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Pixels don’t care

warpspire.com

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Re: Pixels don’t care

#41

Post by pasbesoin »

mjn wrote: post #12
morisy wrote: post #3

I had the totally same experience with early online communities (Everything2, Slashdot), and for a long time made a conscious effort of keeping my avatar off the Internet. It's a little utopian, yes, but being able to deal with people based on their ideas, ideals, and quality of work, and develop fast friendships without ever being aware of so much (Great line: "How could the internet know you were gay? 80 years old?…

One thing I'm not quite sure what to make of is that I felt a lot of that aspect on the BBSs I started out on during high school, despite them being more local. Since there was free local calling but long-distance cost money (possibly a US-specific thing), I dialed up only local BBSs, which made for a certain location specificity. I liked that to some extent, because it made the local BBSs "special" in some way, kept…

I was part of an Internet based, but highly topical, forum. The experience was somewhat similar. Clumpy and fairly self-selecting. Some people did meet, out-of-band and/or in real life. But the nature of the community, and the worldwide physical dispersal, kept this rather limited.

Actually, while the forum had a very specific topic of focus, people there got to know each other rather more generally.

It's the one place where I wore an avatar. One of the cartoon character defaults.

The anonymity and strong community ethic of respect for privacy actually facilitated communication.

I find the "real name" initiatives ("now with photos") trending to the same sort of superficiality I run into "in real life".

"Brogramming" and a lot of the rest of the "current trends" also come to mind.

I think some of us are going to continue to look for those more intimate, even while more anonymous, communities. HN used to be (more than) a bit that way, before it exploded. (Where, too, people chose to reveal themselves to others, but on an opt-in basis.)

Re: Pixels don’t care

#42

Post by FireBeyond »

delinka wrote: post #39
FireBeyond wrote: post #13

What a strange claim. "Looking back", he can't help but feel discriminated against due to his height. It couldn't possibly be because of his "no formal eduction, no experience with any big clients", could it?

If you have demonstrably great work, what does formal education do for you that will affect your work for some company? Similarly, if this guy isn't the one landing the client or dealing directly with them on a regular basis, how can the pixels possibly care about for whom they are assembled? I read these parts of his anecdotes as excuses concocted only after an in-person meeting.

What -should- be the case and what is the case are often demonstrably, and substantially different.

Witness government organizations who pay $x for a position, or $x * 1.25 for the same position if you have a degree, for but one example.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#43

Post by kneath »

FireBeyond wrote: post #13

What a strange claim. "Looking back", he can't help but feel discriminated against due to his height. It couldn't possibly be because of his "no formal eduction, no experience with any big clients", could it?

That would be a great argument if my peers had formal education or experience with big clients. None of them did.

There is no "point" to be made by my post, rather a description of two vastly different ways I was treated for the same work I was doing during the same point in my life — one online, one in person.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#44

Post by mvleming »

pnathan wrote: post #40
mvleming wrote: post #35

If you look to history, you can see overtime we acquire new ways of changing ourselves. There was a time when there wasn't makeup, but nowadays people can use makeup and change their appearance. Same thing with dying your hair, getting a plastic surgery, or arguably even body building: by getting this down to a science, we can figure out how to best change our physique. But really, all of these methods are crude, rea…

The weird thing is, I've been in some of those avatar worlds, and people still want to look humanoidish, often outlandishly 'supermodel'. Almost no one actually experiments beyond that. It's weird when I recall cyberpunk short stories from the 80s where people had all these radically weird and different avatars. Why should we be confined by our minds to looking like supermodels, why shouldn't we look like some sort o…

I never thought about it in that way, and that is interesting. It's like the more we have the opportunity to not look human, we take that opportunity to look more human. But, thinking about it, it makes sense. It's personifying what society has deemed as the perfect image. In response to your comment, I think you just need to give culture time to experiment with new ideas when new opportunities rise up. I've actually never played in an avatar world, but I imagine, for example in Second Life, new styles or physiques. Maybe you could tell me?

Re: Pixels don’t care

#45

Post by Stefan_H »

If I read this correctly, the main negative point was that the author was not paid as much as his colleagues, though he did get the position. The author suggests this is because of his height. To me (a young professional in the software development industry) that screams that the author did not know his own worth and therefore did not negotiate a high enough pay. I'm young for the positions I have held, and am roughly of average height, but you can be sure that I will get paid the same or more than my colleagues, because I understand how much I am worth and I am willing to say as much.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#46

Post by mikecane »

>>>For the first time in human history, it’s possible to be represented (almost) solely through the merits of your work.

I don't want to detract from what he went through -- god knows short people and other physical "non-conformists" are too often treated differently (for bad and good) -- but Andrew Carnegie was short too. What we're all suffering under is image indoctrination from mass media, from magazines, movies, TV. Every time I hear someone say something like, "S/he looks the part," I want to reach for an imaginary gun. Life is not effin Central Casting. And it's all gotten worse in just the past 10-20 years, with everyone on mass screens seemingly all having the same damn jaws and jawlines, looking like they all came from the same limited gene pool. It didn't used to be that way. Anyway, Napoleon was also short. Don't let anyone push you around.

EDIT: After reading a sales-related comment here, I was reminded that Ross Perot is also short. He made out OK.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#47

Post by darkarmani »

sharkweek wrote: post #38
kerryfalk wrote: post #30

? I, too, am short. I'm 5'6". I have always worked on teams with people much older than me (seems like a 15-20 year average). When I was in my early 20s and in sales selling high dollar value equipment I recognized that my age wasn't going to help. It took a few moments to dispel that once I began talking with someone as I just needed to overcome the view that I was inexperienced (As that would be associated with my…

>We all face challenges and each are unique to us. Completely random musing, but it reminded me of my height being disadvantageous when in perspective: I'm a pretty tall guy, a little above 6'4", and have an extremely large reach -- Also a pretty avid rock climber. I can rarely climb at my gym without someone commenting about how it must be so nice to be able to just "reach" for all the holds. Ignoring the fact that…

Agreed. That nice rest everyone gets on a "perfect" knee bar, just doesn't work for the taller people.

Rock climbing strength doesn't scale with weight. And tendon strength which is so important develops so slow. After crimping on tiny holds so many times, I don't really want to hear about how my height is an advantage in climbing. Every once in a while you get to reach past the small holds to a nice big jug, but the rest of the time you're carrying the extra weight.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#48

Post by upquark »

mikecane wrote: post #46

>>>For the first time in human history, it’s possible to be represented (almost) solely through the merits of your work. I don't want to detract from what he went through -- god knows short people and other physical "non-conformists" are too often treated differently (for bad and good) -- but Andrew Carnegie was short too. What we're all suffering under is image indoctrination from mass media, from magazines, movies,…

I'm not sure it's gotten worse in every aspect, particularly in terms of acceptance of foreign ethnicities and races. People do have an unrealistic model of the real world, and that model is being currently skewed by mass media, etc, but previously it was skewed by local cultural attitudes, religious doctrine, etc. I don't think people were ever objective in judging each other based on merits vs appearance.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#49

Post by mpyne »

daeken wrote: post #23
mpyne wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work hard, meet the right people, and use your gut. I've done that all, and been successful out of it. But at least in my case there was one even larger element in play: Luck. And I can't even begin to list all the different ways that I've been lucky (and unlucky), but I always keep that in the back of my mind. I could have born in Somalia, or a Brooklyn ghetto, I could have tried to make my last career move a year…

"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." - Unknown (tons of attributions) While some things are just random chance -- who your parents are, where you're born, etc -- but most things in life don't come from luck, much as we like to ascribe things to it. Most of the time it comes from hard work and -- probably more importantly -- tenacity. I've been "lucky" in a lot of ways,…

I do believe that it's possible to "help luck along" (kind of the same theme as how "planning is indispensable, but plans are useless"). So I'm not saying this to say "Don't try", but rather to try to counter a bit the idea that "working hard" implies success. It's usually necessary, but not always sufficient.

Re: Pixels don’t care

#50

Post by danabramov »

I started doing freelance work when I just turned 17 and learned just the opposite thing:

“It's up to you to tell the story.”

I was able to turn my age into advantage, and the contrast between my obviously teenage avatar and a convincing portfolio helped me distinguish myself from most other freelancers.

It was the same with my first job: I just approached a guy after he gave a lecture and asked him questions he found interesting. He was a CTO of an outsourcing company, and I asked if they were looking for C# programmers. I sent a very pompous resumé and got hired despite its silliness—it made them curious enough to land me an interview where I was able to show I'm a normal guy.

If you're seriously different from the rest, you can turn this into an advantage as long as you stress this point and make it an integral part of your story—not something you hide. People appreciate honesty and some humour too, and that's especially true in freelancing.

Exposing your vulnerability (yes I'm young, yes I'm a minority, etc) while showcasing your great work makes you look humane and more likely to be a great person to work with. You'll attract better customers—I experienced this myself. People you'll enjoy working for.

Your work speaks for yourself in either case, but in the end it's how you market your work that determines if the one evaluating you feels excitement (“This guy's so young but his work kicks ass, he must be a real prodigy”) or doubt (“This work is great but he's so young so we shouldn't hire him”).

Of course getting a lot of signed positive reviews is important, and pricing can be tricky too.

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