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Happily. http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-secret-service http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-s... http://www.

Happily. http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-secret-service http://www.theguardian.com/careers/careers-blog/spy-career-s... http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.varsity.co.uk/news/3180 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bond-mi5-wants-cat-loving-twentysomethings-424915.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/forget-bon... For starters. They're not normal people, in that they're recruited by elitist institutions from other elitist institutions. Not dissimilar to how branches of our industry work, although the profile for who they want is somewhat different. But for the most part, in terms of personality, they're fairly normal people. There aren't any mustachioed villains sitting around wondering how best to abuse their powers. Yes, there's some who enjoy wielding the power they have, but the same is true in business, and doctors like performing surgery. Mischaracterising people like this does no service to the reader, no better than people who take controversial political figures and characture and demonise them. In the end, it just makes for a lower level of discourse and a worldview lacking in nuance. Ironically, what the poster was complaining about.

wfo 11y ago
Comparing them to tech industry folks is not doing you any favors; the tech industry is EXTREMELY insular and thinks in almost lockstep. Look at the magic contentless words people use like "disruption" like a mantra to express group identity and nothing more. The tech industry clings onto weird extreme political views that are laughably absurd to almost anyone else, the extreme libertarians you see at the forefront, the anti-education people, the people who want to remove all patents and IP. Coming here is like entering a weird extremist alternate-reality echo chamber on the weirdest issues the tech industry seems to have a hard-on for. Poll us on any issue relating to technology or politics and you will find we are so radically different from the general population. And we're (almost) all white, middle-upper class Indian or East Asian men. If the intelligence community is anything like that I'm much more afraid than before I read your post. And the fact that you start out by saying they are cherry-picked from elite institutions and then you go on to say they are normal -- the first notion completely contradicts the second. Elite institutions often come with narcissism, a notion that you know better than the rest of the world, a single-minded determination that it takes to excel in a particular area (the educational system) eschewing any other considerations it takes to be a full, complete normal human being.

wfo 11y ago

Comparing them to tech industry folks is not doing you any favors; the tech industry is EXTREMELY insular and thinks in almost lockstep. Look at the magic contentless words people use like "disruption" like a mantra to express group identity and nothing more. The tech industry clings onto weird extreme political views that are laughably absurd to almost anyone else, the extreme libertarians you see at the forefront, the anti-education people, the people who want to remove all patents and IP. Coming here is like entering a weird extremist alternate-reality echo chamber on the weirdest issues the tech industry seems to have a hard-on for. Poll us on any issue relating to technology or politics and you will find we are so radically different from the general population. And we're (almost) all white, middle-upper class Indian or East Asian men. If the intelligence community is anything like that I'm much more afraid than before I read your post. And the fact that you start out by saying they are cherry-picked from elite institutions and then you go on to say they are normal -- the first notion completely contradicts the second. Elite institutions often come with narcissism, a notion that you know better than the rest of the world, a single-minded determination that it takes to excel in a particular area (the educational system) eschewing any other considerations it takes to be a full, complete normal human being.