Entries for amotif

Bad Interviewer, No Cookie [Bad Interviewer, No Cookie]

amotif — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 18:23:03 GMT

Thought I'd fork off from the "ers go wrong--that's right, you were the one interviewing for a position, and the interviewer, well, you couldn't believe it...

Guidance:

Hard or open-ended questions do not in themselves a bad interview experience make.

Probably best not to reveal the identity or company of the interviewer in question; this is about bad interviewing technique or habits, not humiliation.

For example:

I was interviewing for a C++ position and the C++ "expert" put me through his little C++ quiz. No problem, except that he'd occasionally interject with some clearly false argument to the contrary. I learned as the interview proceded that he used to deal with his know-it-all students that way--by claiming falsehoods to be true. As the interview continued, it occurred to me that some of his "false knowledge" didn't appear to be game playing but what he thought to be fact. Annoying and weird to interview with a true know-it-all (who really doesn't).

(In the following months that I worked with him this behavior continued, often with him spouting something that was easily refuted either from memory or a quick web search. I pretty much gave up on listening to anything he said.)

in reply to Bad Interviewer, No Cookie

Moving On... [Moving On...]

amotif — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 01:20:26 GMT

One contract ends and another begins. It's the cycle of life, isn't it. :)

Call me crazy if you must, but here's the view I'm giving up as I move to a new contract.

Pop Quiz
- Can you name the city?
- Can you name two well-known landmarks (fuzzily) visible in this photo?

(Sorry, it's an awful quality picture from my cell phone. Why would anyone use their cell phone as a camera? Time for me to buy a decent quality point+shoot camera that I can carry in a pocket.)

in reply to Moving On...

Please don't close the Coffeehouse [Please don't close the Coffeehouse]

amotif — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 02:49:56 GMT

Charles wrote:
column Stallman wrote for CNET news.com. In it Stallman wrote:

"When someone uses the term 'intellectual property,' typically he's either confused himself, or trying to confuse you. The term is used to lump together copyright law, patent law and various other laws, whose requirements and effects are entirely different. Why is Mr. Gates lumping these issues together? Let's study the differences he has chosen to obscure."

Now, the statement "When someone uses the term 'intellectual property,'typically he's either confused himself, or trying to confuse you" is easily over the top enough to roll my eyes back into my head. But it starts out worse; Stallman opens the article with this:

"When CNET News.com asked Bill Gates about software patents, he shifted the subject to 'intellectual property,' blurring the issue with various other laws."

Yet when I read that same interview to which Stallman refers to in his article I found that Gates didn't introduce this term--it was introduced by the interviewer asking about "intellectual-property rights." In fact, here's the question:

"In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, "We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights." What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?"

No need to shift the subject to "intellectual property," is there? It already is the subject of the question. This disconnect between Stallman's analysis and the text of the Gates interview, of course, sets up a major cognitive dissonance, causing questions to careen madly through my mind:

Did Stallman link to the wrong interview? Surely not, the text of the interview does refer to communists in the context of intellectual property rights..

Is Stallman himself shifting the subject and obscuring the issue?

Does Stallman get paid for writing columns like this?

Can I get paid to poop out columns like that? Do I need anything more than to be opinionated and outspoken?

Can I ever possible recover the time I spent reading Stallman's column?

Of course I jest. But not entirely.

in reply to I say hooey!