How to Hire Geeks

Dec 12, 2003 3:17 PM
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Speak to them in their own language.

(For the non-programmers, that means "Now hiring".)


Comments: How to Hire Geeks

Isn't this, more specifically, how to hire a c programmer?

Posted by: David Kearns on December 12, 2003 4:03 PM | permalink

Well, I don't know C (well), so I just did:

$ python -c "print ''.join(map(chr, [78,111,119,32,72,105,114,105,110,103]))"
Now Hiring

Yes, that is some brutally ugly Python, but it's a one-liner and the rules are different for those ... :)

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on December 12, 2003 4:42 PM | permalink

Yeh, they're looking for C programmers for their video games designing staff. It's neat they even care for case sensitivity, this makes it yet cooler. [mho]

Posted by: mademoiselle a. on December 13, 2003 5:09 PM | permalink

A C++ programmer would use std::string from the Standard Template Library instead of an array of chars : )

Posted by: O'dell on December 13, 2003 9:25 PM | permalink

Can someone please explain to me how that says "now hiring"? If those numbers represent characters, why are they so high? There are 26 letters in the alphabet, 10 digits, plus only a handful of other characters.

Joe, why did you aggregate your lists?

Posted by: Daniel Grossberg on December 16, 2003 1:37 PM | permalink

There are 256 characters in ASCII.

26 letters * 2 for upper and lower case
10 digits
(some) accented characters
various symbols
punctuation
spaces
various "control" characters (e.g. line-feed)
http://www.jimprice.com/jim-asc.htm

As far as the "lists" -- if you're talking about links, that's because it's how I read blogs now (check the post I link to), and it's easier to maintain one list instead of two.

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on December 16, 2003 2:38 PM | permalink

Whoa, I just saw this on BoingBoing today. I need to swing by here for quicker service.

Posted by: on December 16, 2003 7:14 PM | permalink

It's pretty cool. This is actually effective. Note the second to last paragraph:

http://doug.telerama.com/joegrossberg

Posted by: Doug Luce on December 18, 2003 9:56 AM | permalink

Doug, I like that. Half "do you read instructions", half "are you truly a geek or a full-of-shit resume padder"?

Posted by: Joe Grossberg on December 18, 2003 12:41 PM | permalink

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.