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"Fakers, cheaters, bullshiters are everywhere unfortunately" We are. Source: I am a master-level bullshitter. Professional lobbyists and politicians ask me to

"Fakers, cheaters, bullshiters are everywhere unfortunately" We are. Source: I am a master-level bullshitter. Professional lobbyists and politicians ask me to make introductions, use my network, etc. Here's the weird thing, though: I'm a software developer. A pretty good one. Not the best, but top 20%. I know tons of Natural Bullshitters like myself, but I've never met another one that was a software engineer. Dabblers, occasionally, but no Naturals. The thing is, it takes a bullshitter to spot a bullshitter. So being a good bullshitter is the skill that has offered the most utility to the various jobs I've had in tech: calling out frauds, inflating the profiles of the people on my teams doing actual work, undermining lesser bullshitters that try to take credit from them... come to think of it, there's never been a technical team I was on where I was not the most popular member of the team (among my peers, at least). So if you can find a Daywalker, try adding them to your team...

abalashov 9y ago
I can kind of relate to that. I wouldn't call myself a professional bullshitter, and I wouldn't still have a business after ten years if I didn't have substantive knowledge of what I do. However, my cultural and family background is in the humanities. I spent most of my adolescence and teenage years on my programming hobby, like many people here I think, but the route to a tech career was a rather incidental one. My parents are philosophy professors, and I entered university with a political science major (switched to philosophy), before dropping out two and a half years later to pursue what was by then an ascendant tech career. The discord between my background and the psychology of typical software engineers and business guys has led to amusing, sometimes infuriating cultural clashes over the years. Nevertheless, I've got the comment more than a handful of times over the years that I really should have been a writer or do something involving lots of speaking. You can probably tell from this comment alone that I'm not a person of few words. As I get older, this has seen me enlisted to assist with marketing copy, résumé polishing, LinkedIn profile formulation, and a variety of other tasks that require putting a spin on things and drawing on one's facility of rhetoric. Some have said I'm a lawyer on the inside, combining the logical, left-brained, procedural qualities of a programmer with a knack for wordsmithing eloquent pleadings. It's a weird space to dwell in. The real nerds think I'm a bullshitter half the time. The real bullshitters think I'm a nerd who lacks the social jujitsu to really hobnob with Visionaries like themselves. Beats me.
sitepodmatt 9y ago
I dont underestimate the benefit of soft skills and also benefit masters of org/office politics can lend to the rest of the team, especially when your one step away from a contract renewal. Ive had great PMs before that add the benefits you mention. But occasionally you get a toxic bullshiter in the coding space, dabblers ranked as technical peers, out for themselves and somehow pulls the wool over management, asshats.

abalashov 9y ago

I can kind of relate to that. I wouldn't call myself a professional bullshitter, and I wouldn't still have a business after ten years if I didn't have substantive knowledge of what I do. However, my cultural and family background is in the humanities. I spent most of my adolescence and teenage years on my programming hobby, like many people here I think, but the route to a tech career was a rather incidental one. My parents are philosophy professors, and I entered university with a political science major (switched to philosophy), before dropping out two and a half years later to pursue what was by then an ascendant tech career. The discord between my background and the psychology of typical software engineers and business guys has led to amusing, sometimes infuriating cultural clashes over the years. Nevertheless, I've got the comment more than a handful of times over the years that I really should have been a writer or do something involving lots of speaking. You can probably tell from this comment alone that I'm not a person of few words. As I get older, this has seen me enlisted to assist with marketing copy, résumé polishing, LinkedIn profile formulation, and a variety of other tasks that require putting a spin on things and drawing on one's facility of rhetoric. Some have said I'm a lawyer on the inside, combining the logical, left-brained, procedural qualities of a programmer with a knack for wordsmithing eloquent pleadings. It's a weird space to dwell in. The real nerds think I'm a bullshitter half the time. The real bullshitters think I'm a nerd who lacks the social jujitsu to really hobnob with Visionaries like themselves. Beats me.

sitepodmatt 9y ago

I dont underestimate the benefit of soft skills and also benefit masters of org/office politics can lend to the rest of the team, especially when your one step away from a contract renewal. Ive had great PMs before that add the benefits you mention. But occasionally you get a toxic bullshiter in the coding space, dabblers ranked as technical peers, out for themselves and somehow pulls the wool over management, asshats.