Diverting slightly from the “Job opportunity” fracas. a couple of people have explained to me why Andreas’ comment about an HP job posting:
> You're talking about the company that just last month reported the worst loss > in its 73-year history and is on the brink of laying off 29,000 people, > right? > > More importantly, though, do we get a ping-pong table? was unwelcoming. It would seem that he was taken to be saying that obviously no-one would jump at such an offer following all these layoffs, and that it generally belittles HP, so might offend someone who works there or is considering working there. This is further taken as Andreas saying to Mark that he needn’t have bothered to post because the offer is clearly ridiculous. And I guess that therefore Mark is a silly fellow, who should give up recruiting and consider basket weaving, and generally reconsider his life because he must be a failure. This interpretation is a revelation to me. I took Andreas to be talking to the community, not to Mark, and to be saying to us that, given HP’s current troubles, it was amusing (and it is!) that HP is hiring for such a position. Furthermore, one might wonder how such a position can seem attractive in light of these issues. Perhaps Mark or someone else with relevant information might care to comment? Ah, but the point is how Mark might interpret Andreas’ comment! Because we want to welcome MPs (or PMs? What is such a thing anyway?), and poor, fragile Mark might take us to be belittling his job posting, and thus questioning his manhood, and thus scaring him away. How treating poor, fragile Mark like this intellectual invalid isn’t insulting to him I’m not quite sure. Anyway. I put it to you that: - we should assume that everyone in our community is reasonable, charitable and friendly until clearly demonstrated to be otherwise; - we don’t have to try very hard to find a reasonable, charitable and friendly interpretation of what Andreas wrote. To insist otherwise is to insist that Mark is not himself capable of finding all of these interpretations, and furthermore that his delicate ego needs defending from such complications, which I propose is more insulting to Mark that anything Andreas might have been taken to be saying; - if you think there is some danger that poor Mark’s delicate ego might have been so grievously offended by a particular interpretation of Andreas’ throwaway joke that he might abandon us as a lost cause, then you should politely and privately ask Andreas to clarify what he meant, or if need be publicly and politely offer that while Andreas is a likable and inoffensive fellow, it is possible that you interpreted what he said in xyz way, and if so, you should know that this is almost certainly not what he meant, and really we all love you, Mark, and we’d love to hear more about how we should go work at HP. But really, someone who works in HR or recruiting is certainly going to have a particularly thick skin, and I’m sure Mark thinks all this is ridiculous, if he’s reading it at all. Can we not just all try to be polite, friendly and above all charitable? Can we treat our interlocutors, both regulars and irregulars, as grown-ups, capable of reasonable and nuanced interpretation and intent? Can we not assume malice unless malice is clearly demonstrated? Please? -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
