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Bill Gates Resume (1974)
- Waterluvian 7y agoDespite it being a violation today, I get the point of wanting to know marital status. But why height and weight?
- paulpauper 7y agomy guess is, this was a long time ago back when military service was more common and people were not as reticent about disclosing such information and
- quietthrow 7y ago“Attractability” of a candidate was not limited to their skills. As in some parts of the world today we know that these things are largely orthogonal to performance at job. As rational and simple as that sounds today, back in the day knowing these details was equally rational and simple. We just find it difficult to get that point of view since we didn’t live in that time. This is the same as ageism today. “Young people are just smarter”. What do you think people will say on hacker news 30 years from now when they read that was the thinking of some of today’s tech leaders
- jimmaswell 7y agoIs the belief really that age is irrelevant to mental performance, or do we just want people to be able to continue being employed for moral reasons?
- tasuki 7y agoOh, of course it is related. Also, apart from declining mental performance, with age comes valuable experience.
- Waterluvian 7y agoI've seen that in action. An older dev was an absolute burden on a hack day moving at a snail's pace. But for long term architecture he always had super valuable "oh I didn't think of that" things to say. He was so awesome to have on the team, at the cost of sometimes having to watch him crawl toward a few lines of code. Not a hard choice in my opinion. Of course I've seen the whole spectrum. Useless old people. Useless young people. It's best to simply be a meritocracy.
- erikpukinskis 7y agoIt’s the same issue as gender or race discrimination. There are often differences in means, but because within group differences are an order of magnitude larger than between group differences, from the perspective of any two individuals trying to understand each other, group membership gives you no meaningful information. Knowing the averages will actually make you worse at assessment.
- lrem 7y agoAlso: this one is more present today. I can just not mention I'm married, while still reaping the benefits of being attractive.
- scarface74 7y agoTrue. But I do just the opposite. Even though they aren’t allowed to ask me if I am married, I go out of my way to mention off handedly that I am married. I want them to “discriminate” against me if they have the type of culture that expects people to work for 60 hours a week regularly.
- lrem 7y agoHehe. I've been going around telling how my wife is nine months pregnant, asking how the paternity benefits are.
- cosmodisk 7y agoAny success getting a job after mentioning it?
- a1pulley 7y agoI mentioned my newborn in all of my job interviews because I didn't want any surprises on either side of the table. I interviewed at six places and got five offers - two at FANGs, three at unicorns. I don't think there's a culture of discrimination against young fathers at large companies, and I don't think it's necessarily bad if there is at early-stage, high-growth start ups.
- cosmodisk 7y agoAny company worth working for would accept it as a fact of life- most people end up having kids at some point. If the opposite is the case,well, it's better to stay away from them.
- rightbyte 7y agoSo the employer know what size to supply for working clothes I guess?
- jarfil 7y agoOr whether they have chairs capable of accomodating a 500lb employee.
- gopalakrishnans 7y agoIn India, I remember submitting a passport size photograph with all the resumes I submitted during college/campus interviews. When I moved to US, I realized that was not a requirement.
- ma2rten 7y agoThat is common in Europe as well.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoit's not required but it makes you more considered.
- hocuspocus 7y agoEven in countries where it was the norm (like Germany), this is not really true anymore. For tech positions or anything remotely close, the impact will be zero or even negative, don't do it.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agostatistics? People who should know have told me otherwise
- walshemj 7y agoOnly some European countries - it is very frowned upon in the UK and might well get your application binned. Obviously apart from some jobs requiring PV (TS) clearance.
- codysan 7y agoIs this for security or something? There are listings on Craigslist that once you express interest in, they request photos of you. I always just assume these are fucked up or scams.
- 7y ago
- mieseratte 7y ago> But why height and weight? Physical fitness for the role.
- codysan 7y agoAs I understand it, resumes were more like a personal trading card with things like your hobbies and clubs you belonged to. As time went on it, it shed a lot of the details that wouldn't be of interest to employers. So maybe height & weight stuck around in a more standardized resume.
- hsnewman 7y agoThe image is incomplete. Also what exactly does "incolved" mean?
- JBiserkov 7y agoSame as "dubugging". It's a typo. Should be "involved" ('c' is right next to 'v' on QWERTY layouts, it's weird, I know).
- zabzonk 7y agoThere were not too many spell-checkers around in 1974.
- lrem 7y agoAlso: even if you noticed your printout trip have a typo, you were more likely to go "ah feckitt" due to the hassle of getting a new one.
- bdcravens 7y agoYou could correct errors using correction tape: basically pressed dry white-out atop the letter, assuming you lined it up correctly and pressed the same letter - you then type the correct letter. Of course for an important document like a resume you may want to retype the whole thing. Also it wasn’t really a “printout” since you saw each letter as you typed it.
- rb808 7y agoGiven the dents for punctuation I'm thinking it was done on a manual typewriter, which its very hard to integrate with a spellchecker. :)
- falcor84 7y ago;) Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to develop a "manual" typewriter that warns the user that they are about to make a spelling mistake, possibly keeping the whole word in a buffer until they handle the warning. The warning itself can be performed via any means, including but not limited to an electrical zap.
- k__ 7y agoSo, basically, he's very smart.
- softwaredoug 7y agoWow - first year coursework looks pretty interesting and advanced compared to current first year coursework!
- klhugo 7y agoComplexity of each one of those topics also increased a lot. Think about it, at that time a guy could just design the whole computer hardware, and write the software.
- rand84545 7y agoI'm amused that such a resume would be binned by many HR departments. That is some HR depatments, are so bad at their job, that they will literally lose your company the chance to get a Bill-gates-caliber dev. I mean obviously if he gets to the technical interview, an engineer can see that he is competent. But they question is would such a resume get past HR?
- xthestreams 7y agoWhat are the reasons for which you're saying it would be binned? (I'm asking because I want to understand, I'm not implying you're wrong)
- quietthrow 7y agoIf you think it’s the company’s loss you are totally missing the point. Due to our economic system and incentives a LOT of companies have gotten “Bill Gates Caliber” people and it’s certainly not the HR or companies loss it’s the worlds and people living in its loss.
- codeulike 7y agoWhat do you mean? In 1974 this would have been a state-of-the-art resume. He typed it on a typewriter, and he's got loads of experience with computers. In 1974 thats really going to stand out.
- mlevental 7y agothis person is pulling out the old saw of "no mention of new sexy technologies like node graphql etc" about resume from a 1974 Harvard student. lol. newsflash those were all hot tech in 1974 and besides any year in the last 100 (including 2019) a Harvard student gets priority rather than binned.
- rand84545 7y ago- no, I didn't mean that. > newsflash those were all hot tech in 1974 and besides any year in the last 100 (including 2019) a Harvard student gets priority rather than binned. I'm european, so I don't really see that many harvard grads. But everythign being equal, why would I give a harvard grad priority over someone from L'X, ETH, mines, oxford, MIT..
- codysan 7y agoMaking $15k at 18 in the 70s, not too shabby Willy G
- TallGuyShort 7y agoI hadn't heard of one of the programming languages mentioned: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOSS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOSS. Interesting.
- Mauricio_ 7y agoSeems like a pretty ugly language judging from the sample.
- agumonkey 7y agoPretty nostalgic seeing a pre MS giant resume from Gates. Also .. look at how simple a resume is. Raw ascii text, few paragraphs .. done. #dubugging
- codeulike 7y agoRaw ascii text It was typed on a manual typewriter - you can tell by the weight of the punctuation.
- dan-robertson 7y agoWhy is the punctuation so heavy? Would it be too delicate otherwise or is it just that the area is smaller so the pressure is higher when the key is struck?
- rb808 7y agoyes pressure is more concentrated, like being stepped on with a stiletto vs a regular shoe.
- agumonkey 7y agowell you got what I meant, also, wasn't ASCII already a thing at the time ?
- codeulike 7y agoYep it was around. I dont think typewriters had support for it though ; )
- jpochtar 7y agoThis is the first I've seen mention Bill Gates knows LISP. Are there any famous programmers who don't know LISP?
- cosmodisk 7y agoPay attention to the $15K salary he wants- that's about $75K in today's money. Not much has changed,even though companies nowadays make many tons more money from the dev work...
- Zombieball 7y agoDo a lot of first year computer science students get paid $75k/year? I know internships can easily earn that but my understanding is they go to 4th year students.
- cosmodisk 7y agoShould have been: not much has changed for better..
- iratewizard 7y agoA lot of first year cs students have under a year of experience and can only list python, Java and possibly C++ under proficiencies. What's more sad is when you try hiring at a job fair and 300 4th year / master's students also only have python/Java/C++ with no side projects.
- wbl 7y agoPlus several years more of coursework.
- nkozyra 7y agoPersonally speaking, vast proficiency in any given language or languages doesn't mean that much to me. You'll pick up es6 or go or whatever else. I care about the thought processes behind development choices, their implications on computational efficiency. They teach this in school, at least in the schools I attended. In fact, many professors were adamant they didn't care about languages at all other than someone grading it can read it. Some classes never wanted to see your source code. Most classes didn't have code at all!
- 7y ago
- dcchambers 7y agoI don't know how much value there is in this kind of stuff, but I am an absolute sucker for this kind of history. Standard, utilitarian, even boring documents that miraculously survived all this time. Granted it's from one of the most famous programmers ever, but it's just so fascinating. Thanks for sharing.
- donatj 7y agoHeight, weight, current salary? Were these things you commonly kept on your resume in the 1970s? I honestly can’t imagine listing any of that today.
- jsjohnst 7y agoMarital status too...
- TomMckenny 7y agoBack then they were quite overtly discriminatory about marriage status, gender, having children or not, disabilities, age, divorce. Indeed, apartment buildings often refused to rent to families with children. In the 70's, people speaking against race discrimination were viewed as center left but people decrying discrimination on these other grounds were considered far left. Even on otherwise "progressive" period TV shows, these positions would be satirized (eg the characters played by Beatrice Arthur and Rob Reiner were satires much of the time. The Mary Tyler Moore character was originally written as a divorcee) And though legislation had recently curtailed ethnicity and religion from being _publicly_ discriminated, it was still seen as ok to discriminate for public facing positions: Connie Chung's position as news reader was considered definite proof of media liberal bias. Indeed, advocating equality for public facing positions or for persons with disabilities was viewed as completely unrealistic.
- cronix 7y agoNow it's personal pronouns and gender. Seeing more and more on resumes. I didn't ask if you were "genderqueer", don't care and it has nothing to do with our open front end dev position.
- nudiustertian 7y agoThe point is that thats what the candidate is requesting to used in conversation and when referring to that candidate. It's a courtesy thing
- i80and 7y ago
- codeulike 7y agoWhat is this site cnbcfm? When I go to the root url I get browser warnings
- adventured 7y agoIt's owned by Comcast. CNBC uses it for CDN purposes I believe. Most of the images on their site start with this: image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image
- magerleagues 7y agoReading this makes me want to find a good biography of Gates or the story of how Microsoft came to be. Any suggestions?
- adventured 7y agoNobody has written a modern, high quality, comprehensive biography of Gates. I'd recommend these three: Hard Drive (1993), by James Wallace Gates (1992), by Stephen Manes Idea Man (2011), by Paul Allen Idea Man is available for $5 on the Kindle right now and is an excellent read, however Gates is only a secondary major character for 1/3 of the book. It does cover the early days though. And Gates is available on the Kindle as well.
- magerleagues 7y agoI just picked up Idea Man. Thanks for the recs!
- gabcoh 7y agoIn Malcom Gladwell’s Outliers he has a section where he discusses Bill Gates’ early life and the lives of a few other software luminaries. Having read that it is not surprising at all to see him taking such advanced classes as only a freshman in college.
- godelmachine 7y agoHe spelled “involved” wrong :D :P PS - (Please don’t downvote me _/\_)
- arbuge 7y agoIt's typewritten. Corrections were more incolved back then.
- throwaway07Ju19 7y agoPerhaps he had to manually type dozens of these. Anyone know how hard was it to access a photocopier in 1974 ?
- walshemj 7y agoProbably a mimeo or gestetner machine - very common for duplicating in the 70's.
- geekrax 7y agoComplete resume: https://i.imgur.com/jZ5bdB6.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jZ5bdB6.jpg
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- EB66 7y agoThe Seattle address listed in the upper left hand corner of his resume is in one of the nicest spots in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Seattle. Sweeping views of Lake Washington. From that house he could see the site where he lives now in Medina.
- wdr1 7y agoCrazy to look back & realize it used to be normal to not just note on your resume if you're married or not, but also your height & weight.
- z3t4 7y agoSorry but we hired someone else. Can we keep your CV?
- drharby 7y agoLet's see Paul Allens resume.
- wardbradt 7y agohttps://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/104645473-PaulAllenearlyresume.jpg?v=1529475935 https://image.cnbcfm.com/api/v1/image/104645473-PaulAllenear...
- emmanueloga_ 7y agoSo they even wrote they resume together! I wonder if Allen wrote both :-)
- dennisgorelik 7y agoBill's address back then: 5161 NE 41st St Seattle, Washington 98015 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6579855,-122.2705519,3a,75y,180.99h,78.99t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZhqHdwgQBWtie6_Ptthl7A!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@47.6579855,-122.2705519,3a,75y,...