:: Freedom ::

Lately I have found an almost magic ability in me. I have the ability to spot high-tech employees in restaurants. It seems to be almost always clear to me: The one with the buttoned shirt, glasses and shy smile. Project manager. Two t-shirt wearing guys in their twenties. Dressed stylish, but not loud. QA engineers. Maybe one of them even a junior programmer.

Again and again, when this happens to me (usually in fancy restaurants), I try to make out a set of rules to describe the things in common to those people. And there never seems to be a single trait that makes me so certain that this person is a high-tech employee. Thing is, I am always dead sure.

Just recently I have found a pattern: My high-tech people are always a little (or a lot) underdressed for the place they are eating in. By "underdressed" I mean either: dressed with too-cheap an attire at too-expensive a restaurant. Or dressed expensively, but with no style whatsoever. While other, normal, people have to go shopping and spend 2 hours at home just to find the right shirt for that special place, people in our industry find it utterly OK to wear an "MFC Developer's Day" t-shirt in a 5-star diner.

If anything, this to me symbolizes the first generation of "nouveaux riches" who have actually transformed their wealth into real freedom, and not into just another form of commitment. Freedom to be who you are, and still enjoy doing what you want, where you want. And if anyone stares, well, you know you make more money than him anyway.

Wadi Writer #2 (Blue )

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