Hi. I'm 32, I'm deaf, and an engineer. Formerly of RIT (though I left long before graduation). Currently located in the Bay Area of CA.
My first job was with Amazon. I was their first deaf corporate employee, and had to fight for every interpreter hour I got. Quit after a year. Did remote contracting for a year and a half, then went to Google. Quit after 2.5 years, and now I work in an office with deaf friends, we do consulting+etc (and are hoping to eventually bootstrap our own startup out of our office =).
Bottom line: Even Google may have utterly fantastic engineers. But even though they gave me a daily interpreter (11-3pm every day, and on demand outside of that, no problem), it's still isolating.
For the other commenters: No deaf person will ever hear anything that isn't told directly to them. Nobody realizes that. In a group discussion, nobody's speaking directly to the deaf person. An interpreter helps, but only somewhat.
One analogy I always liked to tell hearing people: Imagine if you lived in a world of telepaths, where everybody could communicate with each other except for you.
As for the post:
Solitude: Yes, this won't change. Yes, it sucks. I got a cochlear implant last year (yes, at age 31). Though since I wore hearing aids for the majority of my life, I still had enough hearing-related processor neurons in my brain left. It's been fantastic.
Group conversations: This is why I work in a deaf office. Sure - the pay is considerably lower than Google, there's no free food and the work may be considered duller, but it's as relieving as going home after wearing a blindfold all year long and being able to remove it and use your eyes again.
Managers and teammates may sympathize and wish they could learn, but the stark fact is they really don't have the time. It's a very high pressure environment, and everyone needs to constantly be at their best. This, again, is considerably harder for us.
Love: Sure, it's hard, but it's nowhere near impossible, as I can attest (Been with my current, hearing, girlfriend for 4 years).
To go off on another note you stuck in here: I agree - deafness is just another adjective. Not an identifier.
Interviews - Yes, it sucks that they don't know jack, but you really need to take the lead in your interviews.
Don't let them try and figure it out - That wastes their time (not a good thing) and likely leads to a solution that is no good (live meeting). Instead, they'll express their interest in interviewing you - "What time can we call you?". Write back with your requirements, e.g: "I would prefer to converse via (skype, gchat, what have you)."
My Amazon screen interview, amusingly enough, was in a Text MUD (The interviewer noted my background in it and had an interest). My Google interview simply via gmail chat. My other screen interviews have been via AIM or GChat, because I demand them. In-person interviews? Require an interpreter. If it's in an area familiar to you, suggest an agency and/or a specific interpreter.
Screencasts, talks, video tutorials: Add to this list webisodes like "The Guild" and "SMBC Theater". Video-on-demand like netflix and hulu (both slowly improving), amazon instant video, showtime and hbo, etc.
Sadly, nothing ever happens without ridiculous amounts of (pick one) 1) Legal action. 2) Personal work. 3) convincing. Among my personal items of pride is that I am one of the engineers who first convinced them and then developed Captions for YouTube. (Alas, they didn't go for the "community captioning" idea.)
Access services: I'm a signer, not cued speech, alas, but this is why I never went to class =). cough. You can find interpreters and transcribers all across the board on the technical spectrum. I went through a number of interpreters before I picked my regular interpreter, and trained her on the vocabulary. (Poor interpreter had to read through a 200 page print-out of internal Google vocabulary!)
(Of course, this post did remind me of one very early phone interview with a tech shop while using text relay. "Do you have any experience with eunuchs?" (unix))
Deaf Culture: I am with you there.
Friends: Welcome to humanity. We're very social creatures no matter how we try to fool ourselves at first. I was content to be isolated in my dorm room early in college (and before that). But later in college, and ever since, a growing discontent with being isolated from in-person interactions.
Hey, I'm also deaf and studying programming. I had an internship at a web design company, which ended badly, mostly due to my misreading of social cues. Do you have any advice on how to avoid that in the future? And is there some kind of meet up forum where I can meet other deaf programmers? Most of the deaf people I meet in everyday life are semi-literate, and, though perfectly nice people, not very interesting to talk to. It'd be nice to find more people like me.
Re social cues: See if you can find a socially savvy friend to kind of mentor you. By that I mean someone who might hang with you, critique what you do and help you find a means to bridge the gap. I have done a lot of that for my two sons. They are not literally deaf but are ASD, which I have described as "socially deaf" (in other words, they just don't read social cues well or instintively know how to react appropriately). It has made a big difference.
I commented above; posting here so you see it too --
We would like to host a meetup (in the Bay area) and have a drink and get to know each other. If you'd (and anyone else, all are welcome) be interested in that, email me at bobby at brilliantecho.com and I'll put something together.
Hmm, I live a bit far from the Bay area to make the meeting. I really want to have some sort of community, now that I know there's a couple of us. How about a facebook page? Would all of you contact me, shannon at rocketships.ca, so I can invite you?
Hi captdeaf, would you please email me at liamotootle@gmail.com? Several of my friends are RIT graduates and our circles of acquaintances may overlap. I'd also like to ask some questions about your deaf office and the CI, if you don't mind. Thanks!
My first job was with Amazon. I was their first deaf corporate employee, and had to fight for every interpreter hour I got. Quit after a year. Did remote contracting for a year and a half, then went to Google. Quit after 2.5 years, and now I work in an office with deaf friends, we do consulting+etc (and are hoping to eventually bootstrap our own startup out of our office =).
Bottom line: Even Google may have utterly fantastic engineers. But even though they gave me a daily interpreter (11-3pm every day, and on demand outside of that, no problem), it's still isolating.
For the other commenters: No deaf person will ever hear anything that isn't told directly to them. Nobody realizes that. In a group discussion, nobody's speaking directly to the deaf person. An interpreter helps, but only somewhat.
One analogy I always liked to tell hearing people: Imagine if you lived in a world of telepaths, where everybody could communicate with each other except for you.
As for the post:
Solitude: Yes, this won't change. Yes, it sucks. I got a cochlear implant last year (yes, at age 31). Though since I wore hearing aids for the majority of my life, I still had enough hearing-related processor neurons in my brain left. It's been fantastic.
Group conversations: This is why I work in a deaf office. Sure - the pay is considerably lower than Google, there's no free food and the work may be considered duller, but it's as relieving as going home after wearing a blindfold all year long and being able to remove it and use your eyes again.
Managers and teammates may sympathize and wish they could learn, but the stark fact is they really don't have the time. It's a very high pressure environment, and everyone needs to constantly be at their best. This, again, is considerably harder for us.
Love: Sure, it's hard, but it's nowhere near impossible, as I can attest (Been with my current, hearing, girlfriend for 4 years).
To go off on another note you stuck in here: I agree - deafness is just another adjective. Not an identifier.
Interviews - Yes, it sucks that they don't know jack, but you really need to take the lead in your interviews.
Don't let them try and figure it out - That wastes their time (not a good thing) and likely leads to a solution that is no good (live meeting). Instead, they'll express their interest in interviewing you - "What time can we call you?". Write back with your requirements, e.g: "I would prefer to converse via (skype, gchat, what have you)."
My Amazon screen interview, amusingly enough, was in a Text MUD (The interviewer noted my background in it and had an interest). My Google interview simply via gmail chat. My other screen interviews have been via AIM or GChat, because I demand them. In-person interviews? Require an interpreter. If it's in an area familiar to you, suggest an agency and/or a specific interpreter.
Screencasts, talks, video tutorials: Add to this list webisodes like "The Guild" and "SMBC Theater". Video-on-demand like netflix and hulu (both slowly improving), amazon instant video, showtime and hbo, etc.
Sadly, nothing ever happens without ridiculous amounts of (pick one) 1) Legal action. 2) Personal work. 3) convincing. Among my personal items of pride is that I am one of the engineers who first convinced them and then developed Captions for YouTube. (Alas, they didn't go for the "community captioning" idea.)
Access services: I'm a signer, not cued speech, alas, but this is why I never went to class =). cough. You can find interpreters and transcribers all across the board on the technical spectrum. I went through a number of interpreters before I picked my regular interpreter, and trained her on the vocabulary. (Poor interpreter had to read through a 200 page print-out of internal Google vocabulary!)
(Of course, this post did remind me of one very early phone interview with a tech shop while using text relay. "Do you have any experience with eunuchs?" (unix))
Deaf Culture: I am with you there.
Friends: Welcome to humanity. We're very social creatures no matter how we try to fool ourselves at first. I was content to be isolated in my dorm room early in college (and before that). But later in college, and ever since, a growing discontent with being isolated from in-person interactions.