Comment On The New Hire's a Bust

Stan was a nice enough co-worker, but a promotion to VP doesn't mean much to a company that hands out promotions like glowsticks at a rave. Stan was now the 4th VP in the 30 person company.

Interviewed with a company a while back that had more VPs and "Managing Directors" than normal employees. At the time the company had ~50 employees, and only 20 of them had "normal" job titles.

Just don't hire Martin Ulrick Michel Penn-Smith

2nd?

This kinda thing happens all the time, what kind of VP wouldn't think of hiring some hot, gifted - if not in the actual job area - and "keen" young women?

IMO not really a WTF just a reality! or someones daydream with a twist to it!

Crispin Oswald Byron Oberon Leister:

I guess I can't expect a job at this fine establishment. My buddy Rupert Preston Graymanor II applied but they couldn't find any place for him either.

Oddly enough, my friend Therese Isabella Thompson was hired after just a pair of interviews.

It sounds like Stan hired a couple of Weakly Trained Females based solely on their ASSets.

My actual initials are ADD.

/No I don.... hey a kitty!!

strictnein:

Stan was a nice enough co-worker, but a promotion to VP doesn't mean much to a company that hands out promotions like glowsticks at a rave. Stan was now the 4th VP in the 30 person company.

Interviewed with a company a while back that had more VPs and "Managing Directors" than normal employees. At the time the company had ~50 employees, and only 20 of them had "normal" job titles.

A consulting firm?
It depends on what work they do and how well. I've worked at smallish companies where nice titles were given out even without changing the workload.
Or, if Freud was in HR: Sometimes a fancy title is just a fancy title.

ParkinT:

It sounds like Stan hired a couple of Weakly Trained Females based solely on their ASSets.

More like their tit-sets.

ParkinT:

It sounds like Stan hired a couple of Weakly Trained Females based solely on their ASSets.

The first rule of TDWTF: you never explain the jokes...

The second rule of TDWTF: YOU NEVER EXPLAIN THE JOKES!!!

... off to take my meds now ...

In my experience, having multiple people with VP/Manager title usually is a sure-fire sign of nepotism and/or cluelessness. I've worked at a place where every member of the owner's family (both immediate and otherwise) and friends had fancy titles with VP or Manager in it, but did essentially nothing all day (one of them was something like "Scanning Manager" and was in "charge" of scanning documents. That's all he did, all day) yet were management so had clout over everyone (and doubly so for being related to the CEO).

CAPTCHA: Genitus - Stan must have been quite the genitus. Or perhaps he was thinking with his genitus.

This is a marginal WTF. Having your developers as first tier support isn't sustainable. And the college kids they hired made a silly mistake.

I guess it works for the acronym jokes, though.

Hah, this is a clbuttic WTF! I mean, c'mon, who hires unqualified buttets to do this kind of job?!

I had exactly the same type of problem once when we were developing a C++ application.

Remy, where's your comments? My unicorns aren't working either :(

So TRWTF was that the developer wanted to continue working support and was upset they hired someone else?

TRWTF is that someone is using cs for web programming.

I call shenanigans. This doesn't add up, unless this company sells something to developers.

In what kind of company are first-line, service desk type tickets going to have the name of source code files in them?

a promotion to VP doesn't mean much to a company that hands out promotions like glowsticks at a rave

Ah, that brought back so many stimulating memories of infinite debauchery... it's amazing what and who you'll do when you're on that stuff. So many stories...

Best place to rave in Los Angeles, btw, is The Hollywood Palace. Highly recommended. I saw a one million dollar light show there once. There was a massive metal ring on the stage that looked like a Stargate, with strobes that spun rapidly around on the circumfrence, which, combined with the candy, caused it to look like a glowing portal to another dimension. It was often too intense to look at.

Instead of a disco ball, they had a laser hologram ball in which the reflectors were replaced with emitters. Each of the hundreds of emitters drew multicolored, animated sprites such as dancing mushrooms on the walls, and the whole thing was spinning.

It was one of the best nights of my life :).

I guess this just goes to show that girls are dumb.

For all the well-justified facepalming going on at "it was marked with your initials", this does point out that sometimes you do have to train people. These girls are not just pairs of boobs, they are now co-workers, and investing a bit of time in explaining the technology will probably pay off.
It's fun to make fun of the stupid people, and I do that too, but if you treat people as though they're capable of understanding things, and you take the time to help them understand things, they often end up understanding them. And then they're not stupid people any more, they're co-workers who can make your life easier. And because you took some time to help them do their jobs well, they're motivated to help you do your job well.

I know this site isn't about serious answers to serious issues, but really, until you take the time to get someone up and running, you have no grounds to complain that they can't do the job right.

(one of the best tech support people that I know has an awesome rack and a fiendish mind for math - these are not mutually exclusive)

bertram:

I call shenanigans. This doesn't add up, unless this company sells something to developers.

In what kind of company are first-line, service desk type tickets going to have the name of source code files in them?

From URLs?

Something like http://www.ogglefloggled.example.com/fleen.js

Good job, fellow commenters, on making it a whole three comments before descending into sexism.

/sarcasm

And you nerds wonder why you continue to be single...

BlueCollarAstronaut:

I guess this just goes to show that girls are dumb.

Nah. Guys are dumb. Girls are evil.

C-Octothorpe:

ParkinT:

It sounds like Stan hired a couple of Weakly Trained Females based solely on their ASSets.

The first rule of TDWTF: you never explain the jokes...

The second rule of TDWTF: YOU NEVER EXPLAIN THE JOKES!!!

... off to take my meds now ...

Are you new here?

strictnein:

Interviewed with a company a while back that had more VPs and "Managing Directors" than normal employees. At the time the company had ~50 employees, and only 20 of them had "normal" job titles.

This sounds a lot like my current employer. When I started, there were about 50 employees across the company, 30 of which had Director, VP, or C-level titles. Now, we're almost 200 employees, with about 150 Director, VP, or C-level titles.

Sadly, I'm not one of them. :(

Jockamo:

And you nerds wonder why you continue to be single...

I wonder which stereotype is more widespread:
1) That women suck at technology or
2) That IT folk (usually men) are all basement-dwelling mouth-breathers that have never spoken to a person of the opposite sex.

because of the whole VP frenzy, friends and I associate VP with Vice P3n15 and Vice Pu55y. it also gives the term P.... Assistant a whole new swing.

frits:

BlueCollarAstronaut:

I guess this just goes to show that girls are dumb.

Nah. Guys are dumb. Girls are evil.

So Lone Starr, now you see that girls will always triumph, because guys is dumb.

This is great! I almost fell out of my chair laughing at this one!

This WTF made me grimace.

But I think it is because I've been teaching and re-teaching someone the rules of Arkham Horror over and over and over.

I think the first one. Many stories end up on here about how men suck at technology, but I don't think I've ever seen a comment here about guys being dumb that is similar to the one further up the page about girls being dumb. Yet almost every time such ignorance is committed by women and ends up being posted here, there is someone who comments categorically that women as a whole are deficient in this area in comparison to men.

Also IT folk usually being men is a restriction imposed by the stereotype that women suck at technology. There may well be female IT folk who dwell in basements and never speak to anyone of the opposite sex too. So then the second stereotype becomes about IT folk in general. And let's face it, there's plenty of those particular stereotypes around. Us IT folk are also supposed to be caffeine addicted super hackers who wear sunglasses indoors, I'm sure.

Now, here's the real question: how many commenters will lose sight of the fact that Stan is the actual villain here, and instead focus on "Durhurr, girls are dumb."

trtrwtf:

For all the well-justified facepalming going on at "it was marked with your initials", this does point out that sometimes you do have to train people.

True (and, of course, John is TRWTF for not seeing that as his responsibility), but there is some knowledge which is ludicrously common among the recruitment pool.

xzhang:

I think the first one. Many stories end up on here about how men suck at technology, but I don't think I've ever seen a comment here about guys being dumb that is similar to the one further up the page about girls being dumb. Yet almost every time such ignorance is committed by women and ends up being posted here, there is someone who comments categorically that women as a whole are deficient in this area in comparison to men.

That's because they know someone (cof) will come and point out the sexism. It's called "trolling". Taking such comments seriously does more harm than good.

xzhang:

Also IT folk usually being men is a restriction imposed by the stereotype that women suck at technology. There may well be female IT folk who dwell in basements and never speak to anyone of the opposite sex too. So then the second stereotype becomes about IT folk in general. And let's face it, there's plenty of those particular stereotypes around. Us IT folk are also supposed to be caffeine addicted super hackers who wear sunglasses indoors, I'm sure.

No, no. Don't you read TDWTF? We're the idiots responsible for any problems the user's computer might ever have, because we once touched it to help with something.

Super hackers are the guys from TV who assemble viruses using 3D cubes while listening to shitty techno.

C-Octothorpe:

The first rule of TDWTF: you never explain the jokes...

The second rule of TDWTF: YOU NEVER EXPLAIN THE JOKES!!!

... off to take my meds now ...

I wonder... if you inserted your pills like a suppository (or ate a suppository) would it have the opposite effect?

xzhang:

I think the first one. Many stories end up on here about how men suck at technology, but I don't think I've ever seen a comment here about guys being dumb that is similar to the one further up the page about girls being dumb. Yet almost every time such ignorance is committed by women and ends up being posted here, there is someone who comments categorically that women as a whole are deficient in this area in comparison to men.

Also IT folk usually being men is a restriction imposed by the stereotype that women suck at technology. There may well be female IT folk who dwell in basements and never speak to anyone of the opposite sex too. So then the second stereotype becomes about IT folk in general. And let's face it, there's plenty of those particular stereotypes around. Us IT folk are also supposed to be caffeine addicted super hackers who wear sunglasses indoors, I'm sure.

I've been hearing a lot about women in technology in the last century. The girlfiend is writing a thesis on the subject - and I can tell you that according to her research there has never been a time in the history of modern computing when women have not made up a significant minority of the IT workforce. The basement-dwelling mouthbreather stereoype, as far as I can tell, comes mostly out of MIT in the late 70s/early 80s, and more generally from the academic preference for male professors. There have always been plenty of women writing code in industry, and this is not hard to document, through journal articles and conference presentation rosters.

The reasons for the academic preference for male professors are surprising and interesting, and I'll try to make the full thesis available when it's finished if anyone wants the details.

(Hint: it's not the patriarchy out to keep the sisters down)

z00n3s!$:

C-Octothorpe:

The first rule of TDWTF: you never explain the jokes...

The second rule of TDWTF: YOU NEVER EXPLAIN THE JOKES!!!

... off to take my meds now ...

I wonder... if you inserted your pills like a suppository (or ate a suppository) would it have the opposite effect?

Wait they make NON-suppository pills? No wonder why the room clears when I take my multi-vitamin.

AP²:

shitty techno.

Is there any other kind?

frits:

AP²:

shitty techno.

Is there any other kind?

Touché.

On a unrelated note, the way TDWTF tries - and fails - to store and retrieve a simple username with unicode characters is remarkable; especially since it manages to mess it up even more each time I post a comment.

It was originally "AP²". I can't even tell what it is now.

justsomedudette:

Remy, where's your comments? My unicorns aren't working either :(

That's what she said!

neener neener:

This sounds a lot like my current employer. When I started, there were about 50 employees across the company, 30 of which had Director, VP, or C-level titles. Now, we're almost 200 employees, with about 150 Director, VP, or C-level titles.

Sadly, I'm not one of them. :(

You must work at a bank.

Cellmate:

justsomeprisondude:

Mmmmmpphhh mmmmm *gargle gargle* *slurp* mmmmphhhhh ssttttppphh *cough* *yack*

That's what she said!

A vista such as this plays out in my head, repeating endlessly. Why daddy, why?

A week later, two young and aggressively female assets joined the team.

Much better than passively female assets, I would have to say.

My real initials are DOS. I was already obsolete by the time I joined the IT workforce

So some officer sought out employees who may have served in the military (stand at attention: head back, chest out!), are well balanced in spite of being a bit top-heavy, offer a good front-end view, and can offer a titillating experience?

I wish my boss were like that; the women we have around here seem to think that farting is an acceptable social grace.

Or Cher.

CAPTCHA: bene. Wrong, it's Bono.

I have the ^^obvious username and nickname at work. I have also had Ubuntu's installer object to the username.

Bananas:

A week later, two young and aggressively female assets joined the team.

Much better than passively female assets, I would have to say.

My thoughts exactly. I read that as two butch dykes taking on the tech support roles. I can imagine the support calls now...

Client: My [product] isn't doing [function] any more. Can you please help me resolve my issue?
BD (Butch Dyke): What are you trying to say?! That men are better than women? Huh, is that it, you misogynistic pig MAN?!?!?!!?!
Client: Uh, well, no actually... I just needed som[cut off]
BD: BAH!! You said it again!! I will destroy you, you sexist slimeball!!!

(Along the lines of Alice from Dilbert)