Elite .Net Developer
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I can’t really say what motivated me more. Money, prestige, or a legitimate desire to learn the truth about capitalism. But it didn’t matter because all of those arrows were pointing in the same direction.
As I mentioned, Emily and I arrived home from the paddling trip a day early. I used the extra day to write my resume. It was a marketing document carefully designed for compatibility with the job ads I had been reading over the years.
I had all of the technical boxes checked and gobs of relevant project experience. The only remaining problem was my GPA. Everyone says this doesn’t matter after your first job but I still felt I needed something to compensate for all of my years of blowing off assignments I didn’t like.
I had an idea from my days in music school. There were always those kids that sucked way more than me but were totally full of swagger. Their attitude and a their commercial outlook would be enough to beat me out of gigs on a regular basis. In the more academically-inclined STEM culture people try to maintain this passive-aggressive modesty about their own skills. This causes them to write boring resumes that all look alike.
I needed to push the arrogant button. At the top of the page I wrote, “Elite .Net Developer.”
When the phone rang that was all they wanted to know; what made me an “Elite .Net Developer”?
They laughed their asses off but they hired me anyway.
