My outlook on life
I’ve recently found an article that describes my outlook on life. You may want to read it. It will provide a great deal of insight into my brain 
Exception: I don’t mind BASIC (but I prefer GW BASIC or UniBasic), and although I detest character-based menu systems, I find them more efficient than graphic-based menu systems for the most part, and tend to use them instead.
Affirmation and quote: The aforementioned document says this:
Hackers are generally only very weakly motivated by conventional
rewards such as social approval or money. They tend to be attracted
by challenges and excited by interesting toys
as well as this:
Hackers tend to be
especially poor at confrontation and negotiation.
I don’t claim to be a hacker. I just claim that this document very much inline with my way of thinking. If that makes me a hacker, so be it. A point in case, as referenced by the above quotes:
I recently accepted a job at a local tech company. I’m starting the job at a (rather) lower salary than I would have liked. However, I get a chance to play with SBClient/SB+ Server — a 4GL language with lots of intricacies and fun quirks. I enjoy working with that software enough that the money doesn’t matter to me at the moment — as long as I can live on it. And I believe I can. I was told that I stand to receive a substantial pay increase in ninety days if I demonstrate my knowledge of the software. I hope that I’m able to do that — I certainly think I can!
Therefore, I’m associating a pay increase after three months of work with the recognition of my skill in a particular area.
July 24th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Interesting article. However, if I were in a manager where I had several data entry people and other employees considered “hackers” per the article, I’d have to say it would be hard to apply policy fairly.
When a data entry person came to me stating that they also needed to do personal things so they could be more productive it would be hard to deny their request.
It made me consider that the latter “hackers” would probably be best hired as 1099 employees or on a per-job basis. I’ve seen this so many times in the computer industry.
Stu
July 24th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
If I were a manager myself, I could easily deny their request (I think). On the other hand, because the article describes me fairly well:
1) I would understand the difference between regular employees and programmer employees and be generally emotionless toward the regular employees (I’m guessing at that one, I don’t know for sure, but I don’t care because…)
2) I would never be in a management position and have to make that kind of decision in the first place, it’s not what I want. Like it says, I *enjoy* what I do! Promotion? Insult.