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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

#61

Post by marincounty »

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.

Really dude? Had it coming? Spend next Sunday in church. I think his unemployment might have to do more with his age? I know to many unemployed programmers over 45 years of age. Two are literally homeless. Time goes by quick--just when you think you will always be in demand; you get that Friday meeting. You just might feel this guys agony in a few years, but you sound like a spolied brat--who's family will always be there to pay the rent.

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

#62

Post by hagbardgroup »

dbaupp wrote: post #43
philbarr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 8 thousand visitors per day. 240 thousand visitors per month Could he set up Google Ads on there - automatic, passive income that just goes straight into his account?

Any estimates for how much income that would provide?

$360/mo, maybe more, with adsense, potentially much more if people clicked on the ads and the ads were high value.

Also possibly a lot more if he sold display ads directly or ran a good affiliate program for technical books and other products.

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

#63

Post by stuaxo »

akuchling wrote: post #21
cognivore wrote: post #3

Is there context here I'm missing? The screen shot with the legal fee leads me to believe so, but I can't sort it.

Lee is a noted Internet crank, very sure he's completely brilliant and everyone else is a moron. I remember his flaming about the quality of the Python documentation, e.g. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-April/310...

Heh, he is right about the documentation - but his style is indeed cranky.

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

#64

Post by raverbashing »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #42

He needs to find a social services office that can help him get organized and take care of his personal responsibilities. It's completely his fault that he's in this mess, but he probably has some kind of personal/mental health problem that requires assistance. The one thing nobody should do is simply send him money or give him a job, since there's nothing on this page that indicates he won't go back to exactly the s…

Of course. All of this.

And the "trolling" story is funny, did he ever think that's why he can't get a job? Because you need a minimum amount of inter-personal relation skills to be in a company. Of course not.

Reality check time.

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

#65

Post by nkozyra »

Singletoned wrote: post #55
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's certainly 'notorious' in certain circles. He used to be considered a troll in certain newsgroups, because he's very argumentative. I think he is in some ways the prototypical hacker. He's very good at what he does, but he struggles to do anything with financial value, and he's got very bad interpersonal skills. He's done quite a lot of Emacs work, particularly around trying to make it easier to work with. His wo…

Ah, thanks. I think there's a lot of room for boisterous, outspoken and even aggressive developers, but you really gotta prove you have the chops to earn that.

I'd agree with your assessment that interpersonal skills are the issue (in fact he agrees, too) and that's not something you can fix overnight.

I really think the best situation for this guy is to get out of the valley for a bit, get a job doing some very focused dev/maintenance stuff in his areas of expertise (Python/JS?) and design a personal reboot plan.

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

#66

Post by pistle »

digitalzombie wrote: post #22
yung_ether wrote: post #13

Who would hire a 45 year old programmer? Certainly good as dead. Have fun at the laundry.

> Who would hire a 45 year old programmer? Certainly good as dead. Have fun at the laundry. That's... age discrimination. This is illegal in California. He could get hire if he can past interviews or have notable projects.

But difficult, if not impossible, to prove and costly to try to attack.

The age difference is often not even really a conscious thing. It is expressed in "cultural fit" by most young interviewers. Older devs simply are detached from core pieces of younger culture. Whether that's music, integration into workplace rhythms, lanugage, etc.

It's important to specialize some, get broad technically (don't only know everything COBOL), and to force yourself to at least understand the hot new things enough to be able to speak FROM EXPERIENCE about why you want said hot new thing off your lawn... but still be willing to play along.

If you need to work for someone else, you need to balance your tech-righteousness with someone else's, often youthfully naive, ego.

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

#67

Post by elliottcarlson »

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…

Agreed - as someone who dropped out/lacking a degree, I have no mention of education on my resume and let my long work history present me the way I want to be seen. Early on in my career it held me back a little - at least to the point that I had to explain why I dropped out (and I believe I have a decent justification), but in the last 10 years it hasn't even come up.

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

#69

Post by _19qg »

wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Xah Lee is open source contributor to the LISP communities? Really? Where?

He acted as a troll for years in the LISP communities. There is no other contribution I'm aware of.

He was more helpful with Emacs.

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

#70

Post by 15thandwhatever »

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 still hasn't learned his lesson. he's actively asking people to send money to him in a way that skirts the lien the irs has filed against him.

if the irs notices this and gets pissed, it absolutely puts his 'helpers' in harm's way. by continuing to not file taxes, the probability of irs aggression only increases with each passing day.

i'm all for giving people a 2nd chance, but he still hasn't realized that it's his fault, and only his fault.

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