Quirky Engineers Gone the Way of the Dinosaur? 319
Milican writes "I think its time we ask our fellow Slashdotters, 'is there still room in a company for a quirky 'guru', or are projects so large now by necessity team-based development rules.' Read this article on Embedded.com and decide for yourself." I think this article didn't describe someone really 'quirky' though - it was someone who didn't really want to work.
Weird co-workers (Score:5, Funny)
The same guy was also said to have hit a deer with his car on the way to work one morning. The next day he came to work with a home-made "cow catcher" like contraption (imagine the front of locomotive) welded to the front of his car to avoid any further damage due to auto-deer collisions. The big problem with this "solution" was that the contraption was so heavy, every time his car hit a bump in the road, the front end would scrape the pavement and send off sparks.
Anyone have weird co-worker stories to share?
Guru Uniform? (Score:2, Funny)
But what else would be a "guru uniform"? I could wear a slide rule on my belt, but I suspect most slashdotters wouldn't even know what the 18-inch-long implement was for.
Re:Interview? (Score:2, Funny)
It's all in the beard. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:5, Funny)
Another guy was a neat freak. He knew exactly the precise angle of every object on his desk. A coworker would screw with him by rotating his stapler 180 degrees. Every morning the ritual was to watch him rearrange everything into precise order. He couldn't work unless everything was perfect.
And then there's the really freaky people that you only hear about in whispers... like the guy who would walk around in socks mumbling calculus to himself, drinking beer and eating reeses pieces at noon, and while drunk, getting naked in front of the security guard because he forgot his identification in his office and she wouldn't let him in... best that we don't think about that too much!
You say quirky, I say quirky (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Not true of course (Score:2, Funny)
About B.O. (Score:1, Funny)
One day, his roommate blew up at him, yelled "You stink! Why can't you shower like everyone else?!"
...and then he did. Never stunk after that. Made lots of friends afterwards.
It's easy not to know what a problem it is. It takes a lot to get people to honestly point out your flaws.
Do the world a favor! Insult a geek today!
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:2, Funny)
The only three times I saw a change from this were 1) I came back into our office and he had his tower workstation on the side, was standing on it and pulling with his hands trying to get the cover off - not understanding why it was so hard. 2) he was trying to get a desk drawer open and he was using all fo his weight pulling like he was on a strong man show on espn pulling a truck - I told him that the drawers had a lock mechanism where you had to pull the bottom one out slightly and that would disengage the top one - I didn't know why, but it worked. he nodded, turned back around and then proceeded to pull with all his bodyweight again, but this time in many large jerking motions, which dragged the desk about the office. and then 3) the glorious day he was fired for not ever getting anything done.
The fact that I had to be near him all the time (he was annoying in many ways, the above was the humorous parts) made me consider quitting, so I'm glad that he was fired first.
But I left the company I was at prior b/c I worked with a girl on a project who was by far the most painful person in the world. There were many things I couldn't stand, but again, the ones that are funny are what stick out - she was a documentation person, and that somehow entitled her to always carry an open felt pen around with her. Fine. Except she also had some weird condition where when she talked she shifted her weight all around and waved her hands as if she were casting a spell on you - in the process you'd have to dodge the pen or it would mark all over you - she on the other hand never dodged her own waving hands - so she had pen marks on her neck, hands, forehead - or anything else that got in the way. They moved her desk in her office one day and there was an odd half moon patter on the wall from below where the desk was - we pondered it for a bit and then cam to the conclusion that while seated her legs flailed about and left marks all over the wall. Those things alone are just odd - but she was terrible painful in every respect which made any conversation with her resulting in you pondering to yourself if a swift blow to her throat would kill her or just shut her up for a bit, or if you took your own pen and jabbed yourself hard enough in the stomach if the resulting injury would be enough to get out of the conversation.
good times.
now I just work with a bunch of guys that don't speak english very well and smell bad. but most of them do good work (one doesn't seem to understand that you can't name all functions "function1" so it makes debugging his code interesting.
Re:Motivation is all (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:3, Funny)
he saved as "this_is_the_one.xxx", "this_is_the_one2.xxx","this_is_the_REAL_one.xxx"
Re:Quirky-ness not always appreciated (Score:3, Funny)
We didn't see or hear anything from ZZ for a couple of years after that. One day we had a big project that wasn't going well and our manager hired a consulting company to come in and help straighten things out. He asked for their best man. As you've probably guessed, the engineer who showed up was none other than ZZ himself. He had taken a year off to motorcycle across Asia before joining the consulting company. He was making 3 times what he was before. Our manager had to grit his teeth and refer to ZZ as "Mister ZZ" (ZZ insisted) until the project was completed.
(Wipes tear from eye) *sniff* That was beautiful... ;)
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Weird co-workers (Score:5, Funny)
Previous job: Another genius type. Bulgarian. He worked with ear defenders on bcos he said the rest of the office were too noisy. When he got a few new ppl in the office, he said this wasn't good bcos of the negative ions - his ioniser could cope with a few ppl, but more than that would cause problems.
Neither are exactly normal humans, but when the sh*t hits the fan, you're damn glad they're on your side!
Grab.
Re:Question for *you* (Score:3, Funny)
ATM machine.
PIN number.
RAID array.
It's all about redundancy, baby.