Antiresume

"People don't walk around with anti-resumes telling you what they have not studied or experienced...but it would be nice if they did." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan

I'm pretty sure Taleb was joking, but that kind of mischievous idea appeals to me. And it's more fun than working on my actual resume. In that spirit, here's my anti-resume.

Tech I hate

• TCL: I've embedded TCL into things. I've embedded things into TCL. I've automated mutli-million dollar equipment using TCL. I've written TCL that generates TCL that generates TCL. I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Please never again.
• Visual Basic: At Teradyne, I wrote C++ control libraries for an industrial system that used VB as its user scripting environment. I dreaded every line of VB I had to write. I think in 2022 it's unlikely I'll ever come into contact with it again. Fingers crossed.
• Blockchain: Sorry crypto maximallists, feel free to mock me, but as someone who's known about Bitcoin since it was under $1, it's a fascinating but ultimately doomed tech. (Then again if I had bought Bitcoin when it was under $1...)

Tech that I somehow missed.

I don't have any ill will against the technologies listed in this section; it's just stuff I never had a chance to work with much. I'm always willing to learn.

• SQL databases: I've designed small databases, and written SQL, but it's always been for "toy" projects. I just have ended up working on different stuff.
• Java/C#: I've worked on at least one serious Java product from initial inception to customer shipment, but that was years and years ago. Mostly I've lived in the C/C++/Python worlds.
• UI, including mobile: I've just always worked at a lower level.
• Machine Learning: I'd love to learn more about Machine Learning, but I don't have any production experience with it.

Management/process red flags

• PSP (Personal software process) and any other minute-by-minute tracking systems: Look, I understand the intention, but collecting detailed "effort" metrics always seems to turn into a terrible game. Worse yet, I've never seen it improve anything--once minute-by-minute tracking is in place, everything goes even slower than before. (What should you do instead? I prefer a "what did you work on this week" high-level summary.)
• Stack ranking: This is so stressful.
• "Unlimited" vacation: This sounds great, and maybe it works out sometimes. But in the worst case, it puts you at the mercy of a semi-hostile or insane manager. Maybe I'm old but the clarity of the traditional vacation system was so much less stressful and so much easier to arrange.
• Literally criminal managers: I've worked under two different managers that have been featured in The New York Times, and not in a good way. Ask me about this in person; I have stories I cannot tell here. Sorry.