Replace Software Development with any job and you are really on to something.
People are mean and jerks are everywhere. Perhaps somehow society has convinced us otherwise, but there are a lot of terrible people out there.
A lot of people do evil things, a lot of people hurt other people. This is not new and it's not a secret, people for whatever reason are more oblivious to it than they should be or perhaps people are so accepting of inappropriate behavior in our entertainment mediums that we are desensitized to it until it happens to us. I really don't know for sure.
What I do know is not everybody deserves a say in everything. Sometimes people are wrong, or are trolling, or just have no place in the conversation. The right thing to do is to remove those people from the conversation if they aren't being constructive.
I think that the post over states it but I don't think it's entirely wrong that software developers are atypical in their behaviour, even if it's not exclusive to them.
There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy.
And this in an area where in many ways there are many similarities which you'd hope fostered friendship and bonding - we're talking about smart people who often share interests.
Maybe it is just that software developers are typical but even if that is the case given levels of intelligence, education and so on I still find it disappointing that we can't be better than that.
Having been in the work world for a while, I feel like this is new to an extent. I feel like harsh competition to the level of people being willing to sabotage their own projects and so-forth, is a phenomena of a gradually intensifying market-driven pressure that has been unleashed on society through a variety of forces (take-over focused hedge-funds and investor, market-efficiency ideologies, etc).
But reference than anecdotes, I'll give references:
But the point is this a somewhat new order. Of course, competition-so-ruthless-it-produces-bad-behavior has been around forever. But some circumstances allow that truly blossom and I think can argue we have those circumstances now.
I tend to agree with the article... while people can be mean anywhere, seems like there's a certain confluence of characteristics and circumstances that allows "jerks" to have an outsize place in the tech industry.
But I suppose to look on the bright side, I'd rather have somebody be a jerk to my face, even if it is subtle and insidious, than have them pretend to be my buddy and then stab me in the back.
I'll take being surrounded by jerks over trying to navigate some of the intricately constructed, intensely political environments that are common in the business world.
From the item: "The truth is not everyone has your best interests at heart. The truth is that a large number of people would like nothing more than to see you fail...."
Without getting into why, one of the reasons the above is a bit astonishing is that it frequently leads to project failure, and in startups that usually means company failure. You can't depend on simple notions of self-interest even in situations where failure will mean all involved will lose their jobs.
I might be wrong but I think the average jerkyness has been in decline over the last 10 years. Now that CS is not entirely comprised of the geekiest of the geekiest, there are a few well balanced people present, means that employers have more options, and they increasingly want nice people.
10-15 years ago the internet was just for geeks, but now everyone uses the internet, and and now business people want to learn how to code instead of locking us up in basements. So I am encouraged that the aggressive know-it-all might be slowly going extinct.
Very few people consider themselves jerks, or go out of their way to be that way. You could argue that I'm wrong in Finance, but I think I'm right in Software. A lot of the solution is getting inside of other people's heads, especially those who may not have great social skills. Being a jerk isn't the same as less developed interpersonal skills.
I don't think your characterization of society is necessarily all that universal.
I'm from the southern US, where people are known for hospitality and politeness, and I often see things said on places like the LKML that make me go, "If you said that to me in person in that way, I'd punch you in the face." And, to be clear, to me, punching the person in the face is not nearly as rude or unacceptable as whatever they said.
I'm trying to get used to the fact that different people have different social norms. I still think people like Linus have _inferior_ social norms, though. (Though he may be an exception, since his style seems to work so damn well.)
One thing I wish this article talked about: Sometimes, people are brutally honest with little tact. If you're overly sensitive, you might think that such a person is being mean or being a jerk - but they have your best interests in mind, because they are telling you either a factual truth or an unvarnished personal opinion.
The reason why they are brusque is not because 'they have been abused' but because, the tolerance for bullshit is low - because of two things 1) they have seen bullshit bring down otherwise promising projects or ideas, and they don't want that to happen; 2) they percieve that varnishing your emotions or opinions with too much tact increases the cognitive load required by the recipient to 'get to the truth'.
Whether or not being brusque or diplomatic actually is effective is debatable. Nonetheless, I think missing this very important concept is generally bad.
In some fields, like science, having to deal with people who will trash your idea with honest commentary - that makes you think twice about what you are doing - is far, far, far better than having to deal with the silent judgement of a failed experiment that lets you down dispassionately, and wondering, "why didn't anyone care enough to tell me I was stupid to try this".
My bottle of Aspirin says, I should take 2 pills after meals. My cough syrup says, I should take one tablespoon before bed.
But something that will, potentially, save me from myself cannot be delivered with tact, compassion and restraint with no delicacy whatsoever with regard to my sensibilities?
If the advice someone gives me is not in the form I can ingest, then what they have done is pleasure themselves publicly at my expense.
This was advice. I hope what I wrote falls into a form that you found ingestible.
Great points. Permit me to expand on them slightly.
To some people, myself included, frank honesty is respectful. I could be alone here, but I can find passive-aggressiveness, needless euphemisms, and the like to be patronizing. Treating me with kid gloves is like saying, "I have an opinion, but I don't think you are emotionally mature enough to handle it in its raw form."
It's important for "jerks" to be conscious of how their behavior affects their relationships with coworkers. But it's equally important for "nice" people to do the same.
My problem with this is that we often take what's easy and make it into a virtue. It is easy for us (esp. developers) to take the easy way out and decide that one must act the same no matter the context.
The truth is that your audience matters. Outcomes matter. Did the people in the room hear your message in a way that is going to move them closer to fixing the problem? No? Then you lost. (And your brutal honesty is just going to sound like complaining or anticipatory ass-covering.)
There are some organizations and people that are immune to criticism no matter the form. There are many other organizations and people that will accept criticism if it's phrased correctly for the context.
I prefer a more tactful style myself, but i would have to agree that a lot of perceived "jerkiness" is really an expression of misplaced respect.
I have known programmers who are brutally honest, but they do it because in their mind that is how adults talk to each other and this is how they wish to be treated themselves. Being 'tactful' in their mind is the equivalent of treating the other person like a child, and inherently disrespectful. I can see that point of view even if i don't think it is productive.
And then i have known programmers who are just bullies and mean. The difference is that they bittercoat things, making them sound deliberately worse, and they push people down so they can feel smug. That is not ok.
Wrong. Tact, compassion, and honesty are not in any way incompatible.
And no, people who think they are being "brutally honest" while forgetting compassion or even basic fucking manners are not doing so with others' best interests at heart.
They are just being assholes. There are bonafide reasons for that behavior, and they deserve a measure of compassion themselves while receiving that message, but don't try gilding the orifice's behavior.
If you work in software development for a decade or more in a corporate environment, you will encounter a surprising number of stakeholders who would like for the software project you're doing to fail, and will do everything they can get away with to make it fail. I did ERP implementations of Oracle ERP and SAP for many years, and saw this often. This can happen when the system you are replacing has the developer who wrote it (or a set of close allies) working on the transition project, which happens often when there is a system originally written by an in house IT team being replaced by third party software. It can happen when certain in house people did not want to replace the system, or for whatever reason predicted the new system would not be good-- people want their prophecies to come true, and they want to be consistent, so it can be difficult or impossible to convince them the system is good.
There can be bad people, and not just programmers, involved in any business enterprise. I try to look out for them and see what's coming when they want to sink a project I am on. I have also found that there are plenty of people who will not acknowledge the simple truth that I am talking about. They will say, "that is insane; how could any actual stakeholder want to see the project fail?" The answer involves looking at the various definitions of evil, which is a fascinating exercise. Sometimes people want to see harm come to others for various reasons, and that is the real world, sometimes.
I've seen a similar thing in projects that are in trouble: the relevant manager demotes the person responsible for the failure but leaves them on the project. Only your failure can validate their failure. In your examples, if their ERP software is being replaced, I suspect it's hard not to see it being declared a failure.
Another thing I've heard about what some called the "Procrustean bed" of SAP is that it can get terrifically resisted by stakeholders because it insists on rational business processes, and plenty of companies aren't run very rationally.
My family saw that while computerizing one doctor's office in 1980: after the data entry was done, the printer would just not stop in the first accounts receivable cycle. Turned out the office workers sent out a fixed number of bills per month (something like 200?), no matter how many actually needed to be sent. They didn't totally understand what was happening, but they knew "the computer would tell all".
As has been mentioned already in this thread, jerks are in every profession. But after being a software developer for many years and being exposed to other industries both directly and from hearing about it from third parties, the jerkiness in software development is much more palatable to me (though I'm a software developer, so go figure).
In a lot of fields people will be very polite to your face while stabbing you in the back and turning the knife. In software the jerks are generally very upfront, showing far less "people skills" but at least showing you their cards. And while I like to think I've never been a jerk (you'd have to ask people who worked with me to be sure), I've noticed there tend to be two classes of jerks in software development and it may be important for you to try to recognize the distinction.
The first kind of jerk is the grumpy old coder who shoots down your idea to use the latest wiz-bang tech to rewrite your entire project for the next release. This guy has very little people skills and may not do a great job of explaining his position, so he seems to just be shooting you down for no reason. THIS GUY IS PROBABLY RIGHT, though. And his jerkiness comes from years of battle scars.
The second kind of jerk is the cocky (usually younger) developer who is sure he is right about every decision despite having limited real world experience. At first blush he looks like the other kind of jerk (except that he's probably younger). THIS GUY IS PROBABLY WRONG. And his jerkiness comes from a lack of real-world experience combined with an over-inflated sense of confidence coming out of the school years where he was the smartest guy in his school, but mixed with unacknowledged self doubt. Sometimes this kind of jerk grows up to be the first kind of jerk, but sometimes they remain the second kind of jerk.
Oh please stereotype much? Grumpy old coders want a way to do their job as easily as possible -- which is good. However it becomes bad when they refused to learn new (community accepted) ways of doing things that are either REQUIRED or lead to efficiency down the road.
I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of the time. The other 10% I prod them to explore some of those 'wiz-bang' solutions to discover something that they hadn't thought of before.
Strong opinions, weakly held. Be vocal if you think you have a case or don't understand. Stay professional, don't make it personal and you should be ok.
The only category you seem to recognize is whether or not someone has real-world experience. There are legitimately negative people in this field who hurt others at their own expense, or for no reason, every day. This isn't about being nicey-nice when dismissing a bad idea.
It isn't a saving grace if someone bullies you 'upfront' on a daily basis - or if they (like you and almost every man in this industry) assume they are right and have more real-world experience and are geniuses.
I've been wondering how the "everyone is special" and "everyone wins!" trends that people have been teaching their children would manifest. This looks like a good example.
If you do anything that other people will see, some of them will criticize you. That's just life and not necessarily a bad thing. There isn't enough room for everyone to be special and winners. In order for someone to win someone else has to lose. So develop a thick skin. You are not your work. If someone is criticizing you instead of your work, then you learn to ignore them. They just want to be mean. If people are criticizing your work then you learn to pick out the real critiques so you can improve the next one.
And we introspect on why there are not many women in this industry.
I guess women should all just get a thick skin and stop thinking they are special. Because any abuse they might perceive is illusory, and their bullies are actually superior in knowledge and are justified in acting like jerks whenever they feel like it. After all, this is a meritocracy, how could it be otherwise? Whatever you get, you deserved.
Here's the thing with thick skin. Some people are, from a demonstrative physiological perspective [1], more sensitive than others. Telling people to "just develop a thick skin" is like telling a color-blind person to "just start differentiating colors better". Easy advice to give, totally useless.
This is precisely why I went into programming in the first place. A computer doesn't have feelings. It doesn't lie to me, I don't have to lie to it. It will do exactly what I ask it to do without fail, though I regularly ask it to do the wrong thing. They are completely and totally predictable.
People, on the other hand are emotional and mostly stupid (even the smart ones). They are going to lie to you, even if unintentionally, and you're required to lie to them in return. The person you're meeting might have had their family pet die last night and will react to you in completely irrational ways.
It's no wonder why when your job is to deal primarily with emotionless computers all day that it's tricky to then context switch back to lying and walking on eggshells.
I wish I could upvote this statement more. It is difficult to transition from an environment of honesty and truth then into an environment where lies and deceit are the common denominator of communication.
There's actually a method that works quite well in dealing with these "jerks." Ironically, it's the same tactic that men need to effectively communicate well with women.
Here's the secret: acknowledge them. Acknowledgement doesn't mean you smile and nod nor does it involve using the sentence structure ..., but... Try to understand their perspective and communicate through that perspective. Instead of asking others to see your perspective, it's much easier to do the reverse. Most arguments and personal qualification of someone being a jerk has to do with communicating from 2 different perspectives with neither side willing to take some time to understand the other perspective.
Most devs are fairly logical creatures. Understanding their perspective shouldn't be hard. However, it does take a bit of practice. If you can't understand where they are coming from, just ask more questions.
And some devs have the idea that they are Better Than You, no matter what your skill level or expertise. I'm a web dev and worked on a project recently with a lead who had just enough experience with web dev of the 90's to be dangerous. For example, he fought with me repeatedly about md5 being good enough for password hashing, while I wanted to use bcrypt (or at the very least, SHA1, even though it's almost as bad as md5). It took weeks before he relented, and only after I sent him several articles about how broken md5 is. In the end we wound up removing encryption entirely because it made his deployment process harder.
As someone who manage people in the software world, who created his business from zero coding himself alone for years, I disagree.
I had to fight a lot indifference when I started, now it is the opposite problem, when I say something to people in my team, some of them smarter than me they believe it too much, like I was God or something. The same happens with your product, people trust your reputation.
"Jerk" is such a victim mentality word, in my opinion, when you want to create something that is new, people can't see it like you do. It is as simple as that. Now when you make it and success everybody says that from the first day they believed in you(not true) and after you make some repeated successes they continue not seeing it but they trust you.
The fact is that talking is cheap, and some new developer has no reputation at all, so you will have to prove with code that you can walk your talk.
I have found that the more loudmouth and jerk-like the person is, the more they are covering up the realization that what they have/do is not all that unique, significant, or otherwise difficult yet rather comfortable and lucrative. Thus, they feel compelled to loud mouth barking and posturing to protect their bone. It's probably the same kind of mentality of a dog that snarls at his owner that just put down a bowl of food.
Off of the main topic: I explicitly worked with my dogs when they were puppies to avoid this 'mentality'.
The first big thing is that they are expected to be well behaved while I slowly put their food bowl down. If there is a hint of growl or lunging, the food bowl comes back up again and only when they have restrained themselves does the bowl start to go down again - and slower than before. My dogs are seniors now, but they 'understand' that he who giveth the food can - and will - taketh the food if they give me any grief.
The second big thing is that they are expected to give up whatever is in their mouth on command. This requires ongoing training, and also started when they were wee-little pups. They understand that if I put my hand out palm-up, or grip what is in their mouth, and tell them to "release" they are going to loose whatever is in their mouth. If they give it up without a scene, then they get it back in a few moments. If they make a scene, or I have to pry it from their jaws, then they may not get it back. This has helped in situations when they managed to get something they shouldn't have (e.g., a dropped grape).
If a dog snarls at their owner then that's a badly trained dog. I recommend this book if you have a badly behaved dog [1], or any dog good or bad actually.
I had my best friend kill himself on May 31, 1999 when he couldn't find a job and unemployment was running out. He was the best C++ programmer that I knew at the time. He worked at a Startup called Polygon that was mismanaged and abused their employees and then fired them all.
I did all I could to help him find a job, but nobody wanted to take a chance and hire him.
I had many friends I made working IT jobs end up killing themselves because they couldn't find work. Mostly Generation-Xers.
I got suicidal myself sometimes over how management had abused me and treated me. They didn't seem to think I was a human being, just some subhuman third class person they could treat like dirt. Had I worked at a company that treated me a different way I would not have gotten sick and ended up on disability from the stress.
I think its a bit much to say that people being assholes is the dark side that no one talks about. Truthfully, there aren't a lot of dark sides to software that no one talks about. The dark sides I can think of off the top of my head: misogyny; we consider ourselves successful if we put entire industries out of work; ageism; classism; the myth of the meritocracy; neoliberalism; creation of a private surveillance society; overly dramatic HN headlines; probably more I'll think of in the next five minutes.
The thing is, all of these, with the exception of that last one, are talked about quite a bit.
This was worse in the 1990's during when the Dotcom bubble burst. People we worked with were mean to use because 'programmers are a dime a dozen, we get 500+ resumes a week for your job and can easily find someone to replace you who can work for a lower salary.' Mentality that management had towards us programmers.
It is odd that management claims there is a lack of qualified programmers out there when so many programmers are out of work and qualified. Me, I am told I am overqualified by companies begging the US government to raise the H1B Visa cap because there are not enough qualified programmers to hire. It is a form of bullying and a slap in the face of anyone qualified who wants to earn a decent wage and benefits but is called overqualified because of past salaries they had earned.
Working in an IT department other employees can abuse you, call you names, even physically attack you, and you cannot do anything about it. If you complain to your manager they write you up for 'communication problems'. The average non-IT employee cannot tell the difference between a Microsoft Windows bug or a bug in the custom software that is written and thinks you can fix a bug with Windows or Office, etc. When you tell them you don't have the source code to Windows or Office, they get mad at you. Management tells IT workers to lie to the other employees and tell them you are working on fixing Windows and Office bugs, which is basically lying.
Seems like you don't see as many blog posts or thought pieces about it as opposed to other cultural issues in the industry, like gender imbalances or "startup culture" minutiae.
"We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life."
You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?
I feel extremely lucky that I've never had to deal with developers like that. Of course, I just assume everyone is smarter than I am [a pretty safe assumption usually!]. I try not to get to attached "my way" and I genuinely care about and consider my colleagues viewpoints. Call it "ego-less programming" if you will. I generally work in situations where my teammates have complementary skill sets so perhaps that lack of overlap helps reduce potential conflicts.
I did have a bad boss once at my first programming job - back in 1987...
> I’m actually working on a much bigger project to distill some of these specific software developer career tips into a bigger package.
Anyway, he's making general and simplistic arguments for whatever reason. Programmers have strong opinions and will argue them vigorously. I agree with Socrates “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” and we should all not tolerate that, but while the argument is going on, if you can't join in and make yours don't blame the community for being intolerant.
Just commenting to say, that in our profession WITHOUT licensure there is not other way to really prove that we're competent except for our reputation.
This leads to big egos and constantly trying to make your self look better no matter what.
If we were a licensed profession like medicine where you have a third party proof of your competence and you weren't constantly trying to guard your reputation, I bet you that it would lighten people up a lot.
Not in my experience. That just lends itself to a lot of protectionism and equally inflated egos (and the piece of paper to prove you earned it.) In fact, only academia tops medicine for inflated egos and self-aggrandizing behavior in my book.
This research looked at the relationship between empathy and technical work among IT workers. For both women and men, less technical work (i.e. public oriented) tended to have those people with more capacity for empathy. For women, there was a small decline in empathy as the researchers moved towards purely technical work. However, this drop in empathy was far, far sharper for men.
Take your own conclusions about this, including its relation to the presence (or lack thereof) of women in IT.
This post should be titled, 'The Dark Side of Work That No Ones Talks About'. Having worked in the accounting / tax field for years, before switching over to programming, I fail to see how these generalized statements don't apply to other fields. It applies to work in general.
[+] [-] programminggeek|12 years ago|reply
People are mean and jerks are everywhere. Perhaps somehow society has convinced us otherwise, but there are a lot of terrible people out there.
A lot of people do evil things, a lot of people hurt other people. This is not new and it's not a secret, people for whatever reason are more oblivious to it than they should be or perhaps people are so accepting of inappropriate behavior in our entertainment mediums that we are desensitized to it until it happens to us. I really don't know for sure.
What I do know is not everybody deserves a say in everything. Sometimes people are wrong, or are trolling, or just have no place in the conversation. The right thing to do is to remove those people from the conversation if they aren't being constructive.
[+] [-] Tyrannosaurs|12 years ago|reply
There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy.
And this in an area where in many ways there are many similarities which you'd hope fostered friendship and bonding - we're talking about smart people who often share interests.
Maybe it is just that software developers are typical but even if that is the case given levels of intelligence, education and so on I still find it disappointing that we can't be better than that.
[+] [-] joe_the_user|12 years ago|reply
But reference than anecdotes, I'll give references:
David Gordon documents how downsizing produces expertise in sabotaging other rather than efficiency: http://www.amazon.com/FAT-AND-MEAN-Managerial-Downsizing/dp/...
The Gervais Principle perhaps summarizes the predatory new order. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o...
But the point is this a somewhat new order. Of course, competition-so-ruthless-it-produces-bad-behavior has been around forever. But some circumstances allow that truly blossom and I think can argue we have those circumstances now.
[+] [-] georgebonnr|12 years ago|reply
But I suppose to look on the bright side, I'd rather have somebody be a jerk to my face, even if it is subtle and insidious, than have them pretend to be my buddy and then stab me in the back.
I'll take being surrounded by jerks over trying to navigate some of the intricately constructed, intensely political environments that are common in the business world.
[+] [-] hga|12 years ago|reply
Without getting into why, one of the reasons the above is a bit astonishing is that it frequently leads to project failure, and in startups that usually means company failure. You can't depend on simple notions of self-interest even in situations where failure will mean all involved will lose their jobs.
[+] [-] tlarkworthy|12 years ago|reply
10-15 years ago the internet was just for geeks, but now everyone uses the internet, and and now business people want to learn how to code instead of locking us up in basements. So I am encouraged that the aggressive know-it-all might be slowly going extinct.
[+] [-] mathattack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javert|12 years ago|reply
I'm from the southern US, where people are known for hospitality and politeness, and I often see things said on places like the LKML that make me go, "If you said that to me in person in that way, I'd punch you in the face." And, to be clear, to me, punching the person in the face is not nearly as rude or unacceptable as whatever they said.
I'm trying to get used to the fact that different people have different social norms. I still think people like Linus have _inferior_ social norms, though. (Though he may be an exception, since his style seems to work so damn well.)
[+] [-] rco8786|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnautics|12 years ago|reply
The reason why they are brusque is not because 'they have been abused' but because, the tolerance for bullshit is low - because of two things 1) they have seen bullshit bring down otherwise promising projects or ideas, and they don't want that to happen; 2) they percieve that varnishing your emotions or opinions with too much tact increases the cognitive load required by the recipient to 'get to the truth'.
Whether or not being brusque or diplomatic actually is effective is debatable. Nonetheless, I think missing this very important concept is generally bad.
In some fields, like science, having to deal with people who will trash your idea with honest commentary - that makes you think twice about what you are doing - is far, far, far better than having to deal with the silent judgement of a failed experiment that lets you down dispassionately, and wondering, "why didn't anyone care enough to tell me I was stupid to try this".
[+] [-] eksith|12 years ago|reply
But something that will, potentially, save me from myself cannot be delivered with tact, compassion and restraint with no delicacy whatsoever with regard to my sensibilities?
If the advice someone gives me is not in the form I can ingest, then what they have done is pleasure themselves publicly at my expense.
This was advice. I hope what I wrote falls into a form that you found ingestible.
[+] [-] humanrebar|12 years ago|reply
To some people, myself included, frank honesty is respectful. I could be alone here, but I can find passive-aggressiveness, needless euphemisms, and the like to be patronizing. Treating me with kid gloves is like saying, "I have an opinion, but I don't think you are emotionally mature enough to handle it in its raw form."
It's important for "jerks" to be conscious of how their behavior affects their relationships with coworkers. But it's equally important for "nice" people to do the same.
[+] [-] jtbigwoo|12 years ago|reply
My problem with this is that we often take what's easy and make it into a virtue. It is easy for us (esp. developers) to take the easy way out and decide that one must act the same no matter the context.
The truth is that your audience matters. Outcomes matter. Did the people in the room hear your message in a way that is going to move them closer to fixing the problem? No? Then you lost. (And your brutal honesty is just going to sound like complaining or anticipatory ass-covering.)
There are some organizations and people that are immune to criticism no matter the form. There are many other organizations and people that will accept criticism if it's phrased correctly for the context.
[+] [-] Joeri|12 years ago|reply
I have known programmers who are brutally honest, but they do it because in their mind that is how adults talk to each other and this is how they wish to be treated themselves. Being 'tactful' in their mind is the equivalent of treating the other person like a child, and inherently disrespectful. I can see that point of view even if i don't think it is productive.
And then i have known programmers who are just bullies and mean. The difference is that they bittercoat things, making them sound deliberately worse, and they push people down so they can feel smug. That is not ok.
[+] [-] logjam|12 years ago|reply
And no, people who think they are being "brutally honest" while forgetting compassion or even basic fucking manners are not doing so with others' best interests at heart.
They are just being assholes. There are bonafide reasons for that behavior, and they deserve a measure of compassion themselves while receiving that message, but don't try gilding the orifice's behavior.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unoti|12 years ago|reply
There can be bad people, and not just programmers, involved in any business enterprise. I try to look out for them and see what's coming when they want to sink a project I am on. I have also found that there are plenty of people who will not acknowledge the simple truth that I am talking about. They will say, "that is insane; how could any actual stakeholder want to see the project fail?" The answer involves looking at the various definitions of evil, which is a fascinating exercise. Sometimes people want to see harm come to others for various reasons, and that is the real world, sometimes.
[+] [-] hga|12 years ago|reply
Another thing I've heard about what some called the "Procrustean bed" of SAP is that it can get terrifically resisted by stakeholders because it insists on rational business processes, and plenty of companies aren't run very rationally.
My family saw that while computerizing one doctor's office in 1980: after the data entry was done, the printer would just not stop in the first accounts receivable cycle. Turned out the office workers sent out a fixed number of bills per month (something like 200?), no matter how many actually needed to be sent. They didn't totally understand what was happening, but they knew "the computer would tell all".
[+] [-] georgemcbay|12 years ago|reply
In a lot of fields people will be very polite to your face while stabbing you in the back and turning the knife. In software the jerks are generally very upfront, showing far less "people skills" but at least showing you their cards. And while I like to think I've never been a jerk (you'd have to ask people who worked with me to be sure), I've noticed there tend to be two classes of jerks in software development and it may be important for you to try to recognize the distinction.
The first kind of jerk is the grumpy old coder who shoots down your idea to use the latest wiz-bang tech to rewrite your entire project for the next release. This guy has very little people skills and may not do a great job of explaining his position, so he seems to just be shooting you down for no reason. THIS GUY IS PROBABLY RIGHT, though. And his jerkiness comes from years of battle scars.
The second kind of jerk is the cocky (usually younger) developer who is sure he is right about every decision despite having limited real world experience. At first blush he looks like the other kind of jerk (except that he's probably younger). THIS GUY IS PROBABLY WRONG. And his jerkiness comes from a lack of real-world experience combined with an over-inflated sense of confidence coming out of the school years where he was the smartest guy in his school, but mixed with unacknowledged self doubt. Sometimes this kind of jerk grows up to be the first kind of jerk, but sometimes they remain the second kind of jerk.
[+] [-] tsunamifury|12 years ago|reply
I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of the time. The other 10% I prod them to explore some of those 'wiz-bang' solutions to discover something that they hadn't thought of before.
[+] [-] altcognito|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nawitus|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
It isn't a saving grace if someone bullies you 'upfront' on a daily basis - or if they (like you and almost every man in this industry) assume they are right and have more real-world experience and are geniuses.
[+] [-] ripter|12 years ago|reply
I've been wondering how the "everyone is special" and "everyone wins!" trends that people have been teaching their children would manifest. This looks like a good example.
If you do anything that other people will see, some of them will criticize you. That's just life and not necessarily a bad thing. There isn't enough room for everyone to be special and winners. In order for someone to win someone else has to lose. So develop a thick skin. You are not your work. If someone is criticizing you instead of your work, then you learn to ignore them. They just want to be mean. If people are criticizing your work then you learn to pick out the real critiques so you can improve the next one.
[+] [-] pekk|12 years ago|reply
I guess women should all just get a thick skin and stop thinking they are special. Because any abuse they might perceive is illusory, and their bullies are actually superior in knowledge and are justified in acting like jerks whenever they feel like it. After all, this is a meritocracy, how could it be otherwise? Whatever you get, you deserved.
[+] [-] MartinCron|12 years ago|reply
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person
[+] [-] pdevr|12 years ago|reply
I agree with the rest, but winning is not always a zero-sum game.
[+] [-] consultant23522|12 years ago|reply
People, on the other hand are emotional and mostly stupid (even the smart ones). They are going to lie to you, even if unintentionally, and you're required to lie to them in return. The person you're meeting might have had their family pet die last night and will react to you in completely irrational ways.
It's no wonder why when your job is to deal primarily with emotionless computers all day that it's tricky to then context switch back to lying and walking on eggshells.
[+] [-] avelis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xarien|12 years ago|reply
Here's the secret: acknowledge them. Acknowledgement doesn't mean you smile and nod nor does it involve using the sentence structure ..., but... Try to understand their perspective and communicate through that perspective. Instead of asking others to see your perspective, it's much easier to do the reverse. Most arguments and personal qualification of someone being a jerk has to do with communicating from 2 different perspectives with neither side willing to take some time to understand the other perspective.
Most devs are fairly logical creatures. Understanding their perspective shouldn't be hard. However, it does take a bit of practice. If you can't understand where they are coming from, just ask more questions.
[+] [-] itsallbs|12 years ago|reply
I've got a new job.
[+] [-] forgottenpaswrd|12 years ago|reply
I had to fight a lot indifference when I started, now it is the opposite problem, when I say something to people in my team, some of them smarter than me they believe it too much, like I was God or something. The same happens with your product, people trust your reputation.
"Jerk" is such a victim mentality word, in my opinion, when you want to create something that is new, people can't see it like you do. It is as simple as that. Now when you make it and success everybody says that from the first day they believed in you(not true) and after you make some repeated successes they continue not seeing it but they trust you.
The fact is that talking is cheap, and some new developer has no reputation at all, so you will have to prove with code that you can walk your talk.
[+] [-] wahsd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yaddayadda|12 years ago|reply
The first big thing is that they are expected to be well behaved while I slowly put their food bowl down. If there is a hint of growl or lunging, the food bowl comes back up again and only when they have restrained themselves does the bowl start to go down again - and slower than before. My dogs are seniors now, but they 'understand' that he who giveth the food can - and will - taketh the food if they give me any grief.
The second big thing is that they are expected to give up whatever is in their mouth on command. This requires ongoing training, and also started when they were wee-little pups. They understand that if I put my hand out palm-up, or grip what is in their mouth, and tell them to "release" they are going to loose whatever is in their mouth. If they give it up without a scene, then they get it back in a few moments. If they make a scene, or I have to pry it from their jaws, then they may not get it back. This has helped in situations when they managed to get something they shouldn't have (e.g., a dropped grape).
[+] [-] philbarr|12 years ago|reply
1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Listener-Jan-Fennell/dp/00065323...
[+] [-] boomlinde|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orionblastar|12 years ago|reply
I had my best friend kill himself on May 31, 1999 when he couldn't find a job and unemployment was running out. He was the best C++ programmer that I knew at the time. He worked at a Startup called Polygon that was mismanaged and abused their employees and then fired them all.
I did all I could to help him find a job, but nobody wanted to take a chance and hire him.
I had many friends I made working IT jobs end up killing themselves because they couldn't find work. Mostly Generation-Xers.
I got suicidal myself sometimes over how management had abused me and treated me. They didn't seem to think I was a human being, just some subhuman third class person they could treat like dirt. Had I worked at a company that treated me a different way I would not have gotten sick and ended up on disability from the stress.
[+] [-] karmajunkie|12 years ago|reply
The thing is, all of these, with the exception of that last one, are talked about quite a bit.
[+] [-] orionblastar|12 years ago|reply
It is odd that management claims there is a lack of qualified programmers out there when so many programmers are out of work and qualified. Me, I am told I am overqualified by companies begging the US government to raise the H1B Visa cap because there are not enough qualified programmers to hire. It is a form of bullying and a slap in the face of anyone qualified who wants to earn a decent wage and benefits but is called overqualified because of past salaries they had earned.
Working in an IT department other employees can abuse you, call you names, even physically attack you, and you cannot do anything about it. If you complain to your manager they write you up for 'communication problems'. The average non-IT employee cannot tell the difference between a Microsoft Windows bug or a bug in the custom software that is written and thinks you can fix a bug with Windows or Office, etc. When you tell them you don't have the source code to Windows or Office, they get mad at you. Management tells IT workers to lie to the other employees and tell them you are working on fixing Windows and Office bugs, which is basically lying.
[+] [-] swombat|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] georgebonnr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ExpiredLink|12 years ago|reply
Jean-Paul Sartre
[+] [-] Vargas|12 years ago|reply
You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?
[+] [-] chrisbennet|12 years ago|reply
I did have a bad boss once at my first programming job - back in 1987...
[+] [-] michaelwww|12 years ago|reply
> I’m actually working on a much bigger project to distill some of these specific software developer career tips into a bigger package.
Anyway, he's making general and simplistic arguments for whatever reason. Programmers have strong opinions and will argue them vigorously. I agree with Socrates “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” and we should all not tolerate that, but while the argument is going on, if you can't join in and make yours don't blame the community for being intolerant.
[+] [-] nickthemagicman|12 years ago|reply
If we were a licensed profession like medicine where you have a third party proof of your competence and you weren't constantly trying to guard your reputation, I bet you that it would lighten people up a lot.
[+] [-] karmajunkie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephencanon|12 years ago|reply
You've never hung around with doctors outside of the hospital, clearly. Their egos, in general, dwarf any I've encountered in software or hardware.
[+] [-] felipeerias|12 years ago|reply
Male technologists, which make up the majority of the SW development community, tend to be particularly good at the first and bad at the second:
http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf
This research looked at the relationship between empathy and technical work among IT workers. For both women and men, less technical work (i.e. public oriented) tended to have those people with more capacity for empathy. For women, there was a small decline in empathy as the researchers moved towards purely technical work. However, this drop in empathy was far, far sharper for men.
Take your own conclusions about this, including its relation to the presence (or lack thereof) of women in IT.
[+] [-] nish1500|12 years ago|reply