I was riding the bus home from work one day when I lived in Center City Philadelphia. At one stop, this enormous black homeless-looking woman got on and sat in the seat in front of me. She had a nearly unmanageable collection of ratty old bags and suitcases with her, and her clothes were filthy and she smelled terrible. At my stop, as I walked past her seat I glanced over at her and saw that she had pulled out a Macbook Pro and had Xcode open (the Mac IDE) and was working on an iPhone app.

At the time I was working as an iPhone developer for Comcast and we were desperate to hire more iOS developers. I thought seriously about getting this woman's contact details and bringing her in for an interview. Not because I had contempt for homeless people but because I had contempt for Comcast.