US border guards can't believe Nigerian man is a software engineer, google "questions to ask a software engineer" and give him a pop quiz

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/03/01/what-is-your-favorite-color.html

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“How much coffee is too much when you’re trying to unfuck someone’s jacked up git repo so you can merge their PR?”

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Finally a concrete answer to “when will I ever need to do this myself instead of just using an existing implementation”.

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Serious question: At what point do we start holding individual ICE officers personally responsible and complicit in this bullshit?

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Is this Orwellian, Kafkaesque or Huxleyan?

I mean, why choose when you can just mush them all together?

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Memo to staff: Nigeria is not on the list.

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Gilliamesque?

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The list is just an excuse to keep out people the ICE officers don’t like. This guy’s brown, we don’t need any more brown people here taking jobs away from honest white high school dropouts, so let’s not let him in.

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I propose to flag these officers whenever they want to enter another country and quiz them on customs … err … customs. See how many would pass.

Yeah, reciprocity’s a bitch.

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I’ve been doing this since 1996 and I couldn’t balance a binary search tree. My answer would be “I use STL containers so I don’t have to waste my time with bullshit like that. Does a carpenter have to design a new saw for every piece of furniture he builds?”

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I would have gone for Kafka. Orwell - we wouldn’t be talking about it openly. Huxley - drugs are still illegal, aren’t they? But Kafka fits nicely, especially now since the absurd / crazy goes all the way to the top.
What I like especially is how you’ve the got the lowest level employees taking it upon themselves to perform some kind of extreme vetting in anticipatory obedience, before the orders have even been formulated - rather than kicking such things upstairs like they would (have to) in a regular military hierarchy.

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I propose the good old-fashioned community practice of shunning. If you’re a customs officer and you need something, I can’t help you. I don’t shake your hand when we meet, I don’t talk to you. This requires the crucial step of identifying these people, but it works surprisingly well.

And remember kids, befehl ist befehl is never an excuse.

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And that answer, my friend, will keep you locked up in a small room until they can get you back on a plane to wherever you came from.
No USA for you!

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Maybe they just wanted some work done on spec.

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Shunning - I like that. It’s civilized, requires no equipment, and helps to prevent the spread of germs.

Hey, could we bring back ostracizing folks, too?

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That’s what it comes down to: fan service for the white Know-Nothings who voted this confidence artist into office.

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The presumes a desire on behalf of the government to punish such things.

From the point of view of TrumpGOP, abusive/arbitrary racist border guards are a feature, not a bug.

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After it all falls down surely a few will be taking a trip to the Netherlands.

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Why do you assume I’m talking about the government doing this at all?

It ain’t called direct action because you’re waiting on someone else to do something.

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Oh, that’s rich.

“I dunno, Clyde, the answer he gave sure sounds like the techno gobbly-gook some nerd would say, but it doesn’t match the answer we found on this website. Check and see if he has a pocket protector, and maybe we should measure how thick his glasses are to be sure.”

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