At lunch, we were reminiscing about the past (our Director of Engineering is leaving to start his own company) and he reminded us of the time the company tried to place a want ad for a "Senior Engineer". What the company wanted was an experienced engineer and not someone fresh out of school. The newspaper staff informed our company that the word "senior" could not be used in an advertisement because it was discriminatory so the ad had to be changed to use the word "experienced".
That reminded me of another story about our hiring a software engineer. At the time (about 15 years ago), we had a specific need for a programmer who was familiar with the Microsoft Foundation Classes and their use in Windows programming. Since you pay by the word, it was decided to abbreviate Microsoft Foundation Classes to MFC. This was how it was most often used among programmers anyway and we figured if people didn't know what MFC meant (in relation to programming), they weren't right for the job. When this was read to the newspaper staff member, they didn't quite get the MFC part and the head of the Software Group repeated it as "M F C - Mary Frank Charlie" to emphasize the letters. Our ad came out that we were looking for a "Mary Frank Charlie" programmer. I don't think we ever found one.
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