On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 21:01:17 UTC, Meta wrote:
On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 18:56:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
If some company won't hire you because you contributed code to
D, I'd say you dodged a bullet working for such!
When I was young, I worried about what other people thought
of me.
When I was middle aged, I stopped caring what other people
thought of me.
When I was old, I realized nobody thought about me.
Unfortunately, you can't just say whatever you want nowadays
and expect people to respect your freedom to do so. So many
careers have been lost over some flippant tweet or Github
comment that complete anonymity is the only sane option,
whenever possible.
There's a difference between losing a job and losing a career,
and whilst losing a job may not be much fun it is not the worst
thing that can happen to a person, and may looking back from some
years be better than not losing a job. The public instances of
people being fired for violating politically correct norms are
highly salient but can easily lead to a distorted picture of the
real risks. And what appears to be going on is not always the
real story. For example Larry Summers appeared to be fired as
President of Harvard (or whatever his title was) for some remarks
he made about the implications of differences in variance of two
groups. But that can't be understood without realising that he
lost the support of many people before that for standing up for
Schleifer, a very talented economist but one who certainly did
some things wrong in relation to certain activities in Russia.
So when the later hoohah was raised, he didn't have much support.
I think Andrei and Walter are right about the value of
establishing a brand for most people. One's strengths may also
be weaknesses, and it is much better to have people hire you
because they value what you can do and understand and know up
front what difficulties that might imply and don't mind it than
try to be bland and fit in and have them discover that later.
It's a big world, and there are many people that are looking for
someone exactly like you (and you only need one of them), so it's
not the end of the world if by exposing yourself as you are some
people realise that you are not their cup of tea.
I am not speaking theoretically but based also on practical
experience - myself and people whose situations I have known.
Of course people are in different situations, and I am sure there
are cases where this might not apply.
Political correctness though is dead - its very brittleness and
shrillness is also its death rattle - but it will take a little
while for that to be completely clear. People at the best firms
are slowly starting to realise that the incredible risk aversion
about hiring and the work environment has led to having an army
of trained monkeys, and in the long run its not good business to
have only such. There's an advantage to being one of the earlier
people to not be afraid to present oneself as one is because it
is still quite rare. A little courage goes a long way in life.
