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I can relate. When I had little in the way of a professional network I applied to a job once, but that was no more than sending an email that was essentially "H

I can relate. When I had little in the way of a professional network I applied to a job once, but that was no more than sending an email that was essentially "Hey, I think we should work together." And it turned out they agreed. From that I started making connections. > What kind of a Captain Of Industry do you have to be to get this kind of special treatment? Word on the street is that times have now changed, it might not work anymore, but there was a software heyday where companies were happy to find anyone willing to work for them. You didn't have to be anyone particularly special. You just had to be the only person to show up, which was easy because nobody else did. Still works in other industries, though. I just hired a customer on the spot in a non-tech businesses because they happened to mention that they had recently left their previous job in the same industry. I wasn't going to risk losing them over some silly application process.

silverquiet 3y ago
> Word on the street is that times have now changed I'm not that old, but back when I got into the IT world, it was not seen as a particularly desirable profession; I rather liked the idea of being the troll in the basement who didn't need to talk to people and just kept the machines running. I suppose I grew up a bit along with the industry, and that is a good thing, but once it became a bit more lucrative it started attracting a fair amount of attention that I'd rather it didn't have.
- Viliam1234 3y ago
  Twenty years ago, people joined IT because they loved computers. Many of them were on the autistic spectrum. Today, people join IT because they know that's where the money is. For the people who are on the autistic spectrum, this is a bad news, because now they are expected to become happily extraverted, work in noisy open spaces, get interrupted by meetings all day long (and then be on call during the night), keep networking, and get sufficiently good at office politics so that they don't get fired for understanding some corporate bullshit literally. Technical skills are still important, but secondary. tl;dr -- IT was gentrified by normies
icedchai 3y ago
It was common during the dot-com days. I interviewed with the "VP" who asked me to draw an architecture diagram of a recent system I worked on. He said that looked pretty cool, asked some basic questions. Next day I had a job offer at a 20% raise. No take home, no additional interviews, no white board coding, no written application. Most interviews were like that actually, up until 2010 or so. I remember being shocked by my first white board coding interview.

silverquiet 3y ago

> Word on the street is that times have now changed I'm not that old, but back when I got into the IT world, it was not seen as a particularly desirable profession; I rather liked the idea of being the troll in the basement who didn't need to talk to people and just kept the machines running. I suppose I grew up a bit along with the industry, and that is a good thing, but once it became a bit more lucrative it started attracting a fair amount of attention that I'd rather it didn't have.

Viliam1234 3y ago
Twenty years ago, people joined IT because they loved computers. Many of them were on the autistic spectrum. Today, people join IT because they know that's where the money is. For the people who are on the autistic spectrum, this is a bad news, because now they are expected to become happily extraverted, work in noisy open spaces, get interrupted by meetings all day long (and then be on call during the night), keep networking, and get sufficiently good at office politics so that they don't get fired for understanding some corporate bullshit literally. Technical skills are still important, but secondary. tl;dr -- IT was gentrified by normies

icedchai 3y ago

It was common during the dot-com days. I interviewed with the "VP" who asked me to draw an architecture diagram of a recent system I worked on. He said that looked pretty cool, asked some basic questions. Next day I had a job offer at a 20% raise. No take home, no additional interviews, no white board coding, no written application. Most interviews were like that actually, up until 2010 or so. I remember being shocked by my first white board coding interview.