Would it be possible to have celebrity engineers? With all the Pop Idiol (aka American Idiol), Big Brother and Celebrity this that and the other isn’t it about time Engineers got the credit they deserve?
If you try and think of some celebrity software engineers, there really aren’t any. The closest thing to celebrity is probably someone like Bill Gates, or Linus Torvald. I can tell you having personally met Linus, that he’s the most boring person in the world. He wouldn’t know how to be outgoing if someone gave it to him written in a fully commented C program. Perhaps what the engineering community needs is it’s own version of Hello Magazine, it could be, entertainingly, called Helloworld! Magazine.
So what would it take to be a celebrity engineer? More importantly could I be one?
Update 1: Always wear sunglasses.
Update 2: Get a fancy camera phone & Wikipedia page.
Well, here’s a list of essential requirements:
- Be fantastically good looking (compared to regular engineers)
- Either to be regarded as a great engineer, or to have not done anything other than be a celebrity
- Become a socialite
- Always wear sunglasses (even when there’s no sun)
Now I’m clearly doing well on the first point, just look at the evidence in this photo
hmm, there we go, I’m talking myself up like a true celeb. There I go again, shortening things to make them trendy and cool. So on to having achieved something, well…It’s not like I’ve got some popular open source project, or made millions off a startup. However, I was the lead on technology that formed Rosetta and am now working for one of the coolest companies in the industry, Apple. That’s a start, but more effort is definitely required.
Lastly, being a socialite, well…I’ve got a lot of friends but in the world of an engineer does that count for much? Those are real world things that don’t give you credit as an engineer. There are only 12 friends listed on myspace but there are 63 people in my iChat buddy list. This is clearly no good enough!
As you can see from the picture, I’m already doing good wearing sunglasses at my computer. Things are looking up.
Now, what would it take to elevate my position to a real celebrity engineer. Firstly, probably get more people to read this blog. Become so self assured that I give speeches at engineer like conferences and dinners (being in California will make that easier). Ok, so I need a hot girlfriend…wait..I’ve got one of them, the lovely Nikki!
So, something else that all celebrities need to have now is a Wikipedia page. Current there isn’t one for me, see!. Now I need to think of something vain to put there.
Now all I need is that master stroke of luck and exposure to make me a celeb. Now there’s only a few ways to get exposure, the easiest being to do something outrageous. That could easily work but I’d rather do something quite cool.
What about the impact of being a celeb on my life? Would it really be possible to be an engineer who had a celebrity lifestyle. Perhaps this is why there are none, it’s simply not possible to work in software and have the commitments of the life of a celebrity (well they say it’s such hard work!).
I’m going to think about this a little more, wouldn’t it be nice to be give the latest gadgets to endorse them, along with the respect of my peers and be on the front cover of Helloworld! Magazine.