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I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

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Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#131

Post by cmiles74 »

mansr wrote: post #41
thegeomaster wrote: post #33

I don't think anyone should judge him based on the small amount of information available. I understand that his situation is mostly his fault, but there may be other things at play. Why be so fast to condemn someone when an unfortunate sequence of events could've put some of us into a similar situation? I'm not defending Xah Lee's irresponsibility nor I am defending people who condemn him, I just want to say that we…

He spent decades trolling everyone and everything on Usenet and mailing lists. He had it coming.

An eye for an eye, a pain-in-the-ass for a similar ass pain. "He had it coming" seems a punishment far out of balance for "making me mad on the internet".

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#132

Post by colomon »

overgard wrote: post #110
mercer wrote: post #90

Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me. Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer. And that just feels unfair,…

I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them. Many people were once socially awkward, and then fixed it. It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkw…

You're absolutely right that social skills can be learned. But note that they can be massively harder for some people to learn than others. Social skills that come almost automatically to your average person can be a lot of a work for someone with Asperger's to learn, for instance.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#133

Post by bitwize »

overgard wrote: post #110
mercer wrote: post #90

Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me. Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer. And that just feels unfair,…

I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them. Many people were once socially awkward, and then fixed it. It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkw…

I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them.

It takes years to learn them. In an unforgiving environment. If you were punished or mocked every time you got even one answer wrong on a math test growing up, would you be terribly interested in math?

It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkward person clearly does not particularly value is time spent with other people.

Think of it this way: your brain has a number of very, very powerful "vector units" which do certain types of specialized processing insanely fast. Most standard "neurotypical" humans come with their "vector units" preconfigured to analyze and anticipate the reactions of other humans. Some of us don't have such preconfiguration, so we learn to apply them to interesting things we find in the world, like math or programming or board games or something and we become pretty good at intuiting about deep, complex systems. But we have to learn, from square one, things about sociality that everyone else just seems to assume you already know -- and, again, is willing to punish you for not knowing.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#134

Post by dfc »

bestest wrote: post #92
dfc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that I am not perfect and have certainly made poor decisions in my life. But if you feel that being compassionate is not appropriate in this situation at the very least OP could stay quiet and not make jokes about another person's suffering.

Down-vote me all you can, but OP's situation is most definitely self inflicted. It's the same with drug addicts. They can't help it. You can be compassionate with them, but it won't help them. What they need is a kick in their arse to fling them out of their comfort zone and embrace the big changes. Hopefully, OP's new job shall open his eyes and guide him in the right direction. He does not seem to be handicapped ne…

Do you think that making fun of people in desperate situations (for whatever reason) is the way to lead a virtuous life?

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#135

Post by pekk »

jgrahamc wrote: post #83
throwaway283719 wrote: post #26

He could start by rewriting his resume. This in particular stands out - Accomplishment highlights: * Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree. To almost any employer, that is not an accomplishment, much less a highlight! If you're a high school dropout who is very accomplished since then, just silently drop any mention of your education from your resume. Everyone will assume that you left it off because it's irrele…

Sad. A couple of months ago at the Go London User Group a young guy came up to me and told me he didn't have a degree, was totally self taught, and wanted to know if it was even worth him applying to CloudFlare. I told him to apply. He started last Monday. I can only speak for CloudFlare, but educational background is _a component_ of a candidate. But it's only _a component_, it's not everything. We're interested in…

Thank you so much for what you did. And for saying this publicly.

When your own situation is comfortable it's easy to lose sight of how being unable to get work makes you feel totally worthless and life hardly worth living. It is not right to throw people away and deny them the chance to contribute because they are imperfect in some irrelevant way.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#136

Post by test1235 »

overgard wrote: post #110
mercer wrote: post #90

Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me. Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer. And that just feels unfair,…

I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them. Many people were once socially awkward, and then fixed it. It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkw…

I'm inclined towards this thinking also.

Not learning crucial skills is just lazy and self-centred.

I've met amazing devs with no social skills because they didn't want to put effort into learning anything except what they enjoyed.

The world doesn't owe you anything - it's up to yourself to do your best to acquire what you want. You don't get what you want just because in your own opinion, you deem yourself to be deserving of it.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#137

Post by danielweber »

mercer wrote: post #90

Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me. Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer. And that just feels unfair,…

When I was much younger, I used to think that I was so awesome that people would have to bend to my social needs if they wanted my awesomeness. They would come looking for me for employment, for relationships, for anything.

Needless to say, that was foolish of me. Other people are humans just like me, with their own strengths and weaknesses just like me.

Maybe this was on my mind because of the "RMS FAQ" also on the front page. Enough people want to deal with RMS that he is able to give checklists of what he does and doesn't need. And even he still has trouble making ends meet with speaking engagements, since the $10 check-clearing fee needs to be covered.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#138

Post by leoc »

driverdan wrote: post #12

> why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime. Why would anyone give this guy money? It sounds like his money woes are all his fault. He's just begging online rather than begging in the street.

Don't the poor and those in hardship have the right to beg? Besides, as sanxiyn said, he does have something to offer in return.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#139

Post by twic »

nabla9 wrote: post #84
nkozyra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he a particularly noted person? Maybe just in the emacs community? I don't know who he is and that resume is pretty skimpy. It seems that his biggest need right now is self-presentation and that's a pretty tough thing to acquire on short notice. I'd also say there would likely be way more opportunities for someone of his skillset outside of the valley, where the skimpy resume probably looks even skimpier by compar…

He is known as annoying Usenet troll by many. I don't classify him as pure troll, however. He don't troll for the sake of trolling and he can be helpful. He is very opinionated and argumentative and don't adjust his thinking very well. He might have mood disorder. http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html

I remember this guy! Blast from the past! He used to make trouble around comp.lang.java.programmer, i think. He was clearly intelligent, but unhinged and emotional enough that he didn't really contribute anything useful. A sad case all round, really.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#140

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

epsylon wrote: post #113
DanBC wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are just assholes and do not have mental health problems. Unless you're widening the definition for MH problem to include things like anger or Asperger's syndrome.

Being an asshole is a mental problem.

It can also be an occupation, such as working for the government, or the Free Software Foundation.
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