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Comment by jberryman | Hacker News Reader

Sorry to be dense, but is this fiction or an actual open resignation letter? I don't know anything about raganwald.

Fictional. raganwald is too much of a slacker to be hired as a Director of Software Development

Eh, you might want to clarify that somewhere... I thought it was real, and my reaction was "Wow this guy's kind of a dick, I wouldn't even have the balls to ask someone to open their facebook account in the first place".

I think the lack of clarity is actually kind of refreshing for the web. You get that with literary magazines sometimes, where it's not apparent if something is fiction or memoir. But it's odd arriving there from HN.

Yeah, I kind of enjoyed the weird uncertainty for a few minutes.

I thought the Nixon letter was a nice touch.

I found the Nixon letter somehow ironic, actually--ragenwald's character was resigning out of ethical conviction, whereas Nixon resigned as a consequence of his own unethical behavior.

I don't agree that he was but I think Nixon honestly believed he was behaving ethically.

Both involved intrusions into people's personal lives by an employer. In Raganwald's case, digging through someone's Facebook files. In Nixon's case, breaking in to steal Ellsberg's psychiatrist file. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Fielding_break...

Facebook, psychiatrist -- same thing, right? :-)

It wasn't quite clear to me. I know you write in metaphors sometimes, but it was hard to tell if this was real or not.

I liked the hint he dropped here:

"But today something went seriously wrong. I have been interviewing senior hires for the crucial tech lead position on the Fizz Buzz team, and while several walked out in a huff when I asked them to let me look at their Facebook, one young lady smiled and said I could help myself."

I find that figuring out which aspects are real or adapted from reality is part of the fun of reading raganwald's stories.

Fictional on April 2nd, my mind cannot handle the stress!

A very good piece though, thank you for composing it :)

Captain of Undirected Development

Hehe, and I just commented how un-Ontarian the whole story was.

heh :) thanks

That the illustration is Nixon's resignation letter should be a clue.

People use all sorts of tangentially related images for their blog posts. I guess I'm just really gullible, but I thought the post was non-fictional.

> but I thought the post was non-fictional

That confusion is almost certainly deliberate. (Yuck.)

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