March 26th, 2008
Aren’t Engineers People Too?
I just got a call from a headhunter — completely out of the blue — and it reaffirmed everything I’ve come to realize about the way the world views engineers and technical professionals.
I decided to go along with the questioning from this aggressive young girl out of equal parts curiosity and courtesy — after all, she had called a week ago and left me a message that was never returned, so I figured I owed her five minutes of my time. She immediately asked me about my technical experience, even though it became plain to me that she didn’t have any technical knowledge and didn’t understand any of what I told her. She must have been working off of a checklist as I spoke, marking every buzzword that she recognized on her worksheet.
Apparently I must have said enough of these magic words to pass on to tier two questioning. Do I work in Unix or Windows? Do I do hyper-threading? Do I use data structures? Is my work in real-time? After a few of these questions, I tried to explain to her that she was asking me software engineering questions, and I’d already told her this wasn’t what I did. But again, she didn’t know what any of this meant anyhow. She simply wanted yes or no answers to mark on page two of her worksheet. So here were my answers: “no, no, no.”
“Alright, thank you, but we’re really looking for someone who has more Unix and hyper-threading experience. I’ll pass your resume along to one of my colleges to be considered for other positions.”
I suddenly felt defeated and dejected — at least until I realized that I had just been turned down for a position I didn’t want by someone who didn’t have a clue what a data structure was in the first place. Then I just felt annoyed.
I’ve come to realize that most of the world views engineers as these things that come with specified skill sets. But guess what: engineers are people too! We are not just these things that churn out generic computer code. Just because two engineers both know Java does not make them equal! Languages can be learned! Success is transferable! Past success in one area *can* be used as an indicator of future success in another area! I am more than the sum of my skills!!!
I get the feeling that many businesses just don’t know what to make of technical people. They don’t understand what we do, so they break us down into these skill sets — something that they can understand and work with. In the process we lose a little bit of our humanity.
I don’t ever want to work for a company like that. And so the next time I get asked about hyper-threading by a girl who couldn’t even begin to understand what hyper-threading means, I will politely ask her to stop asking me questions and quickly end the conversation.
