At what point in the job finding/interviewing process are you having trouble with? If you don’t mind me asking?
I know if I was hiring for something and found that post, that'd be an instant no-hire from me.
People boycott things all the time for all kinds of reasons. Some people boycott Israeli businesses due to the Israel/Palestine conflict, other people boycott MyPillow, and others boycott Chik-Fil-A, or more recently Budweiser. The outrage here on HN is a bit annoying, considering this used to be a fairly balanced platform.
As a consumer, boycotting a business is basically the only recourse for whatever grievance (justified or not) you may have which happens to be outside the purview of the law. Or is boycotting not petty only when your tribe does it?
But if many people think you are being petty/bonkers/anti-something-they-care-about based on why you are boycotting particular businesses, that might cause you some trouble.
> Or is boycotting not petty only when your tribe does it?
There are certainly some boycotts I don't participate in, but respect the decision of those who do.
Boycotting is petty when people think it's petty (pettiness is an opinion, not an intrinsic property of something). If you want to talk about "tribes", sure, maybe a particular "tribe" thinks some particular boycott is petty. That's life.
Maybe be a little careful with the conspiracy theories, but I am quite done with the corporate-friendly personas we are pushing in our tech world.
I wanted to write a couple posts about anarchism on my personal blog, nothing crazy, and kept being concerned it might drive off a potential recruiter. Who the hell cares, a company where I cannot have a touch of personality is not a place I want to work at either.
Must be because I learned this job in the early 2000s, when sysadmins were wearing black shirts and listening to death metal, and the CEO stayed well away from that office, not the shirt-wearing, well-trimmed DevOps you see at conferences these days.
The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.
We all have our quirks, and we should celebrate them. I know your blog, I can't say I understand where you're coming from or that I relate very much with your persona, but I appreciate that you're able to stand out as your own, and I'm able to recognise you among the masses.
But in many cases, outside the fight for gender identity freedom, this is not possible in the world of modern social media, where you're always one step from being lynched by a mob because you dared go against the grain. The Twitterverse is the reason we're all sterile clones of each other, dividing everybody into a us vs them culture battle. That's too much nonsense for me.
Thanks for the level headed conversation
If it's important to you then you should. There are places that allow/encourage people to be individuals.
>The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.
That said be careful what you write and how you phrase it because it's one thing to have an opinion, and another to make a statement like that.
That's the bloody point. Fuck having to walk on eggshells, especially when I made it quite clear I have no issues with that. I had to be quite careful with the wording, and I know exactly this opens me to be attacked and pointed out as a bigot because I equated gender identity struggles with identity in general. How dare I.
We're all walking on eggshells and get quickly silenced if we even dare question it. I do not wish the Internet to operate under mob rule.
The things you say in public could be heard by someone and those someones have the gall to form an opinion of you you don't like -- some may even confront you about it.
Disagreement, unemployability, hostility, these are among the prices we pay for saying things in public places such as the internet. You can decide to pay the price and maybe turn it into a fruitful discussion (granted, unlikely on the internet) or you can shut up and seethe with anger for "being silenced".
> especially when I made it quite clear I have no issues with that.
No, you didn't. You pretty much said "just saying" as though that absolves you of what you actually said [0].
[0] https://www.npr.org/2010/12/18/132160770/its-rude-its-crude-...
People increasingly don't even read the posts before the go off on ideological rants and false accusations.
Eh? The comment I replied to said `The only potentially "controversial" idea (as in, corp might not like it but will have to deal with it) that is still accepted in tech is being trans or a furry. I have no issue with either, mind you, just pointing out that anything else is a no-no.`
The discussion is around identity, and mentioning that these days only gender identity is a corporate-acceptable struggle. I claim that identity in general should be celebrated. I shan't be afraid to say, on my blog I'm an anarchist, or, for argument's sake, I'm a satanist, I am trans, I vote Trump, Google is a shitty company, or Star Wars is a terrible franchise.
No, you don't get to do that on any topic. If you write a blog post on a programming language feature, and in the middle of your post decide to slip in a note about your feelings on the middle east conflict, web3/crypto or your political opinions, expect people to talk about that. You decided it was important enough to mention in your post, so it's up for discussion.
> and just a way to entrap me.
Nah, you don't get "woe is me" card if you shoehorn in a dog whistle and get called out on it.
> I shan't be afraid to say, on my blog I'm an anarchist, or, for argument's sake, I'm a satanist, I am trans, I vote Trump, Google is a shitty company, or Star Wars is a terrible franchise.
Do that. But don't be surprised if people treat your words equally.
If you can't keep your message on-point, that's a you problem, not an everyone else problem.
This is why social media is shit today. It's full of people unable to sustain intelligent discussion, so they try to find hidden meaning behind someone else's words.
You see a dog whistle, I see a person that gets off doing online witch hunts, instead of simply knowing how to disagree. If you have to resort to the personal attack, it's quite obvious there is no intelligent argument to be had here.
This is not Twitter. Good day.
You don’t want to live in a world where people won’t hire you because they don’t like you? You’re in for a rough ride.
Actually my gender and race are much more "me" than my blog, cause I might change my opinions and my blog no longer reflects my internal "states".
You can’t discriminate based on sex or race, you can based on personality.
1. You probably don't have many friends or
2. Your friends are not very diverse
Outside, in the real world, I can sit and have a very pleasant conversation on TV shows or Lisp interpreters with someone with terrible ideas or belief which are inconsequential to the matter at hand and are not part of the conversation. I can sit for a beer with childhood acquaintances that I know are racist, bigots or generally idiots, because we're talking about something else than the things I know we don't see eye to eye. And that's fine.
It is frightening that we're forgetting how real people outside the Internet are, behave and can get along in all their complexity.
Where did I say that?
> Outside, in the real world, I can sit and have a very pleasant conversation on TV shows or Lisp interpreters with someone with terrible ideas or belief which are inconsequential to the matter at hand and are not part of the conversation. I can sit for a beer with childhood acquaintances that I know are racist, bigots or generally idiots, because we're talking about something else than the things I know we don't see eye to eye. And that's fine.
Good for you. We're multinational company with thousands of employees, I personally been witness to situations where incompatibility in views caused issues during work. In my free time, with my childhood acquaintances I can talk about anything, during work with my colleagues I want to have productive workday - not arguing about current flavor of racism or whoever-knows-what's opinions about anarchy.
Again I know it's not black and white and everyone has different red lines. If someone treats killing baby mammals as their favorite form of entertainment I probably can't work with them.
My original post was refuting claims that a blog and public code could get you hired.
I know that companies will see me as not a good fit. That's a good thing for both of us because I've come to realize that I'm not a good fit for a sterile office environment.
A blog can get you hired.
Your blog will not.
I don't care how good of a C whiz this person is, if I see that crap associated with an applicant their application is going straight to the incinerator. Even if I had no problem hiring bad, asshole human beings, this guy is a legal liability.
People really don't read my blog posts very well.
You're the one that isn't getting hired. Whether you recognize your error or not, the people looking to hire do. There's content in your posts that if they were in a company slack message would be a major liability. Most companies don't believe in breaking the law.
The moderation of lobste.rs is nowhere near as even-handed as HN, as his example (and many others) demonstrates.
Beyond being an ethically bad and bigoted person, this guy would bring state and federal liability to the company from the first day on the job. I don't care if he disagrees, this isn't a matter up for discussion, I will not break the law for you.
I'd suggest separate technical/non-technical blogs and only referring people to the first. I'm mostly thinking of all the blog posts that explicitly point to the disclaimer..
You don't have to hide the personal blog but this is probably a bit much for sites you point employers at.
I've come to expect it.
Notice that I never wondered why companies don't hire me. I merely said they don't. I know I'm not a good fit in a sterile work environment.
IMO this is the real problem - and it comes through in your blog posts. It's very risky to hire someone who can't be a cog, you need a lot of social proof that they're worth the risk.
Edit: From what others wrote about about your blogs, I think your ascertion that your personal views shouldn't pose a proboem are wrong. By that I don't mean having them is wrong, but being as outspoken about, lets put it mildly, potentionally controversial opinions in a borderline aggressive way is the problem. It would be an equal problem if we talked veganism as another, potentionally bad, example. Nobody wants to be called out by their co-worker during lunch for having a steak everytime. And nobody wants to talk about why a co-worker feels insulted for not being ablento bring a gun to the workplace.
Edit 2: Paul Graham has one of his earlier articles that seems relevant: the one about keeping a low public profile. Is more relevant than ever, the more said profile deviates from the mainstream the more it can become a problem. GP is great example for this.
https://staffeng.com/book has a list of different types of staff+ roles that could maybe fit.
EDIT: Took a quick look at your blog to see if there were any obvious red flags and found this, in the context of the Rust Foundation's prohibition of firearms at Rust events
> I have a concealed carry permit. I have firearms and other weapons. I know how to use them, and I will use them in defense of my wife and myself.
> And you can bet I carry them into places I consider dangerous if it is legal to.
If I was hiring, this would be a huge red flag to me. Why do you need to even consider bringing a firearm into a conference?
> "Why can't I get a job?"
> - man with 30ft pole behind them with a red flag hoisted on it
There might be people outside of the conference targeting attendees? That is the talk of someone who walks around life haunted by fear.
I'm Australian based, probably similar elsewhere.
This would be a problem for me when hiring too (to be frank - hard pass due to above, and no amount of git code beauty would change that).
Collaboration, communication, team work are much more important long term in bigger teams. Willingness to help team/project even though sometimes bureaucracy might be Kafka-esque. Yes we are all cogs in big machine, so what? It takes 2 seconds to realize that for each of us. We still do the work, its work for christ sake, we pay the bills, vacations and go back to our families just like everybody else.
I personally think I'm just not a good fit anywhere.
If you don't want to do the things that would qualify you for the available jobs, that's not because your technical posts wculdn't make you stand out, positively, it's because you're choosing not to!
I'm not so sure it would work. By the time I thought about it, I had already gone viral on HN and the personal attacks had started.
You can also ask dang to delete some of your posts on HN if it helps disassociate your name from discussions like these (though I doubt most people would think to look you up on HN based on a name)
But I'm still going to carry when I feel I need to.