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INESC TEC, in the words of our partners – Statement by Tiago Faro from ADIRA.

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I started working over 20 years ago for organisations belonging to the Portuguese State, and I was always irritated by the management model that incentivises full compliance with the annual plan/budget (...), Ângelo Martins (CSIG)

Free Nonsense

"Human beings are very good at stereotyping, mainly when it comes to jobs. I would like to tell you about the stereotypes surrounding my job.", José Ornelas (CSIG)

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Free Nonsense

Free Nonsense

By José Ornelas*

At the time I wrote this text [November 2015], bad news were all around. Europe is shaken by the attacks in Paris, the refugee crisis increasingly worsens, the Turkish, the Russians, and various politicians. I guess it’s safe to use Einstein’s famous sentence: “I hope Christmas comes soon so that we can eat some desserts and release some tension.”[1] I wanted to write a funny text for this Free Nonsense, but as you can see right now it is quite difficult. Or maybe it’s my fault, so do me a favour and pretend to laugh.

Well, my name is José Ornelas and I am currently in my final year of the Master's Degree in Network and Information Systems Engineering. In August 2015 I started working on project “Stop Depression” at CSIG [INESC TEC’s Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics]. I started enjoying computers and technology at a very young age. I believe that that interest was born when I received my first computer, at the time a really powerful Pentium 2, and after a short while I decided to open it to assemble the 56k model.

But let us not dwell in the past. As you can suppose from my academic and professional choices, this interest persists to this day. As a programmer, or the “computer nerd” (which is basically what family members and friends call us), I am constantly bombarded with questions about computers. After some years, we start understating the role that people think we play in this technological world. Human beings are very good at stereotyping, mainly when it comes to jobs. I would like to tell you about the stereotypes surrounding my job. This is how most people see us:

  • They think we format, clean and fix computers.
  • They think that if they present us with an IT problem over the phone we can easily solve it.
  • They think we know everything about any kind of device/software even if we have never used it.
  • They think all we do is create websites and apps.
  • They think all we do is play video games.

This is just a summary, because these things can take large proportions. Similarly to what happens with the Law of Moore, I believe we must double our knowledge quarterly, otherwise we cannot meet people’s expectations of us. This is the other life of a programmer. Isn’t it funny?

[1] This is true. Source here: bit.ly/1e1EYJv

*Collaborator at the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG)