I am willing to 'out' myself as a human being who has struggled with serious mental illness my whole life, if there's a chance it could help this person. I have also had a long and prosperous career, including 5 years as a senior engineer and lead at Microsoft. These two things are very nearly orthogonal. I.e. my medical history has very little to do with my employment history.
But being compassionate does not require you to analyze this person's merits. The only thing to 'analyze' is that he begged you for help.
Also, please remember the hackers, family, and friends we have lost to suicide. People say "I wish we'd known. Maybe we could have helped." Well, you know; and there is a chance you could help.
As a person who has struggled with the same, I disagree. Compassion and "help" from strangers would have helped me very little — might even have harmed me. The compassion of my family and friends, their encouragement, honesty, and support, helped me beyond measure. I don't think strangers on the internet can fill that rôle.
There doesn't seem to have been a deep bench for his support team for a very long time, if ever.
When I went to school in Gainesville, there was a saying: No matter how weird you are, there are a bunch of people who are weirder. The internet is that at scale. Thirty years ago, Xah would probably not have known people who he could identify with or that anyone identifies with him. The internet gets some people out of their isolation. It lets them talk about things that they find interesting or that matter.
I don't talk programming languages with the locals. The appropriate topics are children, church, and Auburn football - which runs from National Signing Day in February to the BCS in January.
He could do with some help in the near term, but in the long term he should be fine.
He needs to socialize more in an environment that will get him a job that allows him to pursue his passion and get out some more.
Perhaps some unobtrusive ads on his website geared to stuff which fits in with the leisure interests and hobbies of Lisp hackers and relate geeks should serve him well.
It will require a notice to Adblock & Noscript users that they should unblock ads and Javascript from his page as they are unobtrusive
If your leg has a medical problem, get well soon, do everything medically needed. If your brain has a medical problem, people will treat you very differently. Voices like yours will hopefully change that over time.
I don't see any evidence of him having a medical problem, but he surely deserves our compassion.
I interviewed/phone screened Xah Lee about 2 years ago.
I'd never heard of him, so I skimmed over his resume and checked out his site an hour or two before the call. I remember when I was looking at his site I was seeing various articles around math and programming, and then articles about things like "2 girls 1 cup". The breadth of articles completely threw me off. He seemed to have this unfocused interest in EVERYTHING. After looking over everything I could I had no idea how we'd be able to use him, but I was really interested in talking with him.
I went into the call expecting a lot of tangents about various topics he was passionate about and thinking I'd constantly have to refocus the conversation. Instead the conversation was pretty boring and not really going anywhere. He had breadth, but the depth was not there. At least not for the things I brought up. I couldn't understand how someone who seemed to be interested in everything could have no real interest in anything.
For the last couple of minutes we talked about his site, and how he maintains/updates it. He finally seemed to light up, and we hit on something he was really interested in talking about. The basics of the site looked like it was just a couple of scripts, a lot of static text files and some emacs. The setup might have been impressive in the mid-to-early 90's, but it wasn't relevant to anything we would have wanted/needed.
The call lasted maybe 20 minutes, and then we wrapped it up. Every topic, other than talking about his site, was a dead-end. My internal feedback at the end was: "No! Maybe... if we were trying to hire encyclopedia writers".
I think his main problem with interviews is that his real-life personality doesn't even come close to his online personality. If I would have gone in expecting the standard slightly-awkward developer interview, things might have gone better. I still would have said no, but it would have been a weaker no.
Not so internal anymore! Don't get me wrong, I read your comment with interest, but then was struck with how we are talking about him as if he _was_ dead. Apparently he likes his life to be public but actual job interviews somehow strike me as private.
You're right. I was thinking about it for a while and have seen his name show up other times where I've thought about commenting and haven't. Normally I wouldn't say anything, and it would have stayed personal and private. I hovered over the submit buttton for a few minutes and then even after I submitted I was hovering over the delete link for a few minutes.
I wanted to give some perspective on what "not interviewing well" means in this case. It seemed as if a lot of comments were assuming age discrimination and issues with mental illness among other things. I wouldn't doubt that is the case sometimes, but from my experience that wasn't the case. There were other issues. I'm sure most people who interview him run into the same issues.
I think his biggest interviewing problem is that he can't live up to the expectations others will expect from a one-man encyclopedia.
This is a total gray area at this point. I had no idea who this guy was before this post and now I know more about him than some of my close friends and all by his own admission. I'm glad Beanis added his viewpoint, it doesn't give too much away but provides a more nuanced understanding of what the issues are for this guy who is obviously technically very capable.
Some people take a while to warm up to a conversation. Some people are cagey. Some just don't know how to dance the phone interview minuet.
The conversation didn't follow the script in the interviewer's head. Maybe that's because he wasn't interested in the topics at the start of the interview, maybe it's because the interviewee wasn't comfortable until the interviewer expressed an interest at a less impersonal level.
Think about it this way, what really interested the interviewer was the website, and until that came up the topics were from a checklist. Many people can tell the difference between going through the motions and seeking information.
The icebreaker was the website and then the conversation ended. To keep things moving, it's often better to put the icebreaker in front of the convoy.
I used to be terrible at interviewing. I know when I see other people going through similar problems, and make every attempt I can to work around them. There is only so much you can do though, and you have to accept that you will miss out out on some good candidates.
The phone screens I performed were just a quick first round check to see if a candidate would be a valuable employee for us. They weren't supposed to be super in-depth or time consuming for either party. The whole thing is basically one big ice breaker. Hoping that I can hit on some topic that will cause a candidate to expose some skill, knowledge or enthusiasm that would move the company forward. There was very little structure. It was all about finding skill overlap, and then trying to decide if they would pass an in-person round of interviewing. If I hit on an ice-breaker at the end of a conversation, it means I had already exhausted all of the others.
Oh yeah, I know it's business and I'm not suggesting someone missed out on an ideal candidate. I was really just thinking it through and thinking about how people at the fringe see the world and how hard it is to cross that barrier.
Part of that is mediated by my experience when I first discovered his site. I was learning about Emacs when I found it, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, there was something I thought was pretty interesting - might or might not have been Emacs related - so I submitted it to HN. Showed up dead, immediately. Apparently his site was banned. It no longer is, of course.
But that's the way his relationship with the tech world was structured - banned by HN. Now maybe he had been spamming submissions or trolling, but it's possible his site was just blocked because it was Xah Lee: I mean there are people in this thread who are still judging him based on his behavior a decade or two ago.
A person who has spent a lifetime as an outsider is likely to have a different set of defense mechanisms - a different set of survival skills. What I was getting at is that the thing you both were interested in on a personal rather than a business level was his website. Unlike his 'professional career' it's something he can take full credit for and which is objectively worth being proud of - it's full of useful content.
My sense is that creating content is what he could be exceptionally productive. Maybe what's called for is an agent and an editor.
He could start by rewriting his resume. This in particular stands out -
Accomplishment highlights:
* Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree.
To almost any employer, that is not an accomplishment, much less a highlight! If you're a high school dropout who is very accomplished since then, just silently drop any mention of your education from your resume. Everyone will assume that you left it off because it's irrelevant given all your experience since then.
If the first paragraph of your resume calls attention to the fact that you didn't even graduate high school, it sets a bad tone for the rest. Many people will throw your resume away without reading further.
A couple of months ago at the Go London User Group a young guy came up to me and told me he didn't have a degree, was totally self taught, and wanted to know if it was even worth him applying to CloudFlare.
I told him to apply.
He started last Monday.
I can only speak for CloudFlare, but educational background is _a component_ of a candidate. But it's only _a component_, it's not everything. We're interested in what people know and what they can do. I honestly look more at people's personalities, employment history and Github than what college degree they have.
Ditto. I actually actively don't look at peoples qualifications when it comes to hiring, as I fervently believe that the ability to get a degree does not correlate to, well, anything in real life, other than what your tolerance to debt is, or how rich your parents are, or how compliant you are. None of those are really endearing qualities in a potential employee.
It usually comes out conversationally months down the line, and we therefore are mathematicians, school & college drop-outs, physicists, chemists, geographers, and marine biologists - and all developers.
In no small part this stance comes from my own experiences when I first set out into the world as a naïf graduate, thinking that a masters (Desmond - didn't let my degree get in the way of my education) in Physics from [redacted] was somehow valuable. Turns out that a first in urban forestry management counts for more with most employers, because HR witches don't actually understand the skills they're supposed to be assessing, and therefore just get told "throw everything that's not a 1st in the bin". Which is a despicable waste of talent, and why I therefore do not give two hoots what you studied or where, if at all.
You say you believe that your ability to get a degree doesn't correlate to anything other than your tolerance to debt or how rich your parents are.
But you clearly believe that your 2:2 in Physics (for Americans, a 3.0 GPA) is worth more than someone else's 1 in Urban Forestry Management (for Americans, a 3.7 GPA) so presumably you think that there is some variation in difficulty among degrees, and presumably you believe that smarter people will be able to get better degrees?
Nope, I believed that. I now realise it's total bunkum, as while one degree may be more challenging than another, from a hiring manager's perspective it's the GPA/class that counts, and little else, and value is in the eye of the beholder.
Thank you so much for what you did. And for saying this publicly.
When your own situation is comfortable it's easy to lose sight of how being unable to get work makes you feel totally worthless and life hardly worth living. It is not right to throw people away and deny them the chance to contribute because they are imperfect in some irrelevant way.
Agreed! I've recently made the decision to try and move beyond my comfortable freelance existence, and instead try and enable 1) those who have trouble functioning in a 'normal' work environment, and 2) those who are starting with no portfolio or degree.
It would make me happier (because what's fun about just living comfortably!), and it might help others. Win-win.
But doing this from within an existing company is perhaps even better
As a degreeless, high school drop out who works for a very large corporation that's not the case. In a time where many are screaming about shortages in skilled IT people, mandating a degree is only going to narrow the already small pool of possible candidates down even further for no explicable gain. Many job advertisements I've seen will say "degree or relative experience", the latter being the key part here.
A degree is a proxy. A recruiter without specific knowledge cannot assess a developer's technical abilities in any meaningful way (even an extremely experienced developer can't reliably do so). The degree implies a school continuously assessed the individual abilities over the course of several years and found them acceptable enough to issue the degree. A degree offsets responsibility from the recruiter to the school/institution.
Also from the potential hire himself. It's not that he sucks, his college didn't prepare him for this new role. It's not his lack of passion and really any deep interest in the craft, it's just that he had wrong lecturers, also most of them even weren't there to lecture most of the time, so what can you expect?
So now we can hire him and train him for a year or more, because without it he's completely useless, but that's ok, because he's just like we expect him to be. On the other hand, this one here who was willing to take all the responsibility for himself, who's eager to prove his actual skill doing useful things, he's too dangerous, because... What? Because he could actually end up doing something, and then we'd feel bad?
I'm not saying what you say is wrong, like in untrue, but I can't help but feel it's somehow unfair.
> a school continuously assessed the individual abilities over the course of several years
Yeah. Some abilities. That differs from person to person and from college to college, but these abilities may or may not be the ones you want to optimize for.
> but that's ok, because he's just like we expect him to be.
For large companies, predictability beats quality. Keep in mind strict business processes exist to defend organizations from incompetent workers, even at the cost of limiting competent ones. Incompetent workers are cheaper. Since the processes prevent competent ones from achieving outstanding results, there is an obvious incentive to hire only incompetent ones.
> I can't help but feel it's somehow unfair.
Not sure about fairness. I certainly don't like it.
> Yeah. Some abilities.
Those are the abilities large banks and insurance companies want. For the average non-technical manager, being able to consider developers as interchangeable cogs beats developers that are impossible for managers to characterize or predict.
Agreed - as someone who dropped out/lacking a degree, I have no mention of education on my resume and let my long work history present me the way I want to be seen. Early on in my career it held me back a little - at least to the point that I had to explain why I dropped out (and I believe I have a decent justification), but in the last 10 years it hasn't even come up.
> If you're a high school dropout who is very accomplished since then, just silently drop any mention of your education from your resume.
Yeah, do this, it really works, at least worked for me and apparently a couple of other commenters here.
The general advice is to lie^Wdisplay social skills, ie. present your facts in a way which makes them look like they are what the other person is looking for, and hide everything which would interfere with your lie... I mean, story or narrative.
People don't want to really know who you are, even if they tell you otherwise - especially in the professional setting. They want to read an interesting story and resume is the ultimate literary short form. For me writing a resume is very similar to writing a short story or novel, it's just even harder, because you're the main character. But the creation process and reception mechanisms are essentially the same.
The only specific advice I could give is the same I'd give other aspiring writers: get yourself a competent editor (a human, not software!) and let your imagination run wild.
Indeed. Xah's website and long history may impress a developer, but this is a huge DO NOT TOUCH sign for any career recruiter with little or no technical background. Even for a developer, it's a warning sign - it means your mileage may vary. He may be extremely bright in one thing, but one should not expect something predictable like a comp-sci graduate.
From a certain perspective, one could view those as accomplishments in relation to all he has learned/accomplished and contributed within the coding community.
Cases like this, when the talented person in question is a geek who "doesn't interview well," always frustrate me.
Most of my professional success is a result of social skills and a lot of experience with wildly different social environments and cultures. While I do work hard at being actually good at what I do (because that's just more fun!), I could get pretty far as a cruddy developer.
And that just feels unfair, and frustrating. I do understand that social skills matter when you work for a company, in a team, but it often feels like they're way too important (evidence: incompetent people at top positions in companies who primarily excel at manipulation or are extremely socially skilled).
Of course, there's a difference between a geek who just lacks social skills, and a geek who is just not a nice person and also lacks social skills to hide this (or lacks social skills because of this). I've met my share of those.
But even then, it's hard to (fully) blame the person in question. I've met my fair share of arrogant, abrasive, unsympathetic, or misogynistic geeks who seem to have mostly become that as a reaction to having been bullied or ostracized. Often, it's self-defense or just inability, and quite frankly the main reason I didn't turn out that way was because I was in the right place at the right time, and I had wonderful peers who dragged me out of my isolation.
It just sucks. And I wish I could fix that. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be to know that you are competent, or even well above average, and still not get the jobs that downright incompetent people seem to have no trouble getting.
(I don't mean to justify 'bad' behavior, by the way, but to a degree understanding where it comes from allows me to still sympathize with, say, a racist.)
I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them. Many people were once socially awkward, and then fixed it.
It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkward person clearly does not particularly value is time spent with other people. I'm not saying everyone needs to be a gregarious extrovert (I'm certainly not), but if I were looking to hire someone, I'd be a bit concerned if it was obvious that they had no real interest in anything that isn't directly within their bubble. It's not just "are they skilled" it's, are they actually going to fit in the company?
Social skills are very hard to learn. The best way to learn something is to get a result, positive or negative, for a given input. When interacting socially, results can be difficult to observe, especially when you don't know what to look for, and often can be time delayed. It's also virtually impossible to test a specific behavior in isolation, which makes it difficult to detect what specific thing might cause you to be perceived negatively. Most people start off on a strong footing socially, making it easier to try new things to see if they get a positive reaction, but for someone that doesn't have such a strong footing it can be confusing and frustrating when people don't want to talk to you or spend time with you, and you don't know why.
This is the reason behind manners. They may be bullshit, but they're a conservative basis from which to begin.
For example, manners say, "don't swear at people in conversation."
We all know it can be okay to swear at people in conversation, but Xah Lee hasn't learned when to swear at people.
Xah Lee, stop swearing at people for now and stick to your technical guns. Once you get on some stronger footing, experiment with venting.
I mean, I can't argue they're hard to learn, but in terms of things you can invest time in compared to the value it'll bring you... wow!
I'm not trying to pick on people that lack social skills. Obviously that's an unfortunate predicament. But I do think the general nerd meme that social skills "shouldn't" matter.. I don't like that. They do matter, a lot, there's no getting around it.
There's also the problem that social interactions are emotionnally stressing, so it's hard to have a scientific (external observer) point of view when you must have them yourself. Unless you turn sociopath. Which would be my advice.
I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills? It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them.
It takes years to learn them. In an unforgiving environment. If you were punished or mocked every time you got even one answer wrong on a math test growing up, would you be terribly interested in math?
It's not particularly fair, but social awkwardness does tend to send a signal about what people value. And what a socially awkward person clearly does not particularly value is time spent with other people.
Think of it this way: your brain has a number of very, very powerful "vector units" which do certain types of specialized processing insanely fast. Most standard "neurotypical" humans come with their "vector units" preconfigured to analyze and anticipate the reactions of other humans. Some of us don't have such preconfiguration, so we learn to apply them to interesting things we find in the world, like math or programming or board games or something and we become pretty good at intuiting about deep, complex systems. But we have to learn, from square one, things about sociality that everyone else just seems to assume you already know -- and, again, is willing to punish you for not knowing.
There are places where you won't be openly mocked, though. If you live in a city, you can easily find a good neighborhood bar. If you go there a couple times a week on slow nights, grab a couple of beers, and sit at the bar and watch SportsCenter, you'll end up getting to know the bartenders pretty well. Then the bartenders will make introductions to other bar regulars, and you can get to know them too.
Local bars in cities tend to have very diverse crowds who are accepting of just about anyone as long as you're not a complete asshole. Even the creepy guy at my local bar who hits on every girl who walks in is part of the "crew".
From there, it's just a matter of talking to people and gauging reactions naturally. Your brain will adjust.
While I think you're right, the problem is that the mere first step of hanging at a neighbourhood bar can be terrifying. Doing this alone, in fact, is something that very few people do comfortable, even social individuals.
It's worth the effort though. It's definitely helped me!
> It's not like being socially awkward has to be an innate thing; they're called social skills for a reason, you can learn them.
It doesn't have to be, true. But in the same way that a tone-deaf or rhythmically-challenged individual can probably never be even a decent musician, there are plenty of people who can probably never become 'socially skilled'. Consider autism, for example (in all it's degrees), and also the fact that it's probably quite a bit more prevalent in our profession.
> I get what you're saying, but I also tend to think: if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills?
Why are so many very intelligent people alcoholics? Why are so many doctors smokers? Why do so many psychologists have psychological issues?
There's a massive gap between knowledge and practice, and I've become increasingly convinced that not being aware of that gap is one of the primary reasons people have trouble turning 'saying/thinking' into 'doing'. We underestimate the difficulty.
For example. As a student, me and a friend of mine were living rather unhealthy lifestyles. Then a few years ago she suddenly 'got serious'. She started working out, implemented a healthy diet, and applied herself more to her studies.
A month ago I remarked that I really admired her strength, as I still struggle with these things (to a degree). Her answer? She'd been raised with a strong emphasis on health, her family was always into sports and they're all over-achievers. From her perspective, she merely 'dropped' a habit that was deeply instilled in her, and had little trouble picking it up.
I've found that most of the 'changes' and personal development that I see are not a result of mind of matter, but more a result of upbringing, social environment, and being in the right place at the right time. It's not just that, and I think it should't ever be used as an excuse, but it's much more that case than we often suspect.
A socially awkward person who doesn't 'value' time spent with others more often than not 1) just hasn't proper experienced the value of this, 2) has been actively shunned or bullied socially, or 3) just hasn't found the particular people that they can enjoy time with.
tl;dr: the value we place on things is often a result, not a cause. Or at least it goes in both directions.
So your post kind of resonates with me, but if I were to boil it down I think your point is "Smart people frequently do dumb things, but that doesn't mean they're not smart". Agreed!
I just think a lot of what we call social skills really comes down to, frankly, giving a shit about the person in front of you.
For exceptionally smart people sometimes this is hard.
Interacting with average people can be mind numbing. I mean the average person is.. well, average. But I think 90% of social skills is finding a way to be interested in the people around you. Finding what's interesting about them. As annoying as the phrase is, I think "if you're bored than you're boring" is pretty much true.
Charismatic people don't have some fundamental gift, for the most part, charismatic people are charismatic because they seem to find a way to be interested in all the people around them. Or at least they can fake it.
Sometimes I think about 18 year old me versus 28 year old me. 18 year old me was undeniably smart, but shy and awkward. 28 year old me is (reasonably) socially skilled. The only particular difference between the two is 18 year old me only really wanted to talk about myself, or things I liked. 18 year old me was a total fucking narcissist. 28 year old me tries to figure out what other people are about, and engage them on their terms. It sounds small, but actually caring about other people is a thing some people have to learn, and it makes most social situations about 200% more interesting.
> I just think a lot of what we call social skills really comes down to, frankly, giving a shit about the person in front of you.
Very true. But first of all I'd argue that 'giving a shit' in itself is a skill. We are, to a large degree, taught to be nice. Watching the average eight-year-old in a school yard is a clear example of that. They're practically psychopathic: developed enough to understand the concept of 'the other', but they haven't necessarily learned how to empathize.
I suspect there's a strong correlation between being socially outcast or awkward (whether biological, developmental or contextual in nature) and taking up programming and computers as a hobby. For me that was the case, and for most geeks I know it was too. In fact, the very definition of a nerd is someone who focuses unusually a lot on one thing, at the detriment of other things (usually social).
Plus, it's a relatively recent development that 'social' kids are also into computers, on account of wanting to make games, or emulating 'skater geeks' like Kevin Rose. I still remember that it was rather 'uncool' to be in chat rooms, for example. Or reddit being the nerd version of digg.
And finally, people have a tendency to conform their views to their experiences (more than the other way around, I suspect). So it kind of makes sense that a person with few friends, or a history of no partners, will conclude that 'people are shit'. Misanthropy is usually not innate. I've met a shocking amount of people who are eerily similar in their deeply negative view of society with no real experience of friendship. Some of them, in their late twenties or thirties, seem beyond help.
> But first of all I'd argue that 'giving a shit' in itself is a skill.
Yes. No doubt. I think for intellectual people, the tendency is always to move to a higher level of abstraction and generalize. Works well for ideas, but not for people. A lot of times, the interesting thing about people or situations is in exploring the details.
(That's probably not going to make it on a motivational poster any time soon.)
Great point, because it highlights how 'not giving a shit' is not necessarily a result of an inherent lack of empathy or caring.
I've definitely noticed this in myself. By constantly abstracting things (perhaps exacerbated by my work), I lose the human connection sometimes and only later realize that I wasn't as empathic or caring as I wanted to be, simply because I got caught up in the abstractions.
"I just think a lot of what we call social skills really comes down to, frankly, giving a shit about the person in front of you."
Honestly, I don't think that that is always true. It's possible to have great social skills and not care about people at all. We sometimes call people like that sociopaths. And on the contrary, some people can care greatly but not understand how to express their care/interest.
Perhaps look at it a different way. We all know people who are not good at math. Sure they could spend days, even years, trying to improve their math skills. But even with such a huge time investment, they might be only, say, 10% better at math than when they started.
Was it worth all this effort? Maybe. However most people will think that they should probably have spent their time on something else.
It's pretty much the same situation for socially unfit types - why spend so much time on something they'll never be good at no matter how hard they try. In the end they would just end up being both socially and technically mediocre.
>if they're so smart, why not learn some social skills?
If I learned social skills with the same abilities that made me smart, I wouldn't use that knowledge to interview, I would use it to build an AI.
The comparison is invalid because so far no one has learned social skills that way.
If we understand others by imagining how we ourselves would react, then the things that make it hard to learn social skills will be things that make you different, even if they also help you with something else.
Not learning crucial skills is just lazy and self-centred.
I've met amazing devs with no social skills because they didn't want to put effort into learning anything except what they enjoyed.
The world doesn't owe you anything - it's up to yourself to do your best to acquire what you want. You don't get what you want just because in your own opinion, you deem yourself to be deserving of it.
I've argued against your point in these comments, but I must say I also agree. Some of the most unpleasant people I've met were a toxic combination of intelligence, skill, and a total lack of empathy. Intensely judgmental, misogynistic, vaguely racist, a chip on their shoulders, and no sense of humor (big red flag for me, usually).
You're absolutely right that social skills can be learned. But note that they can be massively harder for some people to learn than others. Social skills that come almost automatically to your average person can be a lot of a work for someone with Asperger's to learn, for instance.
Well, I'm not trying to pick on people with neurological disorders. For those people I'm sure it's an incredible struggle. I'm mostly thinking of average people that just aren't willing to put forth the effort.
Well, what I'm saying is stuff that you would apply to yourself. So I don't know how you'd tell, but presumably, if a person had one of those disorders they'd already know.
I'd say the problem is that we're not always aware of our own struggles (let alone those of others).
In my process of becoming a 'functioning adult', perhaps the most important steps involved realizing what my limitations were, and then learning to accept them.
And looking back, I often 'punished' myself for not trying hard enough, or for being lazy. I only later realized that some things are just much more difficult for me, and the better solution was to shape my lifestyle and environment around those limitations.
The problem of concepts 'lazy' or 'incapable' is that if you apply these concepts to yourself or others, they can easily become just a vehicle for whatever mood or state you're in.
If a behavior runs deep enough it can be really hard to admit that it's even there. After admitting it's there, it can be really hard to come to grips with how much an effect it has on your life. After understanding the impact it has on your life, past and present, it can be challenging to work towards changing the behavior.
Do not underestimate social skills. A SW project is rarely (never?) a one man's job, you have to deal with other team members, business, client expectation, testers, QA, etc.
I have worked in company where people had generally good social skills, were helpful, able to listen carefully and receive feedback and criticism without going mad. On the other hand, have worked in environment where most people were passive-aggressive, unable to compromise or negotiate, unwilling to empathize with other teams. It should come as no surprise that in the latter situation, projects were always running very late behind schedule. (Causation could also have been the other way round, since everyone was stressed out, the basic defense mechanism was to stop worrying about other people, which in turn was slowing down the project further...)
I would add that the different behavior were not really due to individuals but rather to the overall "culture", and modeled after the top manager behavior.
Maybe I am wrong, but early in my career, I used to believe that SW project were technical challenges, but for bigger project, it is much more an organizational challenge, and the way people interact with each other is a big part of that. And being able to listen is as important as being able to communicate clearly.
Absolutely! I didn't mean to imply that social skills are unimportant. If I were to hire a programmer to work for me in a team context, the better choice from a business perspective, often, would be to hire the less-competent but socially-skilled.
But that sucks. Because the best way a socially awkward or socially underdeveloped individual will learn the very essential skill of being more social is through acceptance, a safe environment, and constructive feedback.
Furthermore, it's often not the real problem. A big problem in almost all companies I've worked for is that the managers (who usually are very socially capable non-geeks) were just not skilled at dealing with their developers. And in my opinion that's a core element of their job, to learn how to handle introverts or those less skilled in the social things.
Some of the developers I've worked with were very socially awkward, but if you figured out how to talk to them, they had no trouble communicating what needed to be communicated. To a degree, I think the ones who are socially skilled should use their strength to help those who are not. And if you're a manager, I'd say you're partly paid to do exactly that.
Here's the deal though, because I've wrestled with this myself and after being a founder of three startups this is my conclusion: being a good hacker is not enough - who ultimately is the recipient of a hacker's output? Always the human.
There are so many facets to this argument I won't attempt to cover them in this comment but people with solid social skills are not only easier and more pleasant to hire but are also better hires in many ways due to organizational social cohesion and the fact that the "hacker" may have a better understanding of the customer or recipient.
That's what I don't buy about his Xah Lee's argument that he's terrible at it - if he's written tutorial material that people find useful, he's more socially capable than he thinks. My suspicion is that his drop-out and autodidactic arc are social inhibitors for him; I think he lacks self-esteem due to it (no matter how well self-educated you are). I know that all too well because I wrestle with it myself as a highschool dropout and self-studied person.
the folks who don't need the money (either because they're willing to live like a grad student their either life, or because they're wealthy and working for entertainment) are generally flaky. they won't work their promised hours, give two weeks notice and then just stop showing up, etc.
When I was much younger, I used to think that I was so awesome that people would have to bend to my social needs if they wanted my awesomeness. They would come looking for me for employment, for relationships, for anything.
Needless to say, that was foolish of me. Other people are humans just like me, with their own strengths and weaknesses just like me.
Maybe this was on my mind because of the "RMS FAQ" also on the front page. Enough people want to deal with RMS that he is able to give checklists of what he does and doesn't need. And even he still has trouble making ends meet with speaking engagements, since the $10 check-clearing fee needs to be covered.
Teamwork arguably trumps all skills. Many of the greatest things are accomplished by great teams (look no further than YCombinator demanding multiple founders). Social skills are a critical part of good teamwork skills and good teamwork skills will advance your career in just about any profession.
The problem is that sadly the fact that someone does not interview well, or has no social skills does not automatically imply that he/she is particularly talented. The most interesting stories are about awkward geniuses, but in real life there are plenty of averagely talented people (at least averagely talented compared to other programmers) with lack of social skills. And those are the people for whom finding a job is really hard, because they cannot compensate their awkwardness with exceptional other skills.
Do not pity us. Would you feel sorry for someone who doesn't work hard to stop being a cruddy developer?
We are not alone.
I'm someone who doesn't naturally get social cues. I don't recognize faces. I was bullied, ostracized, and grew up in an abusive household until I convinced my mother to divorce. While children were being children I was protecting my mother, becoming her key social support by 13. I had to be a man before I hit puberty, never having the luxury to act out, cry, or lament the injustice of my situation. There were starving child soldiers in Africa; I had it pretty good. I was a serious A student and got along with adults.
As a result, I was quietly arrogant and unsympathetic. I shunned social interaction with the children around me whom I perceived to be stupid, emotionally weak, rebellious, attention-craving, and suicidal for no valid reason, instead deciding to wait until they grew up.
They never did.
To my surprise, I did. I finally realized that one of the single most important skills for success in society is the ability to handle people and social situations. A person is not competent or above average without it. At some point, you are going to hit the limit of what one person can do and will have to leverage the competencies of others. They will have some you won't, plus one the most valuable commodity of all: time. It is still possible to be a single person success, like Markus Frind from POF, but it often requires social skills and I don't like the odds.
Had I realized this sooner, I would be much further ahead. Turns out I wasn't so smart. Luckily, I only need a decent foundation; this ability can be bought like any other.
I have invested a ton of effort into addressing this with the help of a couple close friends. Progress can be frustrating. Things can be obvious to others yet when you ask them it turns out they either cannot explain, or don't really understand themselves. Everything Is Obvious examines the difficulty in creating a socially capable AI/robot: "social skills" are in fact a collection of often disparate, complex, illogical, and incongruous data points.
We all have challenges in life. This is one of my greatest. If you share it with me, I understand. It is every person's responsibility to choose to improve themselves and to help those around them who've done the same. We can guide people to this choice, but we cannot make it for them.
If you meet us, give us your patience and compassion as you would to any person who doesn't intuitively grasp something incredibly obvious and fundamental to you. I will do my best to do the same for you, though it might not always come off that way.
I've never struggled with social cues by nature, but through circumstances I've had similar struggles with the actual social 'practice'. Working hard at 'fixing' this definitely helped, but a crucial aspect was the help, support, or simply acceptance of those who were better at this than I was. And I try to do that too, in turn.
He needs to find a social services office that can help him get organized and take care of his personal responsibilities. It's completely his fault that he's in this mess, but he probably has some kind of personal/mental health problem that requires assistance.
The one thing nobody should do is simply send him money or give him a job, since there's nothing on this page that indicates he won't go back to exactly the same thing he's been doing for the past 10 years.
(Also, 1600 rent? what the fucking fuck? dude needs to go sleep in a shelter and use that money to get a thrift store interview suit and pay off his bills)
The only comment in this thread to point out the $1600 rent. Unless I'm misreading or it's (heavily) back-logged, living on $3/day/food but paying $50/day/rent just seems insane.
True, but moving is not easy if you're depressed and disorganised, especially if you can't scrape up the money for moving expenses (one more way in which it's expensive to be poor).
It's sad. Almost everyone (including people on that Python mailing list thread below) has jumped on him calling him a troll while (not to their own fault) missing that this guy has mental health issues. He needs professional help not money.
Those people could certainly benefit from working with a counselor. There's a wide range of "personality disorders" that are maybe not "mental health problems" requiring medication, but are still issues that take external help to solve.
And the "trolling" story is funny, did he ever think that's why he can't get a job? Because you need a minimum amount of inter-personal relation skills to be in a company. Of course not.
I would say the opposite. From experience, a 'social services' office will not help, but will make his life more difficult. On the other hand, genuine kindness at least has a chance.
Xah, if you're reading this: Based on the comments on your page it is not clear whether you can or can't accept money via Paypal. Your Emacs resources have always been very helpful to me. I'd be willing to send you some money. Do you happen to have a Bitcoin address that I could send something to?
I just spoke to Xah on the phone. He does want people to donate to his paypal address. He can transfer it to someone to cash it out if needed. He will be making further updates on his site, probably later today to be clear about that. He will be looking into bitcoin also. So feel free to donate, I think at least his contributions to emacs documentation make it worthwhile.
Writing is thinking and one person's philosophical pondering can be another's trolling, e.g. this post.
Sure trolling is sometimes just being an asshat. But it's also a way of creating diversity. An attempt to deprogram members of a cargo cult. It can be fighting group think and ideological tribalism. I've come to think about trolling as often being an expression of a desire to write - it's very essence is writing something that didn't need to be written and doing so in a way that's tailored to one's audience. Just as sarcasm can be a low form of wit, trolling can be a low form of literature.
If everyone who trolled the Usenet or a mailing list or an online forum was condemned for it, who would be left and would anyone want to read what they had to say.
Xah Lee is a person whose particular genius doesn't fit well into a prefabricated category. But his website expresses a genuine desire to help others by sharing what he knows - and what he knows, he knows really well. There but for the grace of god, go I.
You can do every one of these things without trolling. If trolling is used for such a purpose, it often has the effect of fostering groupthink - you often see it in places like 4chan.
Trolling when used for these purposes is often used as a substitute for well-reasoned/articulate point, and has the irresponsible effect of causing grief when it could be pre-empted by simple actions. To not take those actions is often an indication of callousness.
Note: I claim no knowledge on Xah's case, and am not commenting on it.
I apologize for not being more articulate. I'm not suggesting that there are not better forms of writing than trolling or that trolling is something to encourage. My point is psychological: a meaningful fraction of trolling behavior is driven by a desire to write. Writing something to which you respond at length gives me an opportunity to write a counter response. It gives me the opportunity to analyize your arguments and rebut them.
In other words, it provides an opportunity to write just as presenting a reasoned and rational argument does...only on most of the internet even more so. Trolling is the primary form of entertainment on much of the internet. Outrageous flame wars sell popcorn to the peanut gallery. Some people enjoy watching opponents practice their craft in combat.
That's not to say that that impulse to write can't be channeled to a more productive tone and more constructive ends. But the urge to write is what makes for great writing...or at least its possibility.
Writing like an asshat just happens to be a path of least resistance. Sarcasm and meanness provide easy material. They prompt a reaction and getting feedback is how a writer can improve their craft and flaming and trolling are crafts - just somewhat destructive ones. All that trolling manifests itself in the quality of much of the material on Xah Lee's site. He's been writing for more than two decades.
I don't think anyone should judge him based on the small amount of information available. I understand that his situation is mostly his fault, but there may be other things at play. Why be so fast to condemn someone when an unfortunate sequence of events could've put some of us into a similar situation? I'm not defending Xah Lee's irresponsibility nor I am defending people who condemn him, I just want to say that we are all imperfect, after all, and these kinds of things can and do happen because of that fact.
he still hasn't learned his lesson. he's actively asking people to send money to him in a way that skirts the lien the irs has filed against him.
if the irs notices this and gets pissed, it absolutely puts his 'helpers' in harm's way. by continuing to not file taxes, the probability of irs aggression only increases with each passing day.
i'm all for giving people a 2nd chance, but he still hasn't realized that it's his fault, and only his fault.
He feels confident that he doesn't owe the IRS taxes since he has never earned sufficient money to file (less thank $1,000). It turns out, according to the present rules, that he is incorrect: self employed and earning more than $400 a year requires filing income tax.[1]
It does not appear that he is purposely evading taxes. I agree that it is his fault that the IRS is pursuing him, on the other hand it seems pointless for the IRS to pursue someone with so little material wealth.
Distributions from his 401K would count as income and he would receive a 1099 to file and report.
What doesn't make sense to me is that if he's as poor as he claims, he may actually qualify for a lot of assistance in the form of earned income tax credit, food stamps, section 8 housing eligibility, etc.
I'm not qualified to judge his past behavior or what not but by looking at his bank statement, he doesn't seem to be spending his money wisely. I live a few blocks from him so I recognize those places. Rotten Robbies is a gas station which usually means overpriced groceries and sundries.
If he has the ability to work, he could invest the rest of his money into renting a car and then driving for Uber or Lyft. Uber is guaranteeing $40+ per hour for 6 months which is a hell of a lot more than you make as a dishwasher. The only consideration is if he can keep a 4.9+ rating out of 5.0 which seems like a stretch from someone who may be having problems.
> he's actively asking people to send money to him in a way that skirts the lien the irs has filed against him. if the irs notices this and gets pissed, it absolutely puts his 'helpers' in harm's way.
I'm not sure that's actually true. Is it? If you donate money[1] or buy something from him, you're giving him property; whether he is properly reporting that property and paying any necessary tax on that is his issue -- he's not asking you to enter into a conspiracy to hide anything.
At the very least, he could use cash donations to pay off whatever lien is against him. And according to [1] below, the recipient of the donation isn't the one paying taxes on the donation amount.
That's a tough one, then. I'm not from the US so I don't know what IRS really is, but I think I know of analogous institutions here... In which case, he needs to clearly explain that people can get in trouble for helping him.
I hope that the world will have more mercy on you than you give. Xah has been a pain in the ass for a lot of people, but I do not wish anyone to be left without healthcare or homeless, regardless of what they have done. Even criminals get locked up and fed.
Opinions like yours simply have no place anywhere.
Really dude? Had it coming? Spend next Sunday in church.
I think his unemployment might have to do more with his age?
I know to many unemployed programmers over 45 years of age.
Two are literally homeless. Time goes by quick--just when
you think you will always be in demand; you get that Friday
meeting. You just might feel this guys agony in a few years, but you sound like a spolied brat--who's family will
always be there to pay the rent.
An eye for an eye, a pain-in-the-ass for a similar ass pain. "He had it coming" seems a punishment far out of balance for "making me mad on the internet".
I can empathize and I feel bad for anyone in what feels like a helpless and hopeless situation. I sometimes feel like I am there as well despite having "enough" money for a rainy season or two.
Some people need to hit rock bottom to even begin to understand that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Manual labor, however humiliating and seemingly beneath him, may give him the proper motivation he seems to be lacking.
I think this explains the vastly different reactions to the author's post. His mental state, I can easily empathize with. So if I focus on that, my reply will be very positive. But at the same time, he is calling the every day experience of something like 1/3 of Americans "as good as dead", which is frankly insulting to those who do it their whole lives and even support families doing it.
Having to do manual labor for minimum wage is not as good as dead, it is an obstacle. And it is an obstacle that many people have overcome.
I wish the author nothing but the best, but his ability to improve his situation is going to depend on his ability to change his attitude regarding work and what he needs to live. I hope he does. I hope he finds something or someone that will push him in the right direction. But that's what he needs, not a monetary handout. Working as a dish washer isn't going to kill him. It hasn't killed the thousands of other people doing it, some of whom are even happy about their lives and hopeful about the future.
Among minimum wage labor, he also mentioned impending homelessness, lack of private transportation (which, at least in the USA, is a huge impediment) and a total of $23 in life savings, which is pretty bad, even for a lot of people in rough situations.
I don't know if he's "as good as dead", but he's in a hard place, certainly. More than you're giving him credit for.
His situation sucks, I'm not denying that. But why would his likelihood of homelessness be any greater than anyone else working minimum wage? Can he not do what everyone else with a shitty job does and get a shitty apartment with a bunch of roommates for a few hundred a month? Can he not get food stamps like everyone else with minimal income?
I'm not trying to criticize his current feeling of hopelessness. I'm just saying that his situation isn't, in fact, hopeless and that the only way it's ever going to get any better is if he realizes that it isn't hopeless and starts working his ass off to make it better.
And I'm not criticizing him for not having already come to that realization either. It's hard. It takes times. It probably takes help from others who have been there. But it is the only way forward.
It's wrong to be unsympathetic to his plight, but I think it's just as wrong to withhold the truth that many other people have faced the same situation and gotten through it by persistently working their asses off until things got better. He can do this. Anyone reading this in a similar situation, you can do this. It will suck. There's no point in being coy about that. But if you do what it takes to keep working, and work and save smartly, you can get through it. Don't give up hope.
Xah,It really sounds like you need a bitcoin address. Coinbase.com (YC S12) is a great place to start. Once you have some coins, you will find no shortage of people in the bay area willing to buy them off of you.
I would even be willing to run a btc fundraiser on your behalf. I don't have a lot of rep on here, but it's pretty solid in the bitcoin space. Google Jason King Bitcoin or Sean's Outpost
I've come across his blog multiple times when I started with emacs and he seems like a cool guy(anyone that can spoon raw oatmeal into his mouth like it's the greatest thing ever is cool by my book).
It's great he's asking for help instead of showing up on the front page as another dead hacker.
Totally OT, but when I was a kid, raw oatmeal and brown sugar was one of my favorite treats.I hated it cooked. Even now, I still like raw oats right off the stalk, though it's a lot of work for such small reward.
I don't know if he updated the page since you read it, but it says he would prefer a check sent to him or 2 professor associates of his. I'm sure he will be able to use the money on paypal too and he is open to donations using it.
Did he just post a screenshot of his bank account with the session key visible in the URL!?
(I know it's probably not too significant and there are other checks in place, but I found it rather ironic when the text right above it happens to be "I try to be VERY VERY careful".)
I don't think that bothers him. He has discussed his views and tastes regarding pornography (with explicit examples) before on his site. He also has a travellog from Las Vegas that includes a visit to a prostitute. He's quite a character and his site includes posts about everything from math and tech to the stuff I mentioned above.
That it doesn't bother him is not the problem; that it may bother his potential employers is.
When looking at his site from the point of view of someone who could be interested in hiring him, it certainly leaves a strong impression - but unfortunately, not a positive one.
Sticking this one to the US isn't quite fair. I'm originally European (now European-US) and my wife is Chinese. I don't know of any major culture which openly encourages sharing your love of porn.
There is a difference between encouraging and actively marginalizing someone because he watches porn.
I was born in Eastern Europe where nobody had a problem with you watching porn as long as you don't do this at work or in public spaces (schools, shops etc ...).
Correct. I enjoy a fap as much as the next man but I'm not going to advert early or inadvertently blog it, because puritans and PR. No judgment of him, just that it's not helpful when approaching employers.
The majority of his debit acct # is also visible. But seeing as he hasn't been very careful with the rest of his life, why should his empty bank acct be any different?
Xah needs to seek help for his mental illness. Look at his posts on comp.lang.emacs for evidence. He's been spending all these years on $3 a day trying to figure out a more "ergonomic" keyboard for emacs, but many of his suggestions are really just based on what he wants and are less ergonomic than standard emacs.
EDIT: comp.lang.emacs doesn't exist, it's been many years. gnu.emacs.BLAH
Some find this type of labeling helpful. Some find it unhelpful. At any rate, we should probably tread carefully.
People with mental illness need jobs as much as, if not more than, those who pass for normal. I know. I have suffered from serious mental issues for 18 years. In that same time, I have enjoyed a long, exciting, and storied career; and I know that my employers have been grateful.
My intention wasn't to label anyone. Xah has been a disruptive and counterproductive presence in the emacs community, but I think it's because he needs help he's not getting. He spent his time in poverty fighting flame wars on usenet -- he needs to get his priorities straight. I buy he's a smart guy who can get a lot done, but he's not employable in his current state, and I don't think the right solution is to give him money so he can continue to live like he does.
"Diagnosing" people when you're not a doctor and when your only contact with that person is written stuff on the Internet is stigmatising.
It keeps people with mental illness out of work (because employers illegally consider that person to be a riskier hire) and it does little to help the person being discussed who might just be an asshole rather than being someone with a diagnosable MH illness.
I've been following this guy since a bit before Orkut/Tribe days when he had full hair (~2003?). He's been very inspirational. At first I thought he was a bit of a jerk and a troll (not the right place or time to elaborate on this, but well this was long ago so it doesn't matter) but when I saw him take on his education in his 30s I was quite impressed with what he achieved.
I think this guy is top drawer and seems hard working. I have no idea what happened to him, although I do guess his peculiar character has a lot to do with it.
It could perhaps be the effects of isolation (which, as recent submissions and discussions here make evident, can have a huge effect on a person).
I've had periods in my life where I withdrew from others, and every time I recovered, I was amazed by how much this withdrawal warped everything about me, and by how easy it was for me to forget simple social behavior. It was almost like I was a completely different person.
Yes. Isolation can be very damaging, and he seems to be aware of this. And for some people, sometimes, it really can be something that 'just happens' as relationships wax and wane, and not a conscious choice.
If you really think you can code, Fiverr (http://www.fiverr.com/) is the place you have to go. There're many little jobs for you. Do 5 per day, let's do it now mate.
Reading the blog/comments I don't think a development job is what he needs/wants. I think what he really needs is a patron.
So why not Patreon?
Some people find value in the content he creates, and his needs are modest. It is not implausible that enough people are willing to chip in to keep him going, and Patreon provides a way to do that.
Oh, thanks, that clears it up. It's kind of ironic that after dumping all over the intarwebs he's now trying to rely on the good graces of the intarwebs. I imagine there's enough people out there it'll work at least a little.
True, in this text there's a lot of things I agree, however, for example
> If you are accustomed to Perl's semantics, the search operation is what you're looking for.
> Its mentioning of Perl is irrelevant, since the majority reading that page will not have expertise with Perl regex.
Are you sure? I assume a lot of python users (and the docs he's critiquing are not the latest, and may have some "old stuff") used Perl first. Perl users would be familiar with Regexes, so this is a useful piece of info
Or, praising an example as good for a Python tutorial that uses the format def okaydokey(self): return "okaydokey" which is not recommended by PEP-8
Yeah, I can't either. But he does seem to have an eye for (un)readable documentation - the things he's criticizing are completely useless for a new reader.
The invective needs to seriously get toned down, though.
Not that it was a particularly well written "critque" of the documentation, but I've felt similar frustrations when tyring to work through the NodeJS documentation.
Generally when you're used to something that's several orders of magnitude better, e.g. Java docs and you're then forced to work with turds after that it takes some getting used to. Sometimes you never get used to it. Come to think of it.
Yes, a few good points were buried in that post, like "examples are good" and "re.M isn't, strictly speaking, a variable". In the past I've made corrections based on Lee's suggestions, but when good points are surrounded by arrogance and profanity, it's not surprising people stop listening.
Standing as the precipice about to lose your home, your possession and things you have tried to hold on to is
an extremely traumatic affair.
Its very hard for someone honest and hard working in our
world to admit to having problems and asking for help from
the general population.
He has done good things, and he is a fellow human, who needs
help. Leave it at that.
Who cares if he has upset some people on usenet.
You think its some kinda karma?
Wut? Troll the net, lose your house?
If there are trolls on the net that should be taken care
of it is assholes to humiliate and denigrate a man in his
hour of need, when he is down and humiliated. That takes
a lot more of an asshole than having spirited discussions
regarding technical topics on usenet.
1 ) Perhaps this could be the start of Xah Lee learning some social skills. If so, good on him. He'll go a lot further with them.
2 ) Surely someone in this community can offer him a job writing documentation, at the least? Think of it as charity if you must, but he will probably deliver good value, and he would probably be happy to work cheap, if you're into that sort of thing.
3 ) I will donate $, since that's what I can do from where I am.
This is mostly unfortunate. As an Emacs user, I have read a lot of his tutorials and they are very good, I will consider buying one of them (but I don't understand; does or doesn't he accept money through paypal?).
On the side note, he should really edit that bank account screenshot. These downloaded images really looks like they were downloaded from imgur. And if you type those filenames into imgur...
The problem with someone like Xah is that you don't quite know what you're getting yourself into.
Why has he not worked for a decade, and what reassurances are there that he will be able to be productive? There's no chain of trust that would prove that you're not hiring some kind of a ticking timebomb. There's no proof that he's up to speed with any tech since the 90s. There's no proof that he'd not be potentially very quirky and difficult to work with in a team environment. It's a very difficult position to be hired from, and it mostly has to do with the fact that he "let himself go" for a long time.
If you have the option between hiring someone good and "someone potentially good, but also very unpredictable, high-risk and likely to be a long-term project", you'd go with the former every single time, it's a no-brainer.
Wow, that's pretty shocking. As an emacs user I'd often stumble upon his articles. Even bought an emacs autohotkey-mode from him. It's so strange to see a person you thought was this amazing genius that surely did well for himself struggle like that.
Hope you take care of your problems Xah.
If you look at Xah's website with the eyes of business owner it could be a problem that that it handles a lot of exotic stuff, that is almost never a subject in a small to medium IT companies, but is written and fostered with great passion and care.
So there might be concerns if he would fit in to company with all its mundane day to day problems.
I think I would be helpful if he could do an internship or some sort of a program, where he can prove his capabilities to do
- "boring" stuff
- follow orders of his boss
- working teams
Once this is approved, he might had better chances.
my question is, if he's "procrastinating" why didn't he just rent a room instead of a whole apartment? Better yet why not move back to his parent's place? When I was single, I never rented an apartment on my own. I always had a roomate(s).
Best thing someone can do for this guy is to help him fill his taxes declaration retroactively and create a fund for him to write an Emacs book for e.g. Seems quite competent writing about Emacs, so it should be right on his alley.
Maybe someone from Apress, Pragmatic or Packt Publishing can contact him about an Emacs book.
I read it again. What you may not realize is that people with many friends and people with few or none have different meanings for that word.
He may simply be describing the two people that would actually notice if he vanished from the face of the planet as his friends because that is the closest thing he has to one.
It's fine to wash dishes if you need money, but if he ever wants a better life for himself, putting up with the annoyances of people who are not like you is a skill that must be both learned and practiced. Introverts, especially extreme loner hermits, have to sacrifice some of their essential spiritual essence to the vampiric extroverts occasionally, in order to have a better quality of being left the hell alone the rest of the time.
A guy like this really needs a mediator to introduce him to more outgoing types, let them have a taste, and then protect him before they scare him back into the shell. It's very unlikely he could do it alone.
There may be some government and/or privately funded
social services in the area that could help him, e.g.,
emergency rent money, housing, food, counseling.
His Web site with 240 K visitors a month, with some ads,
should be enough to help him significantly.
Well one thing he is doing is soliciting donation for his Emacs Tutorial, which he provides for free on his website. I don't think that is begging, and think it is entirely appropriate.
You won't care about that if you didn't read his Emacs Tutorial. But if you did, consider donating.
I feel for him - he seems to suffering both mentally and physically. But I have a hard time believing he hasn't legally had to file his taxes for the past 10 years. At the very least, if he really has only had $1k in income (which isn't credible - he's showing $700 of income on that bank statement alone) he would have gotten a few hundo from the EITC - which when you only make $1k is a big deal.
And admitting you didn't file for 10 years isn't going to help him going forward either.
Hate to see someone in pain - but this really looks self-inflicted.
I think the biggest help we can give him is to redesign his website: very few people (without knowing his struggling situation) would ever pay for the content. His website content is pure gold but looks like crap..
Am I the only one who thinks that the IRS should not be able to make someone who is mentally fragile homeless, just because he hasn't filed his taxes? It seems very inhumane to me.
Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit]
If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more details about his work.
Full stack web site development. Heavy backend experience + unix sys adimn. Seek startupish, small team engineers environment.
Accomplishment highlights:
• Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree.
• Taught graduate math students at National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taiwan.
• Invited speaker to Geometry And Visualization workshop, Tokyo Metropolitan University.
• Work cited in US Patent.
• Well-known open source contributor in emacs and LISP communities.
• Expert in: JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP, Emacs Lisp, Mathematica, MyLinux, SQL, Second Life Linden Scripting Language. Each with at least ten thousand lines of code. (working knowledge Java)
Specialties:
• Design, code, entire system. Understand language, protocols, raw. Do not depends on frameworks/libs when unnecessary.
Author and Webmaster
XahLee.info
January 2007 – Present (7 years 5 months) San Francisco Bay Area
Creator and author of award-winning website http://xahlee.info/ , since 1997.
• 8 thousand visitors per day. 240 thousand visitors per month.
• 5 thousand HTML pages
• Frequently cited in academic journals as well as online sites such as StackOverflow, Hacker News, Reddit, Wikipedia. Also cited by Microsoft TypeScript publication. (see list of citations below.)
Is he a particularly noted person? Maybe just in the emacs community? I don't know who he is and that resume is pretty skimpy.
It seems that his biggest need right now is self-presentation and that's a pretty tough thing to acquire on short notice.
I'd also say there would likely be way more opportunities for someone of his skillset outside of the valley, where the skimpy resume probably looks even skimpier by comparison.
I realize leaving is tough when you don't have a car, but he also won't have a home soon. Some relocation may be in order. Best of luck to him either way.
He's certainly 'notorious' in certain circles. He used to be considered a troll in certain newsgroups, because he's very argumentative.
I think he is in some ways the prototypical hacker. He's very good at what he does, but he struggles to do anything with financial value, and he's got very bad interpersonal skills.
He's done quite a lot of Emacs work, particularly around trying to make it easier to work with. His work was very helpful to me when I was starting out with Emacs, so I've given him some money. His documentation saved me weeks of work over the years, so giving him a days wages is a no-brainer.
Ah, thanks. I think there's a lot of room for boisterous, outspoken and even aggressive developers, but you really gotta prove you have the chops to earn that.
I'd agree with your assessment that interpersonal skills are the issue (in fact he agrees, too) and that's not something you can fix overnight.
I really think the best situation for this guy is to get out of the valley for a bit, get a job doing some very focused dev/maintenance stuff in his areas of expertise (Python/JS?) and design a personal reboot plan.
You really gotta prove you have the chops to deliver judgement on Xah Lee. I have no idea who you are and I can't tell you did anything as helpful as Xah Lee did.
Maybe you should just refrain from judging people like this so harshly when you don't really know anything about them.
Your attitude sucks. I would never, ever want to work with you when you talk smack on people like this without knowing anything about them.
> I think there's a lot of room for boisterous, outspoken and even aggressive developers, but you really gotta prove you have the chops to earn that.
This sentence of yours strongly suggest that you think Xah Lee didn't prove he has the chops to earn being outspoken. You may even think he probably did not earn such a right at all. Even if you don't think so, the suggestion is there for all to read.
Besides, I have read a good chunk of his website. Even when he goes full insult-mode, he generally has a point.
> This sentence of yours strongly suggest that you think Xah Lee didn't prove he has the chops to earn being outspoken.
I didn't say nor did I suggest this. I'm simply saying that if you're going to walk into a room and act like Linus you'd better have a track record like Linus.
I didn't say Xah Lee does or doesn't, particularly since I noted above that I didn't know much about him. I'm simply pointing out that if that's your style, that's what you need to back it up.
He is known as annoying Usenet troll by many. I don't classify him as pure troll, however. He don't troll for the sake of trolling and he can be helpful. He is very opinionated and argumentative and don't adjust his thinking very well.
Yup. I suspect this is the core of his incompatibility with nominal employment in the tech space.
I agree with others that perhaps a documentation role on an open source project would be something that would be in demand, but having the tech writer telling the developers they are doing it wrong is not a good recipe for success (and that seems to be a real possibility here).
He was unemployed by choice, not incompatibility. I know he has written quite a bit of good emacs documentation and elisp code, and just that is worth donating for to me.
I second this. His emacs/elisp docs have been exceedingly helpful for me in the past, certainly helpful enough to warrant a donation, regardless of any reputation for being difficult to work with.
Like Erik Naggum, which is considered a troll by many, and also a great writer w/ deep knowledge of programming languagess if can get past the troll part.
Also Jon Harrop. There is no doubt he is trolling, but also no doubt he is a very accomplished programmer. (He may disagree he is trolling, but if audience thinks you are trolling, you are.)
"if [the] audience thinks you are trolling, you are"
Really? I thought the entire definition of trolling was based on intent. Trolling is trying to provoke a reaction from people.
By your definition a significant percentage of the world is trolling the anti-vax and truther communities for example. And many mentally ill people who comment online are trolls instead of just being mistaken for them?
This definition seems a lot less useful to me than the intent based one.
> a significant percentage of the world is trolling the anti-vax and truther communities for example
You don't go to an anti-vax or truther community to remind them how crazy they are. When we consider mental conditions, it may be that some people have compulsive troll disorder or something to that effect.
My point about anti-vax or truthers is that they often think people who disagree with them are trolling them, and under this definition that means they are. That seems ridiculous to me.
As for mental conditions, that's another definition that seems inconsistent. I thought trolling was trying to provoke a reaction by being obnoxious or acting stupid or acting mentally ill. I thought the whole point of trolling was that you mostly can't tell if you are being trolled or not. Similar to Poe's law.
A definition of trolling that labels anyone who provokes a negative reaction from a community for any reason, like actually being mentally ill or actually being very ignorant seems overly broad. You just put weev in the same category as someone extremely technically illiterate who asks a stupid question on yahoo answers.
Now you just have a synonym for "annoying" or "irritating".
Hah, indeed. I actually brought a copy of OCaml for Scientists and I was surprised when I received basically what looks like a a hand-bound copy. But the book is actually good, and I could recommend it.
I remember this guy! Blast from the past! He used to make trouble around comp.lang.java.programmer, i think. He was clearly intelligent, but unhinged and emotional enough that he didn't really contribute anything useful. A sad case all round, really.
Indeed. I know a few people who have a (strong) mood disorder, and one characteristic they all share is that they tend to be more abrasive and 'rigid' in general, even when they're in a good mood.
I'd rather work with a cranky trolling yet competent and accomplished programmer, then a sweet talking dip tard. In my experience incompetence is directly proportional to the amount of pleasantries one uses in discourse.
When you're bipolar, you spend less time in the emotional midrange, where social skills are built, and develop a social deficit. (Some people recover in their 20s, because a 20% social deficit is catastrophic at 20 but not at 40-- being "socially 16" at 20 is devastating, but at 40, it means you're socially 32, which is not a big deal-- but some don't). You also spend more time than most people in intense states, which makes you more creative. So bipolar people have a paradoxical age-skew where they seem socially younger but, in some critical ways (creative maturity, ethical insight) tend to be substantially older and more experienced, because they've spent more time at extremes.
From this, there's a tendency (out of resentment?) for people with BP to discount the experiences and skills of normal people as trivial "small talk" and turn emotional and ethical extremity ("I've really experienced life") into a virtue.
Bipolar, I'm convinced, is a different thing from being manic-depressive (which would, in 2014, be called hypomanic-depressive if the term were still used; but to save keystrokes I'll use "manic" even though modern psychiatry only uses "mania" for extreme highs that even most bipolar people never get.) Manic-depressive is present pathology, a symptom profile that few bipolar people have all the time. On the other hand, bipolar (as I'd define it) is a type of mind (creative, judgmental, ethically rigid) that has advantages (if the manic-depressive symptoms are contained) and drawbacks, but that never goes away, even if the manic-depressive symptoms remit. Well-treated bipolar people tend (contrary to stereotype) to be unusually conscientious, loyal, and self-aware. The flip side of it is a sort of extreme moral mysophobia.
It actually makes sense. If you're bipolar, little things have gigantic consequences. A night of heavy drinking can have you suicidally depressed for a week. Simple excitement about an intellectual interest can become socially harmful (you don't realize that others don't share the interest). If you live in a world where you're punished (by internal and external causes) severely for small mistakes, you tend to become intolerant of others who get away with much more.
Thank you for that! The type of people I befriend tend to suffer from disorders, and while I've often come to understand much about how they function, this was something I was particularly curious about. It makes a lot more sense to me now, and I'm pretty sure it might solve some of the misunderstandings and conflicts now that I know this.
He used to piss off a lot of people on rec.juggling by commenting rabidly on any videos that featured female jugglers. I liked him though - for some reason his webpage directly a lot of traffic my way, even though I wasn't female...
This guy doesn't deserve to have had Silicon Valley turn its collective back on him, and I definitely feel bad for what has happened to him, but I don't think his behavior can be attributed only to bipolar disorder or depression. I also don't see hypomanic grandiosity so much as defeat in his posturing, but that's just me.
According to his autobiography, he moved as a teenager from Taiwan to Paraguay, then to Bolivia and finally to Canada. That's a very different story than simply "high school dropout".
http://xahlee.org/PageTwo_dir/Personal_dir/xah.html
Sounds like writing him a new, attractive, professional resume could be very helpful. Clearly his biggest issues are dealing with people and presenting himself.
Side note: that he could live at all in San Francisco on that kind of income is truly impressive. At $1600 a month, rent alone is over $17000 a year.
Some don't realize that a resume isn't a life-journal, but rather a carefully crafted group of documents which should help to paint the image of a choice candidate in the eyes of the interviewer, not the interviewee.
Like much in life, the biggest part of the problem is stepping into the shoes of the other party and learning to craft what they expect to see.
Having helped numerous friends and loved ones with their individual resumes was personally enlightening for when the next time comes that I must make one.
Which is the worst, unforgivable sin (even worse than being old). It doesn't matter what you have done, if there is no corporation to witness to your ability and you do not have a fresh face. Hence "entry-level" positions requiring 5 years of experience, and yet you are unemployable forever if you don't have a job within 5 years of graduating. It might as well be law.
Is having corporate experience really that much better though?
I mean, obviously working for someone for several years implies some level of competence, but your work is nearly always locked away and you can't show it off.
Ideally you'd want someone who does both; working for someone, which demonstrates the ability to work on a team, while also contributing to open source and making their own content, upon which you can grade their technical skills.
As someone who has worked in the corporate world since graduation, I feel I have little to show that is concrete. It's all hearsay.
I feel I'd be better off if I spent time developing myself outside of work hours so that I can have something visible to the world to be proud of, but frankly with a family to take care of it's a struggle to get the energy to do that. I'd like to have my cake and eat it too. It's a little depressing to me, honestly, but it is what it is.
Practically speaking, yes, having corporate experience is much better.
After leaving the school (I didn't graduate), I spent 2 years doing self-directed learning about computing. I have commit access to PyPy and LLVM, am credited in release notes of Mono and IronPython, and hundreds of open source commits to show off. I still had a lot of trouble landing a job. I got lucky in the end, but it was rough.
You seem to overestimate how open source contributions are judged in job search. Corporate experience is not hearsay; it is concrete. Open source contributions are not concrete, because most employers do not know how to evaluate them.
On the plus side: a lot of companies care about Open Source experience and are able to evaluate it.
On the down side: companies who do it are still the minority, and you'll get a lot of competition from similar folks, who'll likely have written even more open source code than you did, and if they have had a real paid-for work experience will probably be preferred
> Is having corporate experience really that much better though?
Yes, a thousand times yes. At a minimum it gives you insight into some product/set of products that are commercially viable and people use. You get experience with at least one build system, and code architecture someone took to market. It also gives you a paycheck that frees up worries about food and housing. In the least demanding of these jobs you can use the down time to learn other technologies by building a MVP of the current product in another technology or contributing to open source projects your corporate job uses. The insight gained from one "real job" is a million times more helpful than trolling github and trying to figure out what a given project is used for in the real world.
Long-term corporate employment is more valuable if you're seeking corporate employment. Only a few corporations (relatively speaking) place any value on open-source project association.
Apparently one reason that Valve did do well for themselves was that they were something like the first to seek out and hire modders rather than just new grads and gaming-industry made men. Naturally they were looking for the best, most accomplished modders but at the time they had their pick of them.
In the 90's, he was the biggest troll on comp.lang.lisp. I actually found some of his stuff funny. It wasn't like it was hard to tell he was trolling. It was performance art, IMO. I often wonder, though, what strange person was behind it. Now I know, sadly.
I guess this is a cautionary tale then about not burning bridges? Seems like the guy is pretty bright, but for all the years he was trolling people, those are the people he needs now more than ever to help him out.
Xah Lee seems like a helpful guy and a decent coder, and I was saddened to find out later that he could also be a highly unpleasant troll. Now, I'm saddened to learn that being an unpleasant troll and failing to file taxes has caught up with him. I hate to hear of him washing dishes for a living, but I can't say I'd jump to give him money, and I wouldn't put my reputation on the line by recommending him for a job.
Same for me. I came across his site (through some usenet emacs stuff) and read his blog entries...I'm all for free speech and all, but I don't think a lot of his opinions would be considered, especially on HN, "unacceptable". Some of it might even be considered "creepy"[0].
It also doesn't help that he is insistent on using his own brand of English[1].
I don't mean to say that you shouldn't help him out. And I definitely can't say if he "deserves to be homeless/near-homeless". Just want to point out that the reason why he hasn't been hired isn't mainly because he has had "no corporation to witness to [his] ability", as someone else pointed out.
I have never heard of this guy, I popped open the JS tutorial, and I am very thoroughly impressed. This is actually one of the best introductions to JS I have ever read. I bought his emacs book because I didn't know how to donate otherwise.
A little bit, until his account gets suspended out of the blue for no particular reason. Of course it's found money and even a bit is better than nothing but he really should not become dependent on his adsense income for something as crucial as food or rent.
Yup. The right thing for him to do would be to write a technical book and sell it. He has his emacs tutorial, but his website already has a bunch of poorly placed ad units on it.
He's literally competing with his own tutorial by selling other sections of his webpage at probably less than $2 cpm. If he optimized his page to sell the tutorial he would earn more than $2 cpm per unit on that. The 'around the web' units are probably not even being managed because it looks like they are set to the defaults for general audiences, which is inappropriate.
What I would do:
1. Redesign page
2. Kill ads
3. Raise price to $30 or more
4. Aim for 2% conversion (no clue how many of those numbers are unique sessions)
5. 2% x 240,000 = 4800 sales -- 4800 * $30 = $144k before fees and taxes
That's wildly optimistic given that a lot would have to be done to the site and that the people looking for free emacs tutorials may not line up perfectly with those willing to pay for it, but if it's legitimately a good tutorial there's an opportunity there. Even a more realistic .2% conversion would still be an OK living for the guy.
He could even get started by quoting one of the other dudes in this thread who said that it was good.
The ads that he has on the page are pennies and it's hard to actually find the tutorial that he charges for. That he might be a jerk is actually totally fine. You would just have to work it into the copy as him having a maverick attitude and being a no-nonsense technical guy, which works well for selling to people who are technical.
He should realize that he is more inclined to be a blogger and a writer rather than professional programmer. He just needs to realize that and go for short term contract or part time gigs which enable to get pursue his Lisp or other teaching roles.
He simply is unaware of the deeper psychological dimension of being a teacher and an advocate and what that means for his personality
45 year old programmers most likely have seen everything come around the block more than a few times in their careers and realize fads / crap ideas when they see them. E.g. Yet another build system
I work with a 42 year old and by far he's the person I've learned the most from even though he "still uses Perl" (I love Perl btw) and I'm trying to convince him to learn Git and abandon CVS.
Exactly, and it's a big reason why some places are reluctant to hire them. They'll rain on your parade faster than anyone else, and people don't like to have their parade rained on.
But difficult, if not impossible, to prove and costly to try to attack.
The age difference is often not even really a conscious thing. It is expressed in "cultural fit" by most young interviewers. Older devs simply are detached from core pieces of younger culture. Whether that's music, integration into workplace rhythms, lanugage, etc.
It's important to specialize some, get broad technically (don't only know everything COBOL), and to force yourself to at least understand the hot new things enough to be able to speak FROM EXPERIENCE about why you want said hot new thing off your lawn... but still be willing to play along.
If you need to work for someone else, you need to balance your tech-righteousness with someone else's, often youthfully naive, ego.
> The age difference is often not even really a conscious thing.
It can even be as simple as a work schedule that is hard to meet for anyone with children. E.g. shifting the start and end of the work day one hour later can be enough to make childcare a nightmare to secure many places.
I simply can't resist downvoting you, but alas, see what will happen to you if you joke about others misery?
On the serious note though, there is this thing called "empathy" where a person has the capacity to recognize emotions that are being experienced by another person. Have you ever been paralyzed by procrastination even when you knew that your continued inaction would be very bad for you? I have, so it's easy for me to understand what he's going through.
If you are procrastinating that much, to the point you are on the verge of literally dying or starving, there is probably an underlying issue like social anxiety, depression, etc that is triggering the procrastination reaction as an avoidance mechanism. I am not sure he is really "enjoying" it, despite what he said. (I am not a psychologist but I play one on Internet.)
Because everyone needs help at some point in their lives and oftentimes a kind gesture from someone is all they need to get started turning things around.
I know that I am not perfect and have certainly made poor decisions in my life. But if you feel that being compassionate is not appropriate in this situation at the very least OP could stay quiet and not make jokes about another person's suffering.
Down-vote me all you can, but OP's situation is most definitely self inflicted.
It's the same with drug addicts. They can't help it. You can be compassionate with them, but it won't help them. What they need is a kick in their arse to fling them out of their comfort zone and embrace the big changes.
Hopefully, OP's new job shall open his eyes and guide him in the right direction.
He does not seem to be handicapped neither mentally nor physically -- and there are millions of people in much more need than such a victim of procrastination.
I think there's nothing wrong in making a joke, but not making fun of people. There is a difference, and I beg your pardon if you parsed mine as a latter.
Especially considering the fact that I went against the reddit traditions and added a "serious note" after the joke ;)
This kind of case is why I don't think guaranteed income will work. Some people won't even be able to manage that money. We have to find a way to insure people have the basics without money (in their hands anyway). The salvation army type/soup kitchen programs aren't it. No dignity, 5000 other guys (a significant percentage of which would slit your throat for a rock), an underlying "join the cult theme".... no, that environment doesn't make things better. Basic privacy and dignity are needs too. And if someone is going to become productive they need access to basic tools like a computer also. If people like Lee could forget about money and work on what they love I think the world would have more for it. Or else a lot more trolling. IDK...
I think what we are seeing here is similar to heroin addiction or alcoholism. But this is an internet 24-7/ trolling rush/ porn addiction that makes it hard to live in the real world. I bet his isn't the only case either. I recommend a three month cold turkey session in the woods of Canada this summer. No net. Up at dawn chopping wood. Real face to face interaction most of the day. Fix this poor fellow right up and give him a new lease on life. I do feel for his case... in the same way someone who drinks a little more than they should might feel for homeless drunk passed out on the sidewalk.
At the same time I am curious how someone could feel significantly differently than the point of view I posted to down vote it. Does someone not believe an internet addiction is partly to blame for Lee's problems? That this isn't a disorder or there isn't a treatment? That his basic needs should not be met? That our social support service system doesn't need a pivot? What exactly is the argument?
So you claim to be a decent programmer, but haven't been working a traditional job in years because why? You claim to be smart but don't know the value of maintaining a basic financial safety net. It won't be hard to bail you out, but this should not be happening in the first place. Let it be a lesson to others. Or is this just a fake?
It's obvious the guy needs some help to help him "pull out". Whether it's a friend, a psychologist, a psychiatrist or a "mystical" experience, he needs something.
There's no point criticizing him, it's obvious nobody would hire him until he "pulls himself out of the hole". But if you live near him and have some spare time / expertise / willingness to help, be a decent human being and help him get to someone that could help or hire him.
Most of are are not as "autonomous" as we think we are, and in unfavorable circumstances, we can all fall off the tracks. And get over the "but don't know the value of maintaining a basic financial safety net"... it's obvious that he already lost the "social safety net" of friends that could have told him this and probably a "psychological balance safety net" too, so it's a bit too late to be any point in telling him this...
Realistically, what's the best kind of support he should be seeking right now?
His linkedin profile doesn't say or at least I couldn't see his job profile. I would imagine it is going to be hard for him to get a job as a coder (with his reputation and all).
Even if he does manage to raise $1600, that only helps him extend his current situation until next month.
He said he's been living in some sort of isoloation ("platonic hermit monk") for the past decade. Maybe a job in a different field may help him give a different perspective from the one he's had for the past decade?
What does one do if they become homeless in the Bay Area?
But being compassionate does not require you to analyze this person's merits. The only thing to 'analyze' is that he begged you for help.
Also, please remember the hackers, family, and friends we have lost to suicide. People say "I wish we'd known. Maybe we could have helped." Well, you know; and there is a chance you could help.
http://www.paypal.com