ph34r my l33t skillz, says the advertiser
March 30, 2007 5:13 PM Subscribe
0100100001100101011011000110110001101111 , %68%65%6c%6c%6f - can you read this? Wanted ads seek out those made out of the right stuff by speaking their language.
Wait, is it unicode or ascii?
posted by IronLizard at 5:23 PM on March 30, 2007
posted by IronLizard at 5:23 PM on March 30, 2007
When will L33T become lame.
Never. Even when all the puzzles posted are stupid and obvious, geeks will feel compelled to solve them to prove how stupid and obvious they (the puzzles) are. Which will uncover the infrequent awesome one, which will impress the geek and s/he'll1 look into it.
1I was going to say "he" and then add "it'll always be a he", but actually my female officemate is, if anything, 10x more tenacious with math puzzles than I am.
posted by DU at 5:27 PM on March 30, 2007
Never. Even when all the puzzles posted are stupid and obvious, geeks will feel compelled to solve them to prove how stupid and obvious they (the puzzles) are. Which will uncover the infrequent awesome one, which will impress the geek and s/he'll1 look into it.
1I was going to say "he" and then add "it'll always be a he", but actually my female officemate is, if anything, 10x more tenacious with math puzzles than I am.
posted by DU at 5:27 PM on March 30, 2007
The dingbat ads are literally written in code.
Not quite. A code encrypts by substituting words or phrases for something else. This substitutes individual characters, which would make it a cipher.
Cryptogeek pedantery aside, I think this is a clever and effective advertising scheme. I remember seeing an ad for a tech jobs site a while back, written in C++. I recall thinking tat, had I been a programmer looking for a job, that would have moved them towards the top of my list.
posted by Spike at 5:34 PM on March 30, 2007
Not quite. A code encrypts by substituting words or phrases for something else. This substitutes individual characters, which would make it a cipher.
Cryptogeek pedantery aside, I think this is a clever and effective advertising scheme. I remember seeing an ad for a tech jobs site a while back, written in C++. I recall thinking tat, had I been a programmer looking for a job, that would have moved them towards the top of my list.
posted by Spike at 5:34 PM on March 30, 2007
had I been a programmer looking for a job, that would have moved them towards the top of my list
as a web developer, ads like that would move to the bottom of list- the list would then be set on fire, eaten by a dog, and buried in the backyard under a pile of kryptonite and garlic.
Granted, I am fairly dillentante-ish about my work, but ads like that just scream:
"Come work for us! We are condescending and exploitative. We haven't even met you, but we think we know what motivates you- code. So we know you'll jump at the golden opportunity to come write it for us, and won't expect much in the way of money, benefits, respect, or a non-hellish work environment."
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:49 PM on March 30, 2007 [3 favorites]
as a web developer, ads like that would move to the bottom of list- the list would then be set on fire, eaten by a dog, and buried in the backyard under a pile of kryptonite and garlic.
Granted, I am fairly dillentante-ish about my work, but ads like that just scream:
"Come work for us! We are condescending and exploitative. We haven't even met you, but we think we know what motivates you- code. So we know you'll jump at the golden opportunity to come write it for us, and won't expect much in the way of money, benefits, respect, or a non-hellish work environment."
posted by drjimmy11 at 5:49 PM on March 30, 2007 [3 favorites]
Got the binary converted to hex converted to decimal pretty quickly, then forgot which letter the lower-case letters started at in ASCII (caps are 65, which I always seem to remember for some reason). Then I remembered you can ALT-keypad ASCII characters in Windows and all was well.
So I guess ph34r m3 or something.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:53 PM on March 30, 2007
So I guess ph34r m3 or something.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 5:53 PM on March 30, 2007
...we think we know what motivates you- code.
No, they know what motivates the person they are looking for. You just aren't that person.
posted by DU at 6:26 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
No, they know what motivates the person they are looking for. You just aren't that person.
posted by DU at 6:26 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
jeepers dr jimmy...you seem a little tense.
i think ads like that scream "hey, we tried to be a bit creative...perhaps the work environment will be as well...or not, but at least we didn't post a boring ad."
posted by django_z at 6:41 PM on March 30, 2007
i think ads like that scream "hey, we tried to be a bit creative...perhaps the work environment will be as well...or not, but at least we didn't post a boring ad."
posted by django_z at 6:41 PM on March 30, 2007
"Come work for us! We are condescending and exploitative. We haven't even met you, but we think we know what motivates you- code. So we know you'll jump at the golden opportunity to come write it for us, and won't expect much in the way of money, benefits, respect, or a non-hellish work environment."
No kidding, people exploit people's love of programming and working long hours for fun way too much, IMO. If I ever owned a tech company I would make sure my coders never worked more then 40 hours a week. On the other hand, that's probably why I'll never own a tech company.
posted by delmoi at 6:47 PM on March 30, 2007
No kidding, people exploit people's love of programming and working long hours for fun way too much, IMO. If I ever owned a tech company I would make sure my coders never worked more then 40 hours a week. On the other hand, that's probably why I'll never own a tech company.
posted by delmoi at 6:47 PM on March 30, 2007
I love the pseudocody ads written by people who either don't know or don't care that it doesn't really make sense. This one for Citibank is a classic that manages to be illiterate as source code and English at the same time.
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:41 PM on March 30, 2007
posted by Armitage Shanks at 7:41 PM on March 30, 2007
as a web developer
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
If you can read this then you're just the sort of person I'm looking to hire to favorite this comment. Applications accepted via favoriting this comment.
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:49 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
posted by Effigy2000 at 9:49 PM on March 30, 2007 [1 favorite]
as a web developer
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30
Heh. I made my Save vs. Snarkiness but I'm glad you didn't.
posted by freebird at 9:56 PM on March 30, 2007
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30
Heh. I made my Save vs. Snarkiness but I'm glad you didn't.
posted by freebird at 9:56 PM on March 30, 2007
as a web developer
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30
Heh. I made my Save vs. Snarkiness but I'm glad you didn't.
posted by freebird at 9:57 PM on March 30, 2007
posted by ryanrs at 7:50 PM on March 30
Heh. I made my Save vs. Snarkiness but I'm glad you didn't.
posted by freebird at 9:57 PM on March 30, 2007
I hate when you think you made your save but you're really just being a stupid jerk and the DM is tricking you deeper into the Lair of the Trolls.
posted by freebird at 10:48 PM on March 30, 2007
posted by freebird at 10:48 PM on March 30, 2007
This one for Citibank is a classic that manages to be illiterate as source code and English at the same time.
I've seen way worse ones than that. Other than one missing semi-colon and the "if (blah==true)" annoyance, presuming that all those undeclared variables are globals it might even compile! :)
posted by antifuse at 8:51 AM on March 31, 2007
I've seen way worse ones than that. Other than one missing semi-colon and the "if (blah==true)" annoyance, presuming that all those undeclared variables are globals it might even compile! :)
posted by antifuse at 8:51 AM on March 31, 2007
Is this something I'd need to turn Adblock off to understand?
posted by flabdablet at 10:06 AM on March 31, 2007
posted by flabdablet at 10:06 AM on March 31, 2007
If I ever owned a tech company I would make sure my coders never worked more then 40 hours a week.
I remember an article in Game Developer magazine (may?) last year where a guy described locking out late nights and requireing everyone to get in by 9am and take the weekends off. They started making all the deadlines. Funny, the great dramatic allnighters are not all that productive. Maybe for a rare emergency but if it's more that twice a year there needs to be better planning.
posted by sammyo at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2007
I remember an article in Game Developer magazine (may?) last year where a guy described locking out late nights and requireing everyone to get in by 9am and take the weekends off. They started making all the deadlines. Funny, the great dramatic allnighters are not all that productive. Maybe for a rare emergency but if it's more that twice a year there needs to be better planning.
posted by sammyo at 6:41 PM on March 31, 2007
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