Does Travelers Insurance Hate Geeks?
Joel put out a flurry of posts in the last few days including this interesting look at a recent Travelers Insurance ad that depicts geeks in a rather stereotypical light. I’m guessing a lot of folks will agree with Joel’s assessment that the add is offensive - what do you think? All I know is it sounds like he’s shopping for a new policy:
You probably forgot that most of the people that read Inc. are geeks. And we buy insurance. Lots of insurance. Like me. And in fact I used to buy it from you. But not any more.
Now, I have no idea just how many geeks are covered by Travelers, but I do know that a lot of them read Joel’s blog…wonder how many will join him in his boycott? Smacks a bit of Microsoft’s recent evolve campaign and we know how popular that has been!
August 1st, 2006 at 8:14 pm
[…] In the late ’90s, a lot of people entered this profession - if you could spell Oracle, you were golden. While I certainly appreciated this attitude during the period I was looking for that all important first job, it was quite a shock when I started working with folks for whom software was just a job. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people have to eat, breathe, sleep this stuff (I really appreciate being able to carry on a conversation about, you know, sports or something) but to really excel at this stuff, it has to be more than a passing fancy. Yes, coders are mocked and software is incredibly artistic. And yes, companies that “get it” do extremely well. The sad thing though - few places seem to really want the passionate among us…wonder why that is. […]