Hacker News Reader

"Having a keyboard is a sign that you don't have any power."

Just as importantly, today not knowing how to use a computer is a bad sign in the workplace, one that will cost you your job.

I contract my time at a place with a fair number of very senior people (age 50+). A few years ago it wasn't like that, most people were under 35 and having grown up with computers had a reasonable mastery of basic computer skills.

When the contract changed the client desired a more skilled labor pool and thus amped up the requirements for most of the positions. What happened? A flood of computer illiterate old-school types who tried to get the few remaining "youngsters" to do the bulk of the work.

It went over very poorly with the younger workers, the contractor and in the end the customer. It was made known that if you didn't have basic computer skills you wouldn't have a job...to be verified by a test before beginning regular work (given after the new hire training period). The result? Something like 85% turnover in the aged 50+ pool inside of six months. The group they have now is not only much better at these basic skills, but a better cross section of truly needed skills anyway.

Watching all this go down made me think of my father, who in his late 60s purchased his first computer (in the late early 2000s) and had the intellectual curiosity to spend hours every day learning to type, fiddling with various settings, changing the screen savers and background graphics...till he was literate enough that he could do pretty much whatever he wanted to do with the machine. He knew the times had changed and it was up to him to get his act together.

For years, senior people did not type their own email, or even read it on a screen.

Reading this I can't help but think of the old "hello world" computer program humor [1] predicated on the idea that the higher the you went up the corporate hierarchy the less computer savvy that person would be:

    New Manager
    ===================

    10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
    20 END

    Middle Manager
    ===================

    mail -s "Hello, world." bob@b12
    Bob, could you please write me a program that prints "Hello, world."?
    I need it by tomorrow.
    ^D

    Senior Manager
    ===================

    % zmail jim
    I need a "Hello, world." program by this afternoon.

    Chief Executive
    ===================

    % letter
    letter: Command not found.
    % mail
    To: ^X ^F ^C
    % help mail
    help: Command not found.

    % damn!
    !: Event unrecognized
    % logout

[1] http://www.infiltec.com/j-h-wrld.htm

Indeed. 10 years after this, in 1992, the general manager of my firm was refusing a computer on his desk as "it looks unprofessional".

> An expensive watch [...] tells the time about as accurately and about as reliably as a mid-priced or cheap watch.

Actually, there's a huge difference in the accuracy of high-end and cheap watches. The cheap watches are way better.

Handicap principle?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handicap_principle

Well, if you want to use Mad Men as a reference, in S04E12 ("Blowing Smoke"), you can see Don touch typing on a typewriter (at his home, though, not the office) quite proficiently at around the 30 minute mark.