The Alphaville Herald

55 Responses to “Linden Lab’s Job Fair in Boston – With Open Bar?”

1. 

   Petey
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   There was an official Linden gathering in Boston and I missed it?

   GodDAMN.
2. 

   Crissa
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   Who refuses to fix nagging problems? By banning people who nag about things which aren’t bugs? If I hear another complaint about ‘attachments’ or ‘teleporting’ or ‘lag’ without specifics, I’ll scream.

   That’s how just about every job fair featuring one company I’ve ever been to. Ones with more than one company generally don’t have an open bar.

   If someone doesn’t approach and talk to Lindens, they don’t get hired because they won’t come forward with ideas and work, either. It’s their party, they get to choose who takes photos. It’s not a public place, like a street. If you don’t know about a company, can’t research it, they shouldn’t need to tell you who they are.

   Why should they hire people who are so passionless as to not know the company they’re applying to? Why should they hire someone who has trouble speaking up in a group?

   Lastly… LL doesn’t use the normal boss/employee relationship, so really if someone said they were the boss they were either joking or violating protocol.
3. 

   qDot
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   My god. What has happened here.

   SLH actually posts something that harshes on open bars.

   For shame, Uri. For shame.

   Next cash bar we’re at, you own me a drink.
4. 

   JimBean
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   i’ve heard that the Lindens don’t all go to church, either.
5. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   This was among my favourite lines in this wonderful piece: “inventories that won’t,”. Maybe a word was dropped; maybe not, but “inventories that won’t…inventory” is really as good a description as we’ve had ROFL.

   I was appalled when I first read the invitation to the job fair the Lindens put out, in which they explicitly stated their job-fair methodology, which was like a parody of the Snowcrash elitism and FIC stuff that I always accuse them of…come to real life.

   They consciously stated that there’d be a party on one floor, where there’d be a kind of cattle call, and only if a Linden liked your looks, would you be invited to *another* area, a VIP lounge, exclusively, to which others would be barred. Imagine!

   I suppose this is what passes for California Cool these days? I rely on Spin Martin to explain this to us.

   What’s disgraceful is that they imagine this snotty elitist in-your-face power-mongering is classy and something people will fall for. Instead, it looks like classless juvenile bullshit, the sort of things 20-somethings dream up if they’ve never gotten off their computers and gone anywhere outside their college bar scene.

   It’s like a parody of more subtle East Coast institutions like the Yale Club or the Skull and Bones or Harvard Club or whatever where you are recruited subtly, and taken through stages to inner confidence and exclusivity — but not in this crude way, where it is announced right in your face at the door — “Hey, come and be humiliated and drink at the bar and watch while other people are picked out right before your eyes for no apparent reason and whisked away to a more exclusive party which you are supposed to gnash your teeth and feel bad at”. When this is done subtly, the first round leaves some behind, but they aren’t made to feel dumped; the more exclusive lunching or dining that follows occurs out of their view on another day.

   I mean, is that obvious filtering tactic crass, or what?! You marvel at whether this stuff is ignorance and chutzpah or both. Pathfinder is *from* Boston, so he doesn’t have Silicon Valley culture as an excuse, but it’s the sort of combination of Boston Brahminism he may have imbined in Boston combined with the LL arrogance that makes him feel he has noblesse oblige everywhere.

   Of course, there’s one very good reason LL recruits these unexposed 20-somethings — they can tell them what to do, and have these people be grateful and goggle at them with gratitude and immediately rush into purveying this arrogant culture themselvse.

   As for the concept that an open bar isn’t going to be part of a job fair, well, I think in fact while not a traditional corporate setting job-fair sort of experience, it most definitely is part of the tradition of recruitment. I’ve been in different things like that over the years where one of the objectives of the recruiters is to determine in fact how people behave in a setting like this, which in fact will make up part of their “job description,” given that a lot of the policy jobs on the East Coast are going to involve constantly going to receptions, where real the business of government and diplomacy is transacted.
6. 

   Brent Recreant
   

   Jun 6th, 2007
   

   I am not surprised
7. 

   Tenshi Vielle
   

   Jun 7th, 2007
   

   Ouch. Not looking good.
8. 

   Prokofy Neva
   

   Jun 7th, 2007
   

   Um, yeah, qdot, be funny, and distract from the principle at hand here.

   So you think it’s fine to disseminate a cult-like corporate culture that involves deliberately hazing and humiliating job recruits by bringing them to an open bar and telling them in their face that they will be looked over and then only invited to a VIP lounge if they are liked?

   Gosh, Crissa, you’re shaping up to be more of a Linden fangirl than even the worst of the old forums jackals.

   >If I hear another complaint about ‘attachments’ or ‘teleporting’ or ‘lag’ without specifics, I’ll scream.

   Uh…like there’s some kind of “client-side’ problem with this? Like this isn’t a widely known and acknowledge problem the Lindens don’t deny? There isn’t any “lag without specifics”. We’re all SO past that. Lag is what is defined as FPS considerably below the norm, where your avatar cannot move, or moves in sudden lurches. Lag is visibly documented looking at a variety of numbers like FPS and number of scripts. The Lindens acknowledge when lag reaches this kind of crisis point by restarting sims.

   >That’s how just about every job fair featuring one company I’ve ever been to. Ones with more than one company generally don’t have an open bar.

   I’ve been to lots of job fairs and so has everybody else, and open bars aren’t the norm for corporate settings in every field. Try to accept that the world doesn’t consist of your private Idaho.

   >If someone doesn’t approach and talk to Lindens, they don’t get hired because they won’t come forward with ideas and work, either. It’s their party, they get to choose who takes photos. It’s not a public place, like a street. If you don’t know about a company, can’t research it, they shouldn’t need to tell you who they are.

   An open meeting that is announced openly on a website and put out in open email everywhere isn’t a place where you can reasonably keep out press, bloggers, or public photo taking.

   Some Linden zealot who tried to intervene like this probably has one of these “special” issues of emotional blackmail that some Lindens try to perpetrate on us all as a reason why they should never have public accountability and link their names and avatars. That’s ethically wrong.

   Most people expect that at corporate events, some suit gets up and says a few words to frame the event. Assuming a frame is just juvenile dickery. There isn’t a frame.

   >Why should they hire people who are so passionless as to not know the company they’re applying to? Why should they hire someone who has trouble speaking up in a group?

   I can’t imagine why anyone would come to a “job fair” (read: introductory cult meeting) in which the rules of the road involve standing around and trying to get noticed, and then watching while some people are noticed and whisked away to a VIP lounge and the rest shat upon. NO thanks.

   Programmers in computer software firms aren’t normally tested on their ability to speak up in a group at an open bar, are they? Don’t geeks tend to be known for their lack of social skills?

   Given the lack of social skills exhibited by this lot of Labbers who put on this event, I’d have to say it is confirmed?

   >Lastly… LL doesn’t use the normal boss/employee relationship, so really if someone said they were the boss they were either joking or violating protocol.

   And you are an expert on LL because…of why?
9. 

   JimBean
   

   Jun 7th, 2007
   

   oh my god people – can you PLEASE just leave SL? PLEASE? listening to you constantly grouse is like being trapped on an airplane with a screaming baby.

   really. go the fuck away. i mean, supposedly you hate SL, right? so leave already.

   the fact that you stay and continue to complain kinda betrays the truth of the situation… you LIKE to whine. you are whiners.
10. 

    Cocoanut Koala
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    And they can pay the younger ones less, don’t forget that.

    Do job fairs normally go like this? Do ANY go like this?

    I haven’t heard of a worse, more socially inept thing in ages! Actually, ever.

    Who would want to work for a company that went out of their way to make people feel awkward and bad like this?

    You could just as easily meet everyone, then invite the ones you like best to a second meeting later.

    And we wonder why things go on like the orientation areas being handed out to their favorites. They really think this is the way to do things! Talk about a cult – talk about ass-kissing – if you want to get a bunch of ass-kissers who think they are in something super-secret and super-special, recruit this way.

    Geez. I don’t blame the person for deciding she wouldn’t want to work there. Who decent would?

    coco
11. 

    urizenus
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    qDot, I approve of open bars in principle of course, but everything depends on what they are serving. I mean if the pleebs are getting that Moet crap and the FICers are getting Cristal or Veuve or Krug, well then that is just plain wrong.
12. 

    Crissa
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    cmd-shift-1. Menu>View>Statistics.

    What’s the sim framerate? What’s your client’s framerate?

    What were you doing when you got ‘lag’? Was it animation lag, did you get the system wait cursor? Was the client working, but the sim not working? Were animations working? Were you snapping back? Near a sim boundaries? Which sim? …Lag can happen on the system, sim, client, ping, server, asset, or animation levels. How are they supposed to fix ‘lag’ if they don’t have a clue which lag you’re talking about?

    Inventory didn’t open? Happens sometimes. Try again in five, fifteen minutes. Bothered? Sometimes tv cable doesn’t work, either. Have you tried reloading a web page every second for twenty-four hours? Guess what – sometimes it won’t load so fast. The internet sometimes doesn’t work well.

    Rez loss? Well, it’s not supposed to do that. Save copies, version your workload – any professional does that. Think this hasn’t been bugfixed? It has, several times, different focusings. Heck, one Linden just spent a month away from any of her regular projects to create a testing and new code for Rez loss so that it wouldn’t happen again. Worried? It was in the patch notes two weeks ago. Yet people complained yesterday about it as if it hadn’t been patched.

    At least SLH makes grid weather reports (can I have a widget for that?) and pays attention to the patch notes.
13. 

    Brace
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    mmmmm Uri I LOVE it when you quote champagne names…

    *purrrsss*
    ~~~
14. 

    qDot
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Silly Uri. Being a tech company that searches for drinks by name recognition, such fine beverages as Cisco and Thunderbird are served.
15. 

    Lewis Nerd
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    It rather infuriates me that Linden Lab are wasting money on such unnecessary extravagance – money that is paid for by your monthly fees and mine.

    If only they’d do things the PROPER way instead of trying to be all “hip and trendy” – and failing dismally – then Second Life might be a better experience.

    Lewis
16. 

    Jesse
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    My suspicions were correct… I always thought a large number of LL employees were very very young.
17. 

    Nicholaz Beresford
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Oh really?

    Dman! And I thought the whole Linden team consisted of tie wearing senior programmers and public communication specialists, hijacked from the best names in the industry. In fact I was sure that they didn’t even need a casual friday because their idea of cool as to loosen the tie knot by an inch or open the topmost button in their brown business costumes.
18. 

    Inigo Chamerberlin
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Hmmmm, I can see some method in this scenario.

    First, the open bar. Well, you watch people. Do they pig out? Can they handle their booze? Do they exhibit self control?

    Then the passive approach. Does it throw them? Are they social? Do they approach you and make their pitch well? Can they handle an unusual situation? Are they polite and friendly against all odds?

    Think about it. IF they perform well, MAYBE they are of interest…

    After all, you are looking for potential Lindens here. Your prospective employees are going to have to work in an unusual environment. Despite LL’s withdrawal from it’s customers of late, when contact with customers is unavoidable they are going to have to deal with a wide spectrum of personalities – and maintain an even keel under all circumstances.

    Yup, I can see what was going on here. Negotiate the hurdles coolly without becoming flustered and you get through to the next tier. Loose it and you fall at the first fence.
    In fact I’ve encountered similar tactics employed on a one to one basis myself in the past.
    It’s not that unusual.
19. 

    JimBean
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    actually the comparison to a crying baby is unfair… the baby can’t help itself.

    imagine being trapped on a plane with an adult screaming its head off.

    maybe now you understand why ya’ll don’t get invited to the cool parties.
20. 

    Jax
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    I went to the Boston recruitment party because I thought “maybe” I might want to work for Linden Labs. I’m not sure if the party was “elitist” as some people have mentioned. Linden Lab was very upfront about the two party areas; however, if you sent them your resume ahead of time, you got on the guest list which I think automatically got you into the “other party.” I sent them my resume ahead of time which got me on the “special” list but I’m not convinced I got on that list because of my resume. Actually, for reasons I can’t explain, I just got the feeling they never read my resume. They’re response with the invitation did have some typos so at least it wasn’t a “stock” response (or maybe their stock response had typos….who knows).

    Anyway, the party was odd to say the least. Personally, I’m not crazy about these types of group social situations but I thought since it was a recruitment party the overall tone of the party would be different. Nope. It was just like a typical social gathering in a bar. People standing around making idle chit-chat and drinking. I looked for a Linden Lab employee to speak with, but all that I could see were already engaged in conversation. So I went to the “special” party.

    Down at the other party the atmosphere was the same. People standing around drinking and making small talk. I looked for another Linden Lab employee and again all were engaged in conversation. I thought it would be rude to stand next to them and wait for opportunity to talk because I felt as if these small talk conversations were really mini-interviews. So I kept my distance, allowed them some privacy, and waited for an opening. Obviously, my timing was off because I was never quick enough to up in when an opportunity presented itself.

    I expected the whole party to by much more professional or at least more structured since it was a “recruitment” party. I can’t say there was an elitist atmosphere because I didn’t get that impression. I can, however, see how some people could feel that way. My impression was that Linden Lab was trying extremely hard to be “hip”, and in that attempt created an unprofessional, unproductive, and uncomfortable recruitment environment.

    Ultimately, I didn’t last too long at the party. I gave up after concluding no meaningful job opportunity was going to come out of this situation. I finished my drink, headed out the door and thought — for this I skipped my kid’s softball game? Good grief! What have I become?
21. 

    dildo baggins
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    crissa, crissa, crissa…puhLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESe don’t try and pretend you know anything about software engineering.

    “Think this hasn’t been bugfixed? It has, several times, different focusings.”

    aha..ahahaahahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

    I bet you work for LL. No wonder their fucked up pile of spaghetti code does not work and the bugs stay unfixed.
    The whole system development process smacks of a kewl bunch of 20 something scriptkiddies on red bull and vodka typing away like 10K monkeys hoping to write TeH mother of all code.

    Well, guess what? You have…except it’s the MOTHERFUCKER of all codebases!

    “Worried? It was in the patch notes two weeks ago. Yet people complained yesterday about it as if it hadn’t been patched.”

    Usually because the bug is still there dipshit. You people wouldn’t know a test plan if it bit you in the arse, let alone have the actual skills, discipline or knowledge to run through one before a release. It shows every time you downgrade the fucking system.

    No worries..the competition is coming…and your arse is grass.
22. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    >cmd-shift-1. Menu>View>Statistics.
    What’s the sim framerate? What’s your client’s framerate?

    DUH. That’s not rocket science. We all do that. That’s how we DETERMINE there is lag when we see the numbers at 10 instead of 99, etc.

    >What were you doing when you got ‘lag’? Was it animation lag, did you get the system wait cursor? Was the client working, but the sim not working? Were animations working? Were you snapping back? Near a sim boundaries? Which sim? …Lag can happen on the system, sim, client, ping, server, asset, or animation levels. How are they supposed to fix ‘lag’ if they don’t have a clue which lag you’re talking about?

    Because um….they do? DER? Because you can tell them, using the sim statistics page, what’s up? If you see it’s all scripts and likely YOUR OWN laggy scripts you can remove them, although it would be nice to see on mainland sims what we see on island sims, top colliders, etc. But most of the time when you report really severe lag of an avatar not moving or snapping on a specific sim, with the figures showing way below the norm, the Lindens either remove a colliding physics item sometimes, or they restart the sim. The fix it. End of story. Your notion that this is all so subjective and vague and “client-side” is overwrought. Even Lee Linden isn’t as persnickety as you are.

    >Inventory didn’t open? Happens sometimes. Try again in five, fifteen minutes. Bothered? Sometimes tv cable doesn’t work, either. Have you tried reloading a web page every second for twenty-four hours? Guess what – sometimes it won’t load so fast. The internet sometimes doesn’t work well.

    For more than a year, my inventory is wildly different each time, 17,000 on one log-on; 14,000 on the next without any real change due to purchases or deletions. And it always loses the most used items. Hugely annoying. The Internet doesn’t work well; but SL works abominably. I don’t whine or complain much, but I don’t deny the facts, as you are doing.

    Did you get a summer job yet?
23. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Inigo, you should be ashamed of yourself for justifying such elitist, piggish tactics. They are to be condemned. It’s not a better world if people treat other human beings this way just to code software in a goddamn game. I don’t care how cool the game is or how much not-a-game it’s supposed to be, it’s not right.

    “Pride goeth before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.”
24. 

    Inigo Chamerberlin
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Don’t tell me what I should and shouldn’t be Prok.

    I’m an individual and I live, at least part of the time, in the real world. Employers test their potential employees – that’s how it is. Nothing to do with your, or anyone else’s, personal axe grinding.

    No one forced anyone to attend that ‘job fair’, anyone who didn’t like it, or was unable to handle it was perfectly free to leave, as some did.

    Oh, and who said the event was restricted to software coders by the way?

    “Pride goeth before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.”? Yes, it does, doesn’t it? You should take care…
25. 

    Aetuneo Novi
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    “I don’t want to be a Linden lol and neither do my friends. we can mange fine with out them in SL”

    I would like to see you do that. Think of what would happen if every linden, just for a week, stopped managing the grid. Stopped paying the bills to keep the servers running, and so on. The bugs which people complain about (Which I have never encountered, by the way) would be nothing compared to the entire grid dieing, and staying dead.
26. 

    Flubdrubdrib
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    JimBean said:
    oh my god people – can you PLEASE just leave SL? PLEASE? listening to you constantly grouse is like being trapped on an airplane with a screaming baby.

    To which I said:
    I used to think that too. The longer I’ve hung around I’ve learned that the sad truth here is that LL has tied people in by allowing them to make money in SL, so now people are actually invested…more than just the six bucks a month or whatever an account is these days. Go look at what an island costs a month, many of the people who post here pay that much a month. I’d say that spending a few thousand a year entitles them right to piss and moan about bad service.

    Crissa Said:
    they were either joking or violating protocol.
    To which Dildo Baggins said:
    I bet you work for LL.

    To which I reply:
    I thought the same thing. I’ll top that bet by betting she had something to do with that horrible event in Boston I’m so glad I skipped.

    Finally,
    Dildo Baggins Said:
    No worries..the competition is coming…and your arse is grass.

    To which I Reply:
    God, I hope so. The longer I’m here the more I see that the LL has pulled a bait and switch; they offered people a place to let their imaginations run free, and told them that if they can dream it they can make it, and if they can make it they can own it.

    Now they have a bazillion people signed up, enough of a footprint to lure in the corporate advertisers, you know, the big ones who buy superbowl commercials. The problem with those people, however, is that they get nervous about associating with anything stronger than a PG rating, so the promise shifts from “dream it, make it, own it” to “clean up your act or go home.”

    I predict that Coke and Pepsi and the rest of corporate America will soon be on board with the wonderfully wholesome Second Life. I also predict that laggy sims won’t be a problem because no one will be there. They’ll hopefully be in whatever new world Dildo speaks of.
27. 

    Khamon
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    “Programmers in computer software firms aren’t normally tested on their ability to speak up in a group at an open bar, are they? Don’t geeks tend to be known for their lack of social skills?” – Prokofy

    I’m sure that LL hires programmers professionally via interviews including probing questions that cut through the terminology. But most LL employees are socialites; that’s their job; it’s what they do. The surprise is that the company is still pursuing this horribly expensive method of growing their customer base rather than shifting the profits into hiring functional employees. It seems that the owners are determined to never shift the employee base from a paRtaie harTAie cr3w to a consistently productive programming shop.
28. 

    Khamon
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    “Programmers in computer software firms aren’t normally tested on their ability to speak up in a group at an open bar, are they? Don’t geeks tend to be known for their lack of social skills?” – Prokofy

    I’m sure that LL hires programmers professionally via interviews including probing questions that cut through the terminology. But most LL employees are socialites; that’s their job; it’s what they do. The surprise is that the company is still pursuing this horribly expensive method of growing their customer base rather than shifting the profits into hiring functional employees. It seems that the owners are determined to never shift the employee base from a paRtaie harTAie cr3w to a consistently productive programming shop.
29. 

    darkfoxx
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    “Worried? It was in the patch notes two weeks ago. Yet people complained yesterday about it as if it hadn’t been patched.”

    I work in consumer electronics aftermarket service. Simply put, I repair what customers break, or defects that were in the product upon sale, but were unnoticed at testing at the factory.

    Usually, when I fix something, it stays fixed. If the same problem arises in the same product again, it simply means that I did a crappy job at repairing it. (or the newly put in electrionics already had a defect)

    What you are saying here, as I quopted above, is that LL did a crappy job at repairing the defect.

    Which is basically what people are compaining about, yeah.

    And the fact that LL still hasn’t fixed some issues that were issues over a year ago whern I first joined up. Or, let me correct myself:

    Things that they have fixed in the past, but very crappily so it broke again.

    I like to compare SL to a rented car:
    It’s really cool if it is a convertible with electronic folding roof, MP-3 player and even now underglow, But if the engine starts sputtering and doesn’t rev anymore above 50 Kil. an hour, all the shiney and features in the world won’t make it less of a crappy car.

    I could stop complaining and just buy a bycicle, but I rather have a car that works. Without shiney and features. As long as it bloody runs.

    SL is the only thing in it’s kind… But it runs crappily. Fuck pretty skies, I want stability, and to be able to find my stuff in my inventory when I need it, not after relogging 50 bloody times before it *might* show up. 50 relogs is about the time I have between work and bedtime.

    Believe me, if there would be a good alternative, I’d sooo be outta here.
30. 

    Morgana Fillion
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    On a purely practical level, how does this scenario lead to choosing the right employees? Ok, you find out that a person can hold their liquor and whether they push into existing conversations or holds back waiting for a Linden to get down the the business portion of this ‘job fair’ – and in such a situation I’d have no clue at all which of those responses would be the preferred one – but how does learning these two very trivial things say one word about whether the person can or will work long hours to fix problems that come up on the fly, how they speak to users via avatar or other text based communications formats, whether or not they even know their stuff enough to be of use?

    I’m all for the Lindens throwing a party anywhere they want and being as elitist as they want to be. If I have a party, I tend to invite friends, too. But why call it a job fair and waste people’s time who are attending to gain info about a job and are rejected because they weren’t aware that the real purpose was to get into the Linden’s elite club and offer them the level of adoration the Lindens seem to feel they are due?

    Dude, really cool people don’t need to con people into showing up for their social events. And I bet that if they’d just touted it as a social meet and greet they’d have gotten a lot more fannish attendees showing up who’d have been thrilled just to stand next to them and gaze in awe.
31. 

    shockwave yareach
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    People with elite programming chops aren’t all that sociable. That’s one reason they sit at their computers and master programming instead of going to the bars and hooking up with people. There ARE sociable engineers and programmers, yes. But even they have a lower than average tolerance for it. If LL hires programmers based on how comfortable they are in a bar, then they are excluding 90% percent of the talent pool they are after, and all of the top end people.

    I would consider any group that hires like this to be very unprofessional and not one that’ll exist for very long. Perhaps this is how deals get made between higher ups, I don’t know. But I’d take my decades of embedded design skill, turn around and walk away if I experienced such a thing if I went in to interview.
32. 

    AIENTITY7
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    I have no financial stake in SL, I do not even have an SL avatar, but I do work in the software sector. Regardless, I really want to see them succeed, for personal reasons, in RL. I get really bummed out by all the haters out there, because the LL people have worked very hard to get where they have gotten and to realize the vision that they have brought into being. (And that thousands of people enjoy.) Yes they take your money, and it is fair to complain about service and quality. But some criticism such as this article transcends the constructive, it just smells like sour grapes. That’s my background. Here’s my two cents.

    First off, I have been to a number of open bar events at software and vendor conferences. If you can pull it off, it’s a good idea to see how your potential employees behave under the influence of alcohol because they will be coming into contact with members of the industry in and around (and under the influence of) alcohol at some point. Also, “in vino veritas,” in wine truth, goes the saying, and often alcohol is a good way to loosen the tongue and figure out what really makes someone tick. It’s even an old KGB trick to get information, plying a subject with alcohol, and if you think this is far out paranoid, just don’t forget one of the key Lindens used to work with one of the better known intelligence services.

    Furthermore, if someone gets smashed blotto at the recruiters open bar, it’s a good measure of willpower and how one actually deals with stress. Who wants to hire someone who will be hitting pints of Canadian Club during crunch-time?

    So it’s not unprofessional to have an open bar at a recruiting event, it’s actually quite smart.

    Second, I have no idea who Anonymous is. But Anonymous’ transferrence could be evident in this article. “I observed others sitting by themselves thinking to myself they wont approach the lindens because they feel intimidated.” No, perhaps Anonymous just felt intimidated. Especially if they are looking for people who can jump feet first into the company and make a contribution to solving problems from day one, someone who has done their homework and knows not just what the company does but the technical issues facing the company. On this count, Anonymous admits, “there was no formal ‘hello I am so and I am your host for the evening …nothing as to who Linden Labs is..even though we do know who they are but then again not really. that isn’t the way to conduct even an informal job fair.” Again, could it be a question, perhaps, of LL looking for someone who has already gone through the effort of doing that research? This does not seem unreasonable.

    Third, I keep hear about this ‘arrogance’ smear and I shake my head, this sounds like more transference. LL people are busy, so if they are short or do not have much time it’s likely not because they “wanted their image to appear to be hip” by excluding others. They are more likely just busy and budgeting time to target talent they think will succeed with the tasks at hand.

    Finally, what does sound arrogant is the idea that LL somehow did not invite Anonymous to the VIP room, and so therefore they were “a bit above them selves or should i say full of themselves.” Why should they be called “full of themselves” just because they failed to see Anonymous’ inferred talent? The underlying arrogance of that statement, infact the whole interview, is not LL’s. Anonymous sounds a little bit arrogant herself, and the tone of this interview is like, “LL is awful because they failed to recognize all I had to offer, I was a goldmine of human capital and they failed to invite me to the VIP lounge for a closer interview.” Maybe Anonymous just didn’t have the technical or social ability to cross the Rubicon? We’ve all been there, but not all can admit it.
33. 

    Thraxis Epsilon
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    This sounds pretty typical for an independant game development firm. If you’ve ever been to E3 in the past, or to GDC (Game Developers Conference). Much of the real business is done after hours at the nearest bar or company sponsored party. Contrary to what Prokofy seems to think, Geeks ARE social people. We just tend to socialize in unorthodox ways.. but that doesn’t preclude enjoying going out and drinking with friends.

    And believe it or not, how well you interact with others in a casual setting IS a good way to find out how well someone will fit in what will most likely be a close knit development team.
34. 

    Jax
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Morgana, you make an interesting point about the “recruitment party” which got me thinking a little bit more about it. I’d love to find out how successful Linden Labs thought the party was. I’m not interesting in the stock response: “Oh, we had a good time. Met some very nice and interesting people.” No, I would love to know whether they found some truly qualified candidates and whether they actually hired anyone from that party. If so, then for which position(s)? Please don’t misunderstand my comments here. I’m not bitter about the experience. I’m just truly interested in the outcome of such a party because I found it rather unprofessional and just can’t imagine anything productive coming out of it.
35. 

    Economic Mip
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    @Crissa, all of the above? Is that an option?
    Here is a detailed techy explanation of Lag.
    Newbie One: Seoul South Korea, STA travel Orientation FPS 25, her connection is a broadband modem, and her two week old computer is capable of running at three times the SL minimum.
    Newbie Two: Tunis Tunisia, Chat lag, typing two words takes eight minutes to show up. Frame rate normal, standing almost inside newbie one. Similar system.
    Newbie Three: Berlin Germany, has no inventory, and is embarrassed to find he has rezzed in the world as a naked female (the “default” avatar map). Other than that fine.
    My favorite coffee is missing from inventory, and that makes my avatar quite cranky in the morning.
36. 

    Nicholaz Beresford
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Makes me wonder if Anonymous sent in her resume:
    http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/21/love-challenges-enjoy-chowdah-hate-the-yankees/
37. 

    Bernabe Fugazi
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Jeez, for a “40 something college educated successful businesswoman” her English skills blow.
38. 

    shockwave yareach
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    AIENTITY7:

    So if I went to the party but didn’t drink anything — remember that most companies have strict policies on alcohol abuse, so any prospective employee is going to avoid giving a bad impression — then I wouldn’t even be considered? Sounds to me like this was a party rather than a hiring fair. No wonder SL is in the state it is in, if it’s run under the same “Party First!” principle. But hey, maybe they’ll pay me a commission for finding suitable employees for them. I hear Paris Hilton is out of Jail today…
39. 

    JackDaniels
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Haha – JimBeam, you hit the nail on the head there boy! “No wonder you whiners don’t get invited to the cool parties.”

    Buncha party poopers.

    Congrats to those cool enough to suckle the teat of LindyWorld. Now, do us proud and remember how it feels to be new and fly and dance with people from thousands of miles away, to enjoy the surprising beauty around every corner, to find that thing that keeps you coming back, the memories you make and the things you create and share. Do the job to the best of your abilities and inspire those who work with you. Now STFU/GBTW.
40. 

    Cocoanut Koala
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Inigo: “Yup, I can see what was going on here. Negotiate the hurdles coolly without becoming flustered and you get through to the next tier. Loose it and you fall at the first fence.”

    I thought of all that, Inigo. Unfriendly though it is.

    But that’s still no excuse for making the “leveling up to the second floor” such a public humiliation thing.

    They could do all that you say and still have the second round at a later time.

    Khamon: “But most LL employees are socialites; that’s their job; it’s what they do.”

    What?

    Morgana and Shockwave: I agree with Morgana, and I also agree about excluding a large portion of the talent pool, as Shockwave pointed out. That’s one of the things that struck me first about this.

    Aientity – if I had gone to this, I wouldn’t have drunk anything alcoholic at all. What would that have told them about me? It’s worrisome. It might have told them I’m not a party animal. (True.) Or it might have told them I’m a recovering alcoholic. (Not true.)

    I’m just not crazy about putting “response to alcohol” at the top of a list of qualifications, though there’s no evidence they were doing that, really, despite others outlining what would be the logic of it.

    Anyway, Aientity, I think Anonymous WAS in the VIP room.

    I HATE that VIP room thing. I hope the other person was right when he said he thought the VIP room was actually available for everyone who had sent in a resume. That wasn’t what was said on the website, though.

    coco
41. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    >”Pride goeth before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.”? Yes, it does, doesn’t it? You should take care…

    Have a nice trip, see you next fall.
42. 

    Prokofy Neva
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    AIENTITY7, you are speculating so much, you are failing to see that while recruiting parties might have open bars, they don’t have this really tacky and fake elitist stuff like a kids’ treehouse club, where they demonstratively take some of those who made it, and kick sand in the eyes of the others. I read about another geek-o-thon to get start-up funding in the latest Newsweek, in which a similar hazing tactic was used, where those budding entrepreneurs had like 15 minutes to prove their case and the VCs said “we like it or we don’t” and that was it — like an awful form of speed-dating. So I’ve come to conclude that this aggressive, hazing culture worse than any drunk and violent frat party initiation ritual is part of the geek tribal ethos these days. We sure as hell can critique it. And people have. One guy said he would took his embedded whatsis skills and turn away. Another said he felt remorse over missing his son’s softball game over *this*. Still another said they were crappy engineers, anyway.

    So none of these people made Skull & Bones. And…we’re supposed to appreciate that passing through this gauntlet makes you superior? Not.

    I don’t at all see Jax or Anonymous as losers or “lacking English skills” merely for having an informal chat that was recorded verbatim and not edited, nor do I see them as losers for not coming up to these arrogant and haughty 20-something asshole Lindens. If anything, if this is losing, then losing is winning. And sometimes in life, indeed, losing is winning.

    And I think it would be great to see who was hired out of this nasty process, and how they behave.

    >paRtaie harTAie cr3w

    hehe. Is that how the l33t spell it?

    Is the problem with Second Life, then, basically that the programmers are too hungover to do their job properly?
43. 

    Nacon
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    It’s not a reliable news source if this person remains Anonymous.

    Any anonymous can lie. Thus, Herald is yanking on your chain. (damn idiots)
44. 

    shockwave yareach
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Prok: I don’t live in any city that LL is hiring in, and I certainly wouldn’t give up my current job to try to join them even if I did. So no, there are no sour grapes here. I didn’t abandon my career path for the siren call of the first Dot Com boom; I won’t do it for the second one either.
45. 

    AIENTITY7
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Prokofy,
    I am indeed speculating and so are you. And only a die hard HR generalist would believe that there is such thing as a frictionless and perfect recruiting process whereby the very best candidate is selected at the end of the test. What it seems to me is that LL threw a recruiting party, advertised as such, and was looking for “someone” with “something”. I am not sure what those qualifications were, or what were the magic elements. Some people caught their eye, and some did not. But I am absolutely not convinced doing it at a party is any worse than a formal tight interview where an interviewee can put on any impression she wants and that rarely reveals true personality.

    In the end a human resource is a human resource, and that is the sad fact of the labor market in the postmodern world — we treat humans like cogs and when you peel away the methodology of global business and human resource management, there is no process that can escape the commodity fetish of the capitalistic market. It’s cruel, period. Shoganai, as the Japanese say, nothing can be done about it.

    I submit that it is actually more compassionate to give someone a free beer or two while rejecting them at a party rather than making them come to an ugly office park then into an inhuman board room to be interviewed by faceless and personality-free suits only then to receive a form rejection letter weeks later. Which is more brutal? Be honest.

    Cocoa,
    Thank you, I stand corrected she may have made it into the VIP room. But Anonymous still did not cross the Rubicon and connect. I think she was waiting for a grand display of lightning and for LL to recognize her as having some sort of penumbra and emanation about her person. She seems mad that she did not get the special recognition she was looking for, and in retaliation trashed LL’s party later on SLH. That’s my read. Maybe I am wrong, but it really seems like sour grapes.
46. 

    John
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    This is a fairly common silicon valley type of thing. The VIP room is for folks who actually submitted resumes, and those who come to the event actually interested in getting a job. Since the guest list isn’t tightly controlled, tons of people will show up with no intention of submitting their resume so they don’t get VIP access.

    Maybe they do it differently on the East Coast.
47. 

    DaveOner
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    “oh my god people – can you PLEASE just leave SL? PLEASE? listening to you constantly grouse is like being trapped on an airplane with a screaming baby.

    really. go the fuck away. i mean, supposedly you hate SL, right? so leave already.

    the fact that you stay and continue to complain kinda betrays the truth of the situation… you LIKE to whine. you are whiners.”

    Truer words have not been spoken, Mr. Bean!

    And to the notion that these cryers are “tied in” to SL because of financial reasons I say “GET A REAL JOB”. Anyone that quits their day job and tries to make a living off of something like SL are complete tools and deserve whatever they get. You’re Chinese gold farmers with access to a Starbucks with Wi-Fi.

    I see both sides of this story…one that LL has a bunch of dot commers that time forgot who’s shit don’t stink but I know for a fact that is a generalization and isn’t true for many of the employees…maybe just the management.

    I also see the other side…a company wanting go-getters with charisma that aren’t afraid to get up and talk to everyone. If it’s a job fair for only one company then you should have ALREADY done your homework and found out what the company is about.

    Companies that participate in multiple-company job fairs need employees…companies that have their own job fairs have employees that need them.
48. 

    Allana Dion
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Interesting how the “reporter” entered the conversation even more ready to blast the Lindens than the interviewee.
49. 

    Brent Recreant
    

    Jun 7th, 2007
    

    Dave, your last line made sense, and no fucking sense at the same time.
50. 

    Khamon
    

    Jun 8th, 2007
    

    ‘Khamon: “But most LL employees are socialites; that’s their job; it’s what they do.”

    What?’ – Cocoanut

    What what? What part of my statement do you not understand?

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