I recently spoke to a former employer who was interested in hiring me for some programming work in the fall. He’s reticent to hire contracted/consultant programmers because he believes that they are awful at communicating and he doesn’t think he should struggle to convince them to fix bugs on his dime. I added my own .02$ with the thought that they are elitist and arrogant which makes convincing them that there are bugs in the first place incredibly difficult. Now I’m not saying all code for hire programmers are like that, just most of them.

This point was reinforced today for me scrolling through the UIC ACM listserv. There’s a question about the new Windows 2008 server which quickly degenerated into zealotry, snobbery and name calling. I had thought that the haloed halls of academia would be more resistant to that kind of behavior(HA! shows how much I know), but alack it is not. I shutter to think that these are my peers and that in ten years I’ll still have to listen to them blather on about the how much more they know than that other guy and how he’s so arrogant for thinking he knows what going on.

Edit: The possible irony isn’t lost on me here