Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 28, 2021

Does Bernie have anything to comeback to?

Is this based on anything that really happened? It seems somewhat implausible.

I bet this really happened back in the 90s. They’re was a lot of tech companies that got bought out, or got replaced.

When I worked at BigNewTechCompany X, we joked that we were acquiring BigOldTechCompany Y – one employee at a time.

Who names their company Chien Fou? That’s just bad for marketing in francophone countries, and it sounds like they’re based in a francophone country.

Why is she with him again?

“Good coders are hot”…in her case, in more than one sense.

“Good coders are hot”. Of all the things that have changed in the tech industry since this strip was produced, that, at least, hasn’t changed.

Take the money and run. Bernie’s have sort of gotten a bad rap over the years. What ever became of old “never paid off” Madeoff?

Why do I think Kim is pulling Mike’s leg here?

Bernie is in Maui to sell everything off and leave the buyers with all the problems.

Does Kim have hepatitis?

Mad dog.

Does “contracts” mean they can’t get laid off? Did Bernie offer contracts to his employees?

“chien fou” mean “crazy dog” if my high school French serves me correctly.

This strip was from 1996.

12 years later, Bernie came back from Maui for good.

April 2021, he left for parts unknown to mere mortals.

There was a famous Silicon Valley story of a guy who interviewed for a job at one company in the morning and another company in the afternoon—and found himself interviewed by the same guy! Who had changed jobs that day (and who most certainly was trying to make a good story out of the process.)

Note that the French company was actually Monitoring their competitors.

I can remember a time when one of the managers from the company’s Dallas office was telling us about the plague of headhunters that office had been infested with. He said that one headhunter had even offered his Secretary a high level coding job a month or so earlier. At a substantial pay increase.

We kidded him that he should have offered to let her take a few weeks Vacation just to find out how long they would keep paying her before they realized she wasn’t a programmer.

He said they hadn’t done That, but that she Had gone out and enrolled in Night Classes. Classes the company would still reimburse Tuition for, at that point in time. If she passed, of course.

Fresh out of grad school in another discipline, but with a long history with computers, I interviewed for a job at the local bus company. The interview was conducted by someone from a consulting company that was handling the transition of the bus company from a larger entity to a stand-alone. I then got a phone call from the consulting company saying that they were recommending that the bus company not hire me, but the consulting company did want to. So, I ended up working for the consulting company. First assignment: the bus company. In a way, the consulting company was right—although I had lots of fun and learned things at the bus company, moving around with different assignments and platforms and organizations was much more interesting and challenging than the bus company alone could have provided.

Be careful “hot young coders”. My nephew got a “good-paying” job with a startup. Because of cash flow problems, they told him he could work on the project from home and get paid at the end of the month. He worked a month, submitted the code … and the company – office, desk, chairs, etc. was gone when he went to find his check. But they kept his code.