Comment by ativzzz
14 hours ago
100% untrue. Hiring is a social game. You want to put your best foot forward, and then slowly let out your truer self over time. Much like dating - you don't want to air all your dirty laundry on the first date. Don't lie about who you are but at the same time people are more tolerant of your quirks once they get to know you better
I actually more or less did air all my dirty laundry on my first date with my wife, and we've been together since 2013, so at least that worked out ok.
Still overall I think I agree with you. I think most techy people tend to like me if they talk to me for awhile, but I can be kind of abrasive with initial impressions.
I'm just psychoanalyzing myself at this point; overall good advice...thanks!
While I completely agree with hiding who you are for work, I code switch for work with the best of them. I am a customer facing consultant in rooms with decision makers, I aired all of my dirty laundry with my now wife because I didn’t want to waste my time or hers.
We had been working together for two years. But not in the same department. I just started talking to her one day in the parking lot and she finally said “are you going to stop staring at me and ask for my number”.
I was not thinking about dating at the time. I had just come out of a bad situation less than a year earlier and I was trying to get my financial house in order - it was 2011 and I had made some bad real estate decisions before the housing crash and I was trying to get my career on track.
I was happy with just hanging out with my long term female friends at the time and they provided all of the emotional and companionship needs I had with no complications. My friends and I traveled together, went out on “dates” (do you call it that when you are just doing date like things with no emotional or physical expectations?) etc.
When I told my now wife all I was going through it didn’t scare her away. She was just as up front with me. We were married seven months later. 15 years in, I still don’t feel like she kept anything from me that I didn’t know about her during the first two weeks and vice versa.
This though is horrible general advice as far as dating. I wasn’t pursuing her. We knew of each other from work so I wasn’t a complete stranger and we were both in our mid 30s and divorced then and she had two boys.
I wasn’t in the headspace to seriously be in the “dating scene” then.
I know how to small talk now and have studied conversational skills for my career. If I were out there now, I would do things differently.