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It depends on the company. I worked at a large international bank where we had a couple dozen project managers that would travel abroad for 2-6 weeks at a time.
by zxcvbn4038 6y ago
It depends on the company. I worked at a large international bank where we had a couple dozen project managers that would travel abroad for 2-6 weeks at a time. We had server set up in a storage closet with a huge porn cache. When the project managers came back to the US we would copy all the porn they had collected to the server, replace the porn on their laptops with new porn from the cache, then send them back abroad again. We never knew what people would come back with but it ranged from "Cinemax" to "Only Legal In Kentucky".
Another guy came back from Switzerland and the bank had to put him in a hotel for three weeks because the night before he left he met a lady at a bar and she left fingernail marks all over his back - no way he could hide it from his wife and he knew he would get divorced if she found out.
At the same bank we had this German trust fund kid who had a $400k a month cocaine habit - Dr. Rockso had nothing on this guy. The bank sent him to rehab for six months and when he came back it was really eerie because I'd never seen him stand still for more then 200ms - he had always bounced around like a humming bird and spoke like John Moschitta imitating yoda.
Fast forward twenty years to my time at Tumblr where people office sexing damaged a half dozen window stools, several chairs, and there was a very nice grey couch they had to throw out due to all the "mysterious" stains. You really didn't trust any flat surface there.
They tried to set up an office bar but gave up after two nights when someone drank the entire inventory of liquor each night.
Tumblr had a lot of LGBTQ "diversity hires". One guy would show up at company-wide meetings and use all of the gay porn blogs to demonstrate the latest features he had been working on. Another guy would strut around the office in a zz-top beard and a french maid outfit w/ fishnet pantyhose and heels. There was a group of transitioning guys who would hang out by my desk and discuss their urine fetish - though they stopped doing that after I challenged them all to a "b_lls-out" coding contest knowing they were no longer equipped.
After all that I think I'm ready if I ever get that dream SRE job at PornHub. O Canada! Our home and native land!...
- Proziam 6y agoI see the tradition of SAP, Oracle, and the big consulting firms from the days of yore is still going strong.
- gnfargbl 6y ago> After all that I think I'm ready if I ever get that dream SRE job at PornHub. O Canada! You know what they say about not letting your dreams just be dreams: https://www.mindgeek.com/careers/?gh_jid=4564518002 https://www.mindgeek.com/careers/?gh_jid=4564518002
- tudelo 6y ago> spoke like John Moschitta imitating yoda Thanks for this
- at-fates-hands 6y agoThis just made my top 5 "WTF" moments of working in Tech. Thank you for this - I thought I was the only who experienced these types of madness at some of the smaller companies I worked at.
- philwelch 6y agoI’ve heard of “bring your whole self to work”, but I didn’t imagine anyone would ever take it that far.
- the_cat_kittles 6y agohow is it possible to have a 400k per month cocaine habit? was he giving it to his 100 closest friends every day?
- yowlingcat 6y agoYou would be surprised at how quickly tolerance builds up once someone gets ahold of the good stuff. Considering that this guy is in Berlin, it's probably not as cheap as it is close to the source. Even so, at $300 an eight ball, that's roughly 44 eight balls a day, or roughly 2-4 an hour depending on how hard he's partying. It certainly is on the heavier side of usage profiles I've heard of.
- toyg 6y agoPrices used to be higher too, in the past.
- stanfordkid 6y agoBerlin is not that far from the port of Antwerp, one of the biggest shipping centers in the EU (and world) -- apparently you can get tons of cheap cocaine there that is really high quality.
- kryogen1c 6y ago> You would be surprised at how quickly tolerance builds my experience in the US navy with alcohol lends strong credibility to this. heavy drinkers can put away 750mL of 80proof a night and not be hungover the next day (much less debilitated). a person with no tolerance would drink that amount and either vomit or die - possibly both. a heavy drinker with an uncommonly high tolerance is capable of truly startling things.
- sneak 6y agoNo single person is doing 11oz of cocaine per day.
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoI wasn’t close enough to him to reconcile his receipts, but this was a place were people talked a lot, the number was 400k per month, they sent him to rehab because they were afraid how his family might react if they dismissed him, he had to hold a job in order to continue to receive funds from his family.
- th0ma5 6y agoBalls out actually refers to engine govenors. Additionally if a person AMAB is transitioning you may well not call them men, but if you asked I guess I would take your word for it.
- jacobolus 6y agoYep, "balls out" and "balls to the wall" are respectively the steam train and fighter plane expressions for "full speed" (similar to "full throttle" or "pedal to the metal"). Neither expression has anything to do with testicles. In any event censoring the word "balls" (even when used euphemistically) is a bit weird.
- c22 6y agoThat porn server sounds like a huge liability. Did you have any vetting process to make sure it didn't accidentally collect child porn or other illicit images?
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoAbsolutely! There was an community of moderators that came by the storage room every day to review the latest intake. There was much discussion. Lunch was served.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- salex89 6y agoI actually think this is the most amusing comment I've read on HN. Thanks. Workplaces seem so sterile these days.
- stanfordkid 6y agoHaha no one blows through $400k of cocaine in a month and survives. It's only $100 a bag (gram)! That would be 13 bags a day of coke.
- joe_the_user 6y ago> It depends on the company. You aren't offering evidence for entertainment companies "it" doesn't happen in, just sayin.
- 23523524353 6y ago>Tumblr had a lot of LGBTQ "diversity hires". One guy would show up at company-wide meetings and use all of the gay porn blogs to demonstrate the latest features he had been working on. Another guy would strut around the office in a zz-top beard and a french maid outfit w/ fishnet pantyhose and heels. There was a group of transitioning guys who would hang out by my desk and discuss their urine fetish - though they stopped doing that after I challenged them all to a "b_lls-out" coding contest knowing they were no longer equipped. This reminds me of Aphyr (Jepsen guy). He does good work, but his twitter feed was full of NSFW stuff, last time I checked. He was also in the silicone balls cult for a while, and spoke out against its leader noodlesandbeef.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago> We had server set up in a storage closet with a huge porn cache. When the project managers came back to the US we would copy all the porn they had collected to the server, replace the porn on their laptops with new porn from the cache, then send them back abroad again. We never knew what people would come back with but it ranged from "Cinemax" to "Only Legal In Kentucky". Wait, sorry, what? Why were you storing this porn, exactly?
- filoleg 6y ago> Why were you storing this porn, exactly? Given that the parent comment mentioned that 20 years after the porn storage story happened they ended up working at Tumblr, I assume the original story took place during a time before high-speed internet and porn streaming were a thing.
- jariel 6y agoLost in this comment is how brutally inappropriate that Tumblr office would have been to work in - and beyond illegal in so many ways but it's just all cool because it's LGBTQ? I thought they were suppose to be 'just like us' and that 'transitioning pantihose urine fetish' would a gross, charicatured misrepresentation? YouPorn you'll find is completely not like that, super professional to the point wherein the 'content' would effectively be mundane. Maybe in some ways more like a bank actually.
- zxcvbn4038 6y agoI just ignored most of it - the only time I was really insulted was when I found out the real reason the office manager went around lighting candles everywhere was that she thought the engineers smelled bad. I overheard her taking to the receptionist while I was downstairs foraging for a favorite snack one day. They didn’t realize I was there, but not cool just the same.
- jariel 6y agoSure, it wouldn't bother me either, but those things are 'squarely sexual harassment' of the kind HR teams usually writhe over. I think if the story were changed to 'straight white guys' then I can also see some letting it pass, but a lot more people viscerally upset as well, popularly.
- foldr 6y ago>Tumblr had a lot of LGBTQ "diversity hires" Out of curiosity, what is your basis for thinking that they were hired only for being LGBTQ? As a gay man I wonder how I can avoid my colleagues thinking this. (It sounds like it's not just the gay folks who were engaged in inappropriately sexual behavior, so it can't be that.)
- thu2111 6y agoThat happens at any company that's sufficiently devoted to SJW principles. Though it's usually about women rather than gays as obviously the question of orientation can't usually be brought up at interview time. I thought everyone working in tech knew this happened. If you doubt it, a simple check of the Tumblr jobs page should make their policy clear: https://www.tumblr.com/jobs https://www.tumblr.com/jobs "Now, billions of posts later, we continue to build out Tumblr as a platform for diverse communities to express their points of view. And we’re committed to hiring a workforce that represents the same diversity." A company committed to hiring a workforce that represents "diversity" will have a lot of "diversity hires", as it's literally their stated policy.
- foldr 6y agoI'm aware that a lot of people think that "SJWs" have taken over tech companies and are forcing them to hire certain groups of people. I was sort of banking on the OP not being one of these people and getting a different kind of answer. I doubt we can have a productive discussion of what you've posted that won't descend into a flame war that's been had a thousand times before. The phrase 'diversity hire' is usually used prejoritatively to hint that the person in question is not really qualified for their job. If the OP simply meant to say that tumblr was quite successful at hiring a diverse range of people, then I think it was a slightly off choice of wording.
- string 6y agoOut of interest, why did you want a different answer? Do you think "diversity hires" don't exist? Whether they do or don't, it doesn't have any bearing on the "diverse" people being hired on the basis of their technical or professional abilities.
- sanderjd 6y agoThis career trajectory is my nightmare. I would have quit all of those jobs on the spot. To each their own I suppose.