Re: Why being Real Smart SUCKS

From: DavidBowman (dt041054_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/07/05 

Date: 6 Feb 2005 22:53:27 -0800

> > After college, there IS nothing
worthwhile.

> What about your career?

What career?

When you've built and programmed the
neutron-embrittlement monitor for a
commercial reactor, represented your
company at a compiler conference,
managed 920 PCs, wrote for PC
Magazine and PC World, wrote the
custom software Judge Jackson used
in the Microsoft case, spent two months
programming a gamma-ray
spectrometer, wrote a skyshine
analysis utility for variable shield
geometries, and then quit for no other
reason than to see what it's like working
in a piss computer store so you could
publish an article about it called "Try A
Little Vendor-Ness", then it doesn't
MATTER that your award-winning work
has universally been acclaimed as
excellent --- particularly if you look like
a biker, are a biker, and answer the
question what do you want to be doing
in five years" with guffaws and laughter.

You see Creighton, they're looking for
the guy in a suit who learned the Java
language with great difficulty from a
place he found on a pack of matches
that said "Earn BIG MONEY in
computers!" who hates it, and only does
it so he can rise to middle
management.

Stupid businessmen -- Republicans all -
- interpret doing many TYPES of things
as "not knowing what you want to do",
and will take someone who's Microsoft
Certified over someone who could
teach it, every single time.

See, hiring managers are looking for
people like themselves, and so they
want sizzle, not steak; and talk, not
action. They interpret "better" as
"unusual", "eclectic" as "eccentric",
"overwhelmingly capable" as
"overqualified", and "appearance" as
"reality".

Yeah, my first posting was a joke!

I don't REALLY think that being smart
sucks; what sucks is that everything is
run BY stupid people FOR stupid
people.

Sure, maybe I should have kept looking
after a month or two, even though Bush
fucked up the economy and tech
unemployment in this area is over twice the
general rate, but I decided to say "the
hell with it" early, and now divide my
time between earning a little money
doing creative writing, and doing the
only thing I really want to do: learn.

I do a good bit of it at sci.relativity, for
which I thank you very much.

=[ d