How the brief was written scared me a little, but 37Signals charges a pretty decent amount to post a listing so I figured it was all going to be kosher. So, the question here is: why didn't you trust your gut feeling? Why did you value your (simplistic) rationalization more?
> So, the question here is: why didn't you trust your gut feeling? Why did you value your (simplistic) rationalization more? Why trust instinct when you can trust fact?
Because the facts were incomplete in this given situation and instinct is an important facet of survival (be it your life or your sanity).
I wonder how likely that guy would have been to respond that way in a face-to-face meeting? I mean, I suspect he would have been somewhat likely, but on some order of magnitude less so than for internet communication. Why do people treat internet based communication differently than other, older forms? I've never had a misunderstanding in person, over the phone, or over snail mail devolve into such a vile display of…
I think it's more like talking about etiquette offline: We've realized it's pretty futile in most contexts and it just brands you as "lame."
The job ad was riddled with typos, bad grammar and bad style. Why did you even respond to it? The domain name on the email account was different from the name of the company. The person running this "Shivum Gautama" has zero history in google. etc. Overall, Mr. Gautama might have been a creep but atleast he was decent enough to show his true colors so early in the game.
Not to mention he posted under different names but the same skype id:
I wonder how likely that guy would have been to respond that way in a face-to-face meeting? I mean, I suspect he would have been somewhat likely, but on some order of magnitude less so than for internet communication. Why do people treat internet based communication differently than other, older forms? I've never had a misunderstanding in person, over the phone, or over snail mail devolve into such a vile display of…
speaking of etiquette I totally lost my cool in a post yesterday after sync issues ate it (now notes on iphones auto syncs and can sometimes lose information and revert).
after the post (f u ios devs) I felt some regret.
but it's one thing if I choose to waste my time (like on HN), it's entirely different when someone else does so.
We've seen this guy a number of times under different guises over at 99designs.com. Our anti-fraud systems mostly pick him up now, he's not particularly bright. Does anyone have a contact at 37Signals that I could provide with details?
We emailed this guy and are waiting back to hear his side of the story. I can't imagine how he'll defend himself, but we'll give him 24 more hours before we pull his jobs off the site.
> your name is JIM WALKER, and you type NOD every 3 seconds What does that even mean?
I read it as a skype-centric way of writing "You are my subordinate (I assert my dominance by saying your full name) and when I say jump, you ask how high!", which seems to fit the tone of the rest of the message.
At my first web job, the week I started there was an empty desk alongside mine. The other employees spoke of its absent occupant as though he was a bit of a curiosity (like they could talk - you could write a sitcom about that place). He eventually returned from leave and I found out why he was the strange one even in comparison to them: he was over 60 years old, still lived with his mother, had some penchant for buy…
They were the days! The oddest thing is I've Googled about 10 names from the late 90s Web design days and haven't found a single person. I can't imagine what they're all up to now but it doesn't seem to be the modern Web development industry, that's for sure. Were the late 90's "new media" bunch really a wackier, more diverse lot than we are now?
I think they were wackier. When I got into Web (95/96, though did some new media stuff a couple years earlier) almost anyone already in the field had moved across from another career path because there simply weren't established training pathways for young students. If you were a strong graphic designer, you stayed in graphic design. Whereas, if you were a desktop publishing hack who was a mediocre designer but didn't make a concise type-setter, then learning PageMill and so on was for you.
At my first web job, the week I started there was an empty desk alongside mine. The other employees spoke of its absent occupant as though he was a bit of a curiosity (like they could talk - you could write a sitcom about that place). He eventually returned from leave and I found out why he was the strange one even in comparison to them: he was over 60 years old, still lived with his mother, had some penchant for buy…
> some penchant for buying any food > set himself on fire in bed > uncontrollable giggle I wonder, what could possibly lead to such things?
