Did you ever wonder what would happen to those programmer guys with the hair and the attitude and the complete lack of hygene or social skills once computers stopped being way cool?
A couple of threads on a newsgroup I frequent are chronicling the ongoing (self-)destruction of an obviously brilliant programmer. He started out by complaining that there have been no jobs in his specialty for that past 12 (!) years, and everything he writes makes it clear why anyone with a brain would run away as fast as possible from hiring him for anything. How should people expect him to network, he demands, when he has no friends, doesn't kow any of his neighbors, and can't stand crowds? Oh, and he can't come to programmer-group meetings because they're generally held in restaurants and he's too poor to buy a meal so the management would no doubt throw him out and call the police...
It's really painful watching all this go by in lengthy screeds for and against, because this guy really ought to be programming somewhere. He's clearly not suited for any other job. But the same traits that marked him as a master geek in decades past -- arrogance, contempt for the suggestions of others, social phobia, complete ignorance of how human beings interact -- make it impossible for him to get back on his feet once he's lost the community of co-workers that more or less sustained him. Instead, he batters people he's never met with carefully-thought-out (and obviously specious) refutations of advice like "Don't add a paragraph to your resume saying that you really need this job because otherwise you'll be homeless in a couple months."
So why exactly is this guy Willy Loman? His skills and his expertise are still useful, but his incarnation of them isn't. He won't or can't take any of the help that's available to him, whether from individuals, organizations or government. And the more he tells about his situation and fruitless hunt for a job (or even for a friend meeting him for lunch) the more it seems that he's already clear on what his path is going to be.
But at least it's morning in america again...
Posted by wallich at September 1, 2003 02:05 PMSounds like many I know. People who decry the horrible lot life has given them, even when it is well within their own power to improve it! "If you think life has delt you a vacant lot, plant some flowers and trees, let them grow, and repeat. Pretty soon you have a garden, not a lot"
Posted by: Tim at September 3, 2003 10:15 AM