually interesting for an engineer.

Your post says a lot about what you need, but nothing about what your company actually uses or what your stack looks like. There's nothing about why I would want to join you (well, except the fact that you can afford five pizzas, I guess).

> Since we are on the subject of countries, I hope you are not from the US. Because, my friends there have an awesome HQ (hint: they actually laugh heartily watching Colbert Report and Daily Show).

I don't understand what this means. (EDIT: From another answer, I realize that by HQ you mean IQ, not headquarters, so it's just an insult).

> You have a fertile imagination, I agree, but in the eagerness to call me names, you've let a word slip: s/imaginary/imagery

I'm guessing the parent edited that? Still, he didn't call you any names anywhere that I saw.

How about none of the above?

Anyway, to put it bluntly: I wouldn't want to work for a company with such a sexist attitude. Diversity is good.

Daniel, how diverse does this team look? http://www.altheasystems.com/about.html

We have not tested/interviewed you. So, the question of your working for us is hypothetical, at best.

I hope they find the heterosexual male they're looking for.

There was this (wo)man who slapped her/his psychiatrist during an ink-blot test.

Until you brought it up, we never thought of our candidates' sexual orientations. We do test for adequate blood circulation to the brain, though.

I think that only females and homosexual males would be able to answer the question "correctly", so this might be reverse-sexist :P

This could actually be an attempt to increase their diversity. They could be hoping that all the heterosexual males choose the first option, and that way they will get more women and gay men applying.

I don't think it's going to work though.

(Also I imagine Linus is extra grumpy at 7am).

And what is your opinion on the technical part of the post?

I think its good for prospective employees to know that instead of dating Angelina Jolie and Megan Fox at the same time, they will be eating 5 varieties of pizza's while coding in the evenings. At least they are honest :)

Thanks! I was wondering if it was just me all alone, amongst a crowd of inappropriately politically correct.

You are single handedly pulling up the average HQ of this thread :^) I owe you a pizza.

Hmm breakfast with Linus would be cool, but you can talk to him online too. Also, this has a very heavy male bias.

The question is in rather poor taste.

Only if the answer that first jumps at you is in poor taste. Think about it.

An appointment with Linus is cheaper than "a lot more" with Jolie and Fox together, so I'll go with the latter.

Except it's stupid.

Awesome choice :)

BTW, that's the 2nd best choice one can make. Think.

And, I forgot to mention that breakfast with Linus is a charity event with a cover charge of 100 USD. Would you still wakeup early and run for it?

I wouldn't in the first place, I'd go with the women. It costs 100 USD for lunch with Linus, but good luck getting a threesome with the girls.

Besides, yes, sexist.

Hey, have fun :)

BTW, know anyone in Bangalore who fit our needs? Our entire engineering runs from here. Shufflr - our social video discovery app - is taking off well on phones (iPhone and Android) as well as on the web (http://shufflr.tv).

Our platform on the cloud that powers all these apps, needs to be scaled for the next order of magnitude in the next couple of months. Please spread the word if you know anyone. Thanks!

I'm sure the answer is 'neither'. After hearing the "cvs/ugly and stupid" comments from torvalds (sorry dude, but those comments paint a picture), and that hollywood is a world of its own, the only way to win is not to play.

Neither is a super busy geek's answer. I'll take it :)

I was a long time cvs user. Could hack it to do what I wanted. Switched to git ~2yrs ago; not so easy to bend but its complexity is one of its main attraction for me.

The post is mine. Didn't know it was posted here by my friend. Thanks to him, real hackers who care about the trade are already mailing me about the engineering part of that post. Both men and women. The following part of the comment is for the sensitive rest.

Hey guys,

(I hope, in modern urban culture, 'guys' is a sexually neutral term; Else, I will have to address the some of the sensitive readers as Dear Mr/Mrs/Ms ...; Let me know)

Sincere apologies are in order:

* To all men and some women whom my post offended because I didn't mention their favourite starlet

* To all women and some men whom my post offended because I didn't mention Brad Pitt and David Hasselhoff

* And to all others who are not Scott Adams' readers

Some of the best computer science engineers I have worked with are women. And I don't hire based on the brand of their nail polish.

You are welcome. The pleasure is mine.

reminds me of http://careers.directi.com/display/CAR/Front+End+Engineer (who should apply section)

Sort of complementing stunts from the other side[1] of hiring scene

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Is_Nothing_%28video_...

Thanks for the one of the few sane comments on this thread. I'll buy you some coffee, if you walk the streets of Bangalore.

not sure if trolling or just.......

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