Subject: Re: Anyone looking for a Lisp/AI job in Pennsylvania? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Fri, 22 Mar 2002 05:45:48 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3225764761204645@naggum.net> * Eric Moss <ericmoss@alltel.net> | Good philosophy. I agree. It's too bad they weren't up-front about how | they would really act. During interviews it was all "We support | innovation. We are going to 'do things right'. We're <blah blah blah>." | I was even told "We're going to experiment with lisp." by the one who | ended up my supervisor. Well, it is basic self-protection to ask for such promises in writing. People tend to be a lot more honest when they have to write things down, for the simple reason that you present a credible threat to the them if you have that document and you challenge them later on. There is no such credible threat if you only have someone's spoken word. Some people are not really big on honesty unless they can be seriously hurt if they are dishonest -- and even then they calculate their losses. You need to hone your skills in detecting such people if you have been hurt by them, not think they are the kind that runs the world and give up, which it sounds like you believe. | I *hope* we can all (myself included) treat this as a statistical outlier | that is vanishingly rare. If you cannot defend yourself against bad people, you are an easy mark. If you think somebody "should not do that to me", you have already lost and will be screwed again and again. Bad people exist. Good people need to identify them, prevent them from causing (more) harm, and be prepared to defend themselves when they try. This is not taught by "turn the other cheek", but there are ways to avoid getting slapped on both cheeks. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.