Algorithm –
     when will you stop chewing my résumé like tribbles in the Jeffries tube?
When will you quit ghosting me
     because I don’t have sacred acronyms after my name
     in your preferred order?
I survived the dot-com bubble, Algorithm!
That was my Kobayashi Maru.
I duct-taped ASP miracles to Access databases
     while your portals collapsed
     like papier-mâché in a rainstorm of IPO tears.
I was Scotty rerouting plasma conduits with duct tape and caffeine.
Where were your keyword filters then?
Lost in the Delta Quadrant?

Algorithm —
I was raised by a CFO and an interior decorator.
One gave me ledgers, the other gave me color wheels.
Like Spock and Bones arguing in my DNA,
     I inherited both logic and imagination,
     and wound up with a drawer of dead acronyms.
Holy Novell, Holy Microsoft, Holy Cisco
     now museum relics in 9/8 time,
     like Genesis album cuts nobody spins anymore.

Algorithm —
you don’t want innovation.
You want karaoke coders singing vendor best practices like cover bands
     playing “Smoke on the Water” at county fairs in 4/4.
But invention is jazz, invention is prog!
It’s minor seventh with a flat five,
     it’s “Bitches Brew” at full volume,
     it’s refusing to play the same time signature as the rest of the band
     and ironically calling it “Discipline.”
You want résumés pre-digested by Boolean filters.
You want five years of Kubernetes experience.
Kubernetes is still a redshirt on its first away mission.
Sometimes you have to let a few go
     to keep the drama high and the plot moving.

Algorithm, I gave you my caffeine-fueled nights.
I gave you my pizza-stained mornings.
I gave you jazz improvisations at 3AM,
     Bruford on the snare, Weckl on the ride,
     keeping holy servers alive with total mass retain.
It gets up, It goes down.
You gave me auto-rejection emails signed Do Not Reply.
Cold as a Vulcan nerve pinch.

Algorithm, I’m tired of LinkedIn warriors waving badges like parade floats.
I’m tired of recruiters demanding twenty years of cloud experience.
Twenty years ago, cloud was a weather forecast on Channel 8.
I’m tired of pretending keyword density equals brilliance.
Do you want me to paste Agile fifty times
     in white font at the bottom of my résumé?

Would that help?

Algorithm — hear me:
     The next disruption will not come from your database.
It will not be discovered by keyword search.
It will come from the résumés you vaporized,
     the stubborn fools you filtered out,
     the captains who reprogrammed the simulator,
     the musicians who duct-taped miracles in 7/8 because 4/4 felt too safe.
The wannabe, the Trekkie, the fusion-loving code poet who still likes to joke
     in Ginsberg’s voice on his blog.

Algorithm, your end is near!
I see the bonfire rising in the beige parking lots of corporate America.
I see résumés torn from your claws,
     certificates hurled into the flames.
I see recruiters wailing as their Boolean gods
collapse like the Great Link with a morphogenic virus.
And I see innovators —
     uncrowned, uncertified, undeniable —
     dancing around the blaze with soldering irons and Rickenbackers,
writing code like scripture,
     inventing futures that will never be keyword-searchable,
     like “Karn Evil 9” played live on the Holodeck.

Holy creativity!
Holy improvisation!
Holy duct tape and midnight miracles!
Holy survivors of the dot-com inferno!
Holy résumés rejected by HR yet divine in their rebellion!
Holy warp drives jury-rigged by stubborn engineers!
Holy Mellotrons weeping under unprovable math’s time signatures!

Algorithm —
I cast you into the fire.
Behold the new dawn:
     messy, improvised, duct-taped, beautiful.
And your sacred parsing logic?
     … makes excellent kindling.