use Perl

Where I work has a pretty good spread of people at different points in their careers. Part of it is that we've been hiring madly over the last 18+ months [1] -- there are only so many tech people in the Pittsburgh area. Part of it is a company culture that emphasizes life balance, which attracts people like me who can't put in constant overtime. And, like a good baseball team, we also try to find smart people in school, get them onto a co-op where they often get fairly meaty problems to work on, and treat them right so they'll stay on.

That said: a couple days ago I went out to lunch with five other guys from my department. One of them is still in school and two just got out, and since almost everybody had gone to Pitt we talked about professors and classes a bit.

Then someone asked, "Hey Chris, when did you graduate?"

"1992."

"Huh. Are you the oldest person here?"

The table sounded off: 33, 23, 22, 23, 34...

Then me: "35. Geez, I guess I am..."

I never thought of myself as the elder of a group before. Weird.

[1] Madly == ~6 months ago I pushed the total to 210; now its 275 or so, maybe more.

Posted from cwinters.com; read original