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"When I started programming, I heard a lot about how programmers are down to earth, not like those elitist folks who have uniforms involving suits and ties. You
by quantum_nerd 11y ago
"When I started programming, I heard a lot about how programmers are down to earth, not like those elitist folks who have uniforms involving suits and ties. You can even wear t-shirts to work! But if you think programmers aren’t elitist, try wearing a suit and tie to an interview sometime. You’ll have to go above and beyond to prove that you’re not a bad cultural fit. We like to think that we’re different from all those industries that judge people based on appearance, but we do the same thing, only instead of saying that people are a bad fit because they don’t wear ties, we say they’re a bad fit because they do, and instead of saying people aren’t smart enough because they don’t have the right pedigree… wait, that’s exactly the same." --- that's his conclusion and that pretty much sums it up for me as a black junior developer from MidWest University who's looking for work now.
- philovivero 11y agoLooking for work where?
- quantum_nerd 11y agoSeattle. But I am open to moving.
- bobwaycott 11y agoMaybe you could embellish your profile with an email address?
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoThere are a lot of down to Earth devs, but there's also some... how do I say this delicately? ... Assholes. These people grew up knowing they were smarter than average, but didn't learn to talk to an average. They always have to be the smartest person in the room. This person's sentences start with "Well, technically..." more often than not because you're dumber than they are. A lot of us go through a period, when we're young, where we start correcting people because, well, we're smart and they're wrong. Most of us get over it and actually learn how to talk to an average (being able to accept when they are right and being able to STFU when they are wrong or explaining it delicately if it's actually something important). Mostly because we learn that an average hates to be corrected all the time. But also because conversations can be fun if you just don't worry about whether what people are saying is "technically" correct or not.
- quantum_nerd 11y agoI agree that there's definitely a lot of down to Earth Devs and they are probably some of the reasons why I didn't give up on this career(even though I didn't fit in nobody's box and felt alienated from everyone since Freshman year of college), but booooy are there so many holier-than-thou "I went to CalFord or StanTech so I am a god!!" whose last iota of humility was probably when they were in middle school. It almost feels adversarial sometimes when going through tech interviews(as if the process of preparing for them wasn't draining enough). Fortunately, there's a glimmer of hope most smarter-than-average devs are actually good people and are willing and nice enough to help when asked. It just doesn't seem like so when I am doing phone screens or talking to some people at insert-programming-language meetup.
- jamesdutc 11y agoI wore a suit when I interviewed at Reddit. I didn't get the job. (Vanity compels me to share: I was probably going to ask for more money than they would have been willing to pay. But before a former CEO pops in this thread to reveal that I was actually incompetent, I must say that I think I put on a good show. The weekend prior to being flown out to SF, I spent a day analysing their server code and was able to not only find a fairly subtle bug but propose a fix for it.)