After 40 years as a computer programmer and game developer—and the passing of his wife of 47 years—Rick has retired and is now living in Ye Olde Folks Home, where he still tinkers with tech and likes to write these amusing and/or thoughtful tales about his storied life.

Fun With Recruitment Ads

The above amusing bit of claptrap appeared in my Facebook feed one day… “emotional intelligence,” indeed.

It reminded me of a similar recruitment ad from West Group when I worked there, showing a pony-tailed young man in a black ripped-up Megadeth t-shirt, who crowed, “I’ve been with the company only two weeks and already I am helping to determine the strategic direction of the company!”

Well, we all found this extremely amusing. All of this was literally true; he managed our section. What the ad didn’t point out was that this guy was a close friend of the CTO, had been foisted on us by the top brass, was somehow exempt from the company dress code (the rest of us were in sports coats and ties), and was driving us all mad.

So yes, every word of that ad was the gospel truth, but a new employee’s chances of wearing band t-shirts and directing the company’s path at the two-week point would be positively nil.

Nowadays you just type in a description into some AI and you get something ridiculous like this. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!