The job hunting continues apace. Today, I got all excited for ten seconds after receiving an email inviting me to a meeting with a company to discuss career opportunities. Then I realised that generally, top-rank software engineering companies don't use AOL email accounts.
A few moments Googling revealed that the company in question is one of those silly multi-level marketing schemes, this particular one being based around the sale of Aloe Vera. Now, aside from it being a miracle ingredient in hair care and skin products about ten years back (since replaced by Boswelox, Fraudulin and anything Nano-flavoured) and a way for me to annoy the hell out of a perky little test-lady called Vera back when I ran the Y2K test environment for North West Water, I have no idea what Aloe Vera is about, how to compile software for it, or if it tastes nice on Malt Loaf. Why I'd want to sell it to other people is a mystery.
Actually, why I'd want to sell anything to anyone is a mystery. When I was a kid, I used to make stuff up all the time, writing in my schoolbooks about how I'd had to parachute out of a burning plane that weekend, but I was all right now, how I was going to America for my summer holidays to visit NASA and fly the space shuttle for them because all their astronauts had the AIDS from being bitten by space-monkeys and so on. This continued up into my teens when I finally found a legitimate use for my unbridled creativity (i.e. really unbelievable lies) in the form of the Pen-And-Paper Role Playing Game.
Yeah, computer nerd what played Dungeons and Dragons. What a surprise!
Surprisingly, I didn't play Dungeons and Dragons that much. Mostly we played more modern or SF games as Fantasy games have Elves and Hobbits in them and Elves and Hobbits (sorry, Halflings) are about the worst, most la-di-da hippy flowers-and-fairies nonsense ever; a teenaged me would probably have accused them of being gay, but I was an obnoxious little sod who hadn't actually met any gay people yet and have since matured considerably. Anyway, the long and short of it is we preferred things with manly guns and rocket-ships which aren't at all Freudian symbols for anything, no-sir.
With all this healthy sublimation of my hitherto-uncontrolled creativity, I made a conscious effort not to go around telling lies any more, no matter how harmless. This turned out to be a wildly successful strategy for someone in a field that values accurate information above everything else and one I've stuck to ever since, honest.
It's a deeply ingrained part of my personality these days and frankly it's not without problems. Relationships are a nightmare, as you might imagine. "Hey there, how about coming round to my place for a thoroughly unremarkable night that you're probably too drunk to be overly disappointed by?" is not the best chat up line ever. Even assuming that a relationship gets past the first awkward encounters, any variation of the classic "Does my bum look big in this?" is basically Doomsday waiting to happen, although if I ever do find a woman who laughs at "Not compared to the Death Star, no" or "Why, are you seeing Sir Mixalot on the side?", I am probably going to marry her. Assuming she can cook.
One of the problems I'm having with honesty is in the jobs market. No, it's not about my CV (which I think is ace, even if employers have yet to agree), it's to do with me looking for a temporary job in the meantime to pay for some C# or Java certification courses to help with the ol' prospects, since C++ for Symbian seems to be a dead end outside of India. You see, most of the temp jobs round here involve sales, a career path noted for its reliance on a certain flexibility with the truth.
Note to the hypothetical reader who is a salesman, outraged at my attack on his personal honesty: I don't think all salespeople are bare-faced liars; some will be, but the best presumably are able to use the truth as their main weapon with a little creative editing around areas concerning how much owning a slap-chop will really change your life.
My problem is excessive honesty. If I become a computer salesperson, for example, I would try to find out the person's needs, how much price was an issue and then sell them the computer that met those criteria. Fair enough, but there's the concept of upselling, where you induce the customer to buy a more expensive item than they strictly need, or want. Plus 3-year warranties and extra cables with gold-plated connectors.
Now me, I couldn't do that. Half the time, I'd wind up talking people out of buying pointless and expensive things. Or I'd be telling people the truth about how useful I think a 3-year warranty is on an bottom of the range, end-of-line graphics card. Employers really don't like it if you're going out of your way to do the opposite of your job title. "But they asked my opinion!" doesn't really seem to be an adequate excuse.
It never is. Most people with opinions should keep them to themselves; at least, that's my opinion.
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