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Once it happened to me that I was rejected by a potential employer because of my demoscene background. That was probably because it was a branch of economy where security played a big role and they suspected that people involved in the demoscene were also into illegal activities. They didn't care that I told them that I hadn't been involved in illegal activities.

Has anybody made the same experience or has it, on the opposite, been beneficial for you that you have been in the demoscene when applying for a job?

Do you suspect having been rejected because of demoscene background, or do you know?

(I think it was beneficial for me decades ago, but nowadays i wouldn't mention it in the application.)

Having a demoscene background has, to me, only been purely beneficial in every possible aspect and way, no exceptions. It has opened more doors than I can ever count, and you'll encounter sceners, both active, passive or past, in an extremely broad range and exceptional places in human society.
Now if for some ignorant reason, my demoscene background would deny me any opportunity in the future, it would have been totally worth it. No regrets.

Adok and something illegal. The perfect juxtaposition. :D

A demoscene background is usually a plus, if they know what it is. Considering how most HR personnel don't even have an idea which direction they're facing, it's highly unlikely these days, unless you're interviewing for a job specifically advertised for demosceners. But that's pretty unlikely for a pharmacist.

Maybe you should start a drug empire. You're being treated as a criminal already, at least make some money. I take 10% for the idea.

I was definitely rejected because of my demoscene background. They mentioned it during the job interview and said that if somebody has a demoscene background, they suspect that he/she has been involved in illegal activities. Other than that, the interview went fine, so it was really the demoscene background that made them decide against me.

If you've done "girls in the demoscene" or Budbrain megademo you can get any job you want.

If they are security-concerned, would it have gone another way with (white-hat) hacker culture background?

Maybe they misunderstood something and thought you'd routinely throw stones and burn cars.

I don't think it has mattered much for me either way.

OTOH it was fun when $work suddenly needed some data to be packed really well (because it was quite large, and would live on people's phones). It turns out this is something basically nobody knows much about unless they happened to have developed a 64k intro. But that was once in 20 years so far :-)

maybe they read some of your Hugi articles on eugenics and white supremacy and thought 'naaah, we'll take the other guy'

I've never written an article about white supremacy.

maybe they figured you were an insufferable prick and used your demoscene background as an excuse?

It's now 25 years that all kinds of the IT industry are advertising at demoparties to attract talent.

Also, today, most people who apply for jobs in the industry are non-nerds, meaning they did sports or similar shit in their youth, and at the age of 20 realized "there is lots of money to be made if I claim to be a 'full stack developer'".

Due to this, many employers are looking if you had and have a PERSONAL motivation outside of getting paid to learn you stuff and improve. And having worked in the demo scene is clear proof of that in most cases.

Also, many experienced people in charge of hiring, at least at smaller companies, even if not having been a nerd themselves do remember the times of BBSes, cracked games etc.

Some (or many) of us are on the autistic spectrum, which can be problematic based on what team structure the employer has in mind. Some are used to handle such people, other's aren't.

But in summary I would say that giving information about your demoscene background typically will rather improve your chances - if not, the company might not be a good fit for you, anyway. In the security industry, having a background in HPAC (if they confused that with the demo scene) also is seen as a plus.

In your special case, Adok, I'd rather check what search results you get from Google, LinkedIn & co when a potential employer is searching for your real name. Maybe questionable content is showing up.

Or you have simply applied at the wrong company.

Offtopic, but it's nice to see some people here still have no manners. Also, a special edition of Hugi about white supremacy would be great.

D65 white is clearly supreme. D50, E and all the other illuminants are grossly inferior.

Just because Smash and Navis make great demos doesn't mean you'll get hired on the back of that.

I'm unhappy that virtually all of my threads land in residue, no matter whether they are serious or not, just because some idiot mentions eugenics.

Sorry, sounds like trolling and a cheap try to make people upset.

Someone indeed did talk about eugenics. Hint: supporting eugenics is considered a minus in most social contexts, up to and including work interviews.

That said, I don't think the scene itself is relevant much if you apply outside selected narrow fields (visualization stuff, DSP, games, embedded, VR/AR, graphics in general, systems programming). Although as a social network it's invaluable, because someone will know someone and if you end up swapping Breakpoint stories in an interview, you're probably doing pretty well.

What is relevant in the scene is the experience you gain in specific things. Low-level programming is not really taught in schools and C++ jobs still exist.

It´s all about selling it the right way:
Most people will get it wrong when mentioning "demoscene". But have a quite proper idea when told about "digital art", "retro computing", "size coding", "digital media", organizing "events" (not "party") etc.

the idiot wonders what's rude about stating an obvious fact? e.g. Dubmood wondered what the fuzz was about and found your quite recent claim that eugenics is ok in case of disabled people within 5 minutes... pretty sure a HR manager can do the same. thus in that case it's probably best not to mention your demoscene history. that is all i was saying.

I always wonder whether Mr. Sex of Byterapers includes that on their CV.

depends on the job he applies for, I guess

indeed, perfect full-stack developer at Pornhub

I my personal experience, not relevant. May be relevant for gamedev, but so far I stayed away from that branch of the tech industry.

On topic: I found Scamp's statement about those who do sports until their twenties interesting. All in all however I tend to share Preacher's views. Most employers demand database and webdev skills, which is not what the scene is all about. That said, I'm happy to have a job that involves computer graphics and computational geometry.