I'm incredibly surprised at how anti-social most of the comments are here. Then again, I just watched the Tina Fey interview at Google, and realizing that maybe I ought not to be surprised. I had this mental image of Google as being a hip, cool, social company to work for but the audience seemed so contrary to this, and even Eric Schmidt would go on and on about how "literal" Googlers take everything, how stereotypically engineer-minded they are, basically implying they were incapable of being creative or having vision or social skills. Maybe that's just Eric being disconnected from his employees, but I have a hunch there is some truth to it.
Even Eric Schmidt would go on and on about how "literal" Googlers take everything, how stereotypically engineer-minded they are, basically implying they were incapable of being creative or having vision or social skills.
Do you realize the hypocrisy of what you are saying? You criticizes that taking things literally is bad by taking Schmidt's comments literally.
I am introverted an geek, but this: "I'd rather shoot myself than hear anything about their children." is borderline anti-social for my taste. Or maybe he just really don't like his coworkers for some reason.
Calling it 'borderline' is too polite. I couldn't decide if (1) he was deliberately overdoing it (revealing the satire?), (2) deeply hated children in general or (3) found his co-workers' children especially hateful or what.
Actually the whole of (7) is way over the border of anti-social:
If my work mates are talking about something other than work, I'm probably not interested. I'd rather chew razor blades than talk about traffic, weather, casino gambling, baseball, real estate taxes, gun control, politics, or Dancing with the Stars. I'd rather shoot myself than hear anything about their children.
As a single male there's a limit to how much talk about a co-worker's children I can stand. If they have an interesting story to tell then that's fine, but if the parents start chatting about/comparing their children then it's time for me to go and do something else.
Right now I'm not a fan of children, this will probably change when I get my own (in many years), but until then I'd rather talk about something else.
Number one, I think. And I suspect that it's less that he started out hating that stuff than that he has just heard so much of it that he's sick of it.
