7 ms·

I'm a bit annoyed at the constant background snide and subtle implication of these vague literary articles, that programmers are bad empathetically or emotional

I'm a bit annoyed at the constant background snide and subtle implication of these vague literary articles, that programmers are bad empathetically or emotionally. They use facts such as western programming culture being very male-dominated, and then twist this to imply that males are bad at being empathetic. Firstly the gender ratio of engineers in e.g. Russia is more even, so let's just shoot that one down before continuing. There's a lot of gender imbalance in Western culture as a whole and to imply that most of it is the "fault" of unemotional males is pretty insulting. Often this also accompanied by some implicit value judgement assumption, that they attempt to force onto the programmer. "My values are better than yours". Er, no sorry. If you think a programmer is being unemotional, perhaps you should take a step back and examine whether it is you who are being unempathetic, brushing away someone else's engineering concerns as being less important than your own personal feelings about a topic that you don't have a good knowledge of?

amelius 9y ago
The problem is that empathy and analytical thinking are to an extent mutually exclusive. See e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.h...
- infinity0 9y ago
  I can't program and play music at the same time either, doesn't mean I'm bad at music.
symstym 9y ago
Did you read the whole article? I don't think it was implying anything negative about tech workers or making value judgements. I am frustrated by some of the same things you are, but I don't think they were present in the article. To me it was saying something pragmatic like "Now that advances in technology are taking care of more and more of our material needs while requiring less labor, there is a relative need/opportunity for workers in roles requiring especially-high emotional skills and endurance". Would you disagree with that?
- infinity0 9y ago
  The article is certainly more negative than you're giving it credit for. Its title makes a prediction about the future, but it spends about 3/25 paragraphs explaining why it is making that prediction (where it quotes statistics about the changing landscape of jobs). The rest of it instead talks about the benefits of being more emotional (nobody would disagree) and complaining about why people don't seem to think it's as important as the author thinks, but without balancing it out with everything else happening in the world that people have to also think about. This is done after framing the first paragraph in terms of Obama supporting computer science education, so it's clear that the author wants to imply a contrast or opposition to this, in the rest of the article. There's also a fair amount of implicit bias and weasel wording dotted around the place, like: - "But the truth is, only a tiny percentage of people will ever end up working in software engineering [..]" - "It’s also not hard to see that highly educated, mostly male [..]" - "the information revolution frees us to complement, rather than compete with, the technical competence of computers" The first and third ones basically "beg the question" of the whole article's thesis - it's stated as an implicit assumption, it's never actually justified. In fact, technology is also automating away a lot of human service jobs, and there's even ongoing research to replace them with robots that can "act" more emotionally. I think the development of this sort of technology shows that plenty of programmers are emotional and empathetic, and the article makes no mention of these. So it's not infeasible that we'll see a trend (in the long run) of there being less "care workers" of the sort that the article mentions. I'm not in the business of making predictions though, I don't think I know enough - unlike this article which is too falsely confident of itself. Nobody disputes that it would be good, if all jobs were done by people that were more emotionally sensitive; however you could say the same thing about technical topics, like knowing how your new laptop or phone actually works. Finally, my own experience of this topic has been that, without exception, complaints about the supposed lack of emotion in programmers or in industry or whatever, has been from people with personal grudges to hold against particular programmers or particular aspects of more analytical behaviour, and who also implicitly think they are "superior" emotionally.
  - resu_nimda 9y ago
    I think you're being overly reactive here. The article really had nothing to do with what you're talking about (though I understand that sentiment exists). It did make a general class-based argument about "emotional IQ," but none of that was directed specifically at analytic programmer types. The reason that programming was mentioned was to illustrate how our culture is currently very focused on knowledge work (programming for everyone!), so they could make the counter-point that another type of work is currently undervalued. You may agree or disagree with that, but it is a huge stretch to take the whole thing as a slight against analytic/less emotional types.
skybrian 9y ago
There's a difference between empathy as a bonus and empathy as a job requirement. Traditionally, people who didn't fit in (the typical nerd stereotype, or maybe someone on the autistic spectrum) could do well as programmers, even if they lacked the sort of soft skills needed to do well in other positions. Of course, it always helps. But being able to accommodate people with different levels of social and/or emotional awareness is a good thing.
- Retra 9y ago
  I'm reminded of a certain kind of irony I've faced multiple times in my life: people who think they are more "socially intelligent" than I finding the most awkward and graceless way of telling me they think I'm not as skilled at being comfortable and graceful as themselves.
wsinks 9y ago
Totally side question - are you Russian by nature and language? If you are, I'm wondering if you ever feel limited by English as a language. Do you feel like you have bigger, better ideas in Russian?
- prodmerc 9y ago
  I'm not Russian, but it feels like emotional responses are more... emotional in Russian. Like thinking about something or swearing. English is a more rational language, and my "native" (I don't use it much) language is a bit restrictive when expressing anything, whether logical or emotional.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Strikes me as more of a cultural difference than language. There are certainly English-speaking people who swear a lot, and creatively, and others who rarely utter a profane word.
    - prodmerc 9y ago
      Swearing in English just doesn't have the same effect for me.
- paviva 9y ago
  You didn't ask me, but I am compelled to answer because its an interesting question, and, well, Russian is my native language. Till the age of eleven, I was essentially speaking only Russian. They did teach us some pretty rudimentary English at school, just enough to ask for directions in a foreign country. Then, my family moved to Canada, and I had to learn French. It took about 2 years to attain a native-level proficiency. Then, I learned English as a "second language" (actually third, of course) here in Canada. French is the language I use most. Thus, my largest and most precise vocabulary is in French, and this is obviously the easiest language to express myself. However, I don't feel constrained by a language while talking/writing in English or Russian. Worst case scenario, I have to turn to Google to translate some precise French word when the English equivalent does not come fast enough. In general, I think in whatever language I am using at the moment, and the best ideas can come in any of those three languages.

amelius 9y ago

The problem is that empathy and analytical thinking are to an extent mutually exclusive. See e.g. [1]. [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121030161416.h...

infinity0 9y ago
I can't program and play music at the same time either, doesn't mean I'm bad at music.

symstym 9y ago

Did you read the whole article? I don't think it was implying anything negative about tech workers or making value judgements. I am frustrated by some of the same things you are, but I don't think they were present in the article. To me it was saying something pragmatic like "Now that advances in technology are taking care of more and more of our material needs while requiring less labor, there is a relative need/opportunity for workers in roles requiring especially-high emotional skills and endurance". Would you disagree with that?

infinity0 9y ago
The article is certainly more negative than you're giving it credit for. Its title makes a prediction about the future, but it spends about 3/25 paragraphs explaining why it is making that prediction (where it quotes statistics about the changing landscape of jobs). The rest of it instead talks about the benefits of being more emotional (nobody would disagree) and complaining about why people don't seem to think it's as important as the author thinks, but without balancing it out with everything else happening in the world that people have to also think about. This is done after framing the first paragraph in terms of Obama supporting computer science education, so it's clear that the author wants to imply a contrast or opposition to this, in the rest of the article. There's also a fair amount of implicit bias and weasel wording dotted around the place, like: - "But the truth is, only a tiny percentage of people will ever end up working in software engineering [..]" - "It’s also not hard to see that highly educated, mostly male [..]" - "the information revolution frees us to complement, rather than compete with, the technical competence of computers" The first and third ones basically "beg the question" of the whole article's thesis - it's stated as an implicit assumption, it's never actually justified. In fact, technology is also automating away a lot of human service jobs, and there's even ongoing research to replace them with robots that can "act" more emotionally. I think the development of this sort of technology shows that plenty of programmers are emotional and empathetic, and the article makes no mention of these. So it's not infeasible that we'll see a trend (in the long run) of there being less "care workers" of the sort that the article mentions. I'm not in the business of making predictions though, I don't think I know enough - unlike this article which is too falsely confident of itself. Nobody disputes that it would be good, if all jobs were done by people that were more emotionally sensitive; however you could say the same thing about technical topics, like knowing how your new laptop or phone actually works. Finally, my own experience of this topic has been that, without exception, complaints about the supposed lack of emotion in programmers or in industry or whatever, has been from people with personal grudges to hold against particular programmers or particular aspects of more analytical behaviour, and who also implicitly think they are "superior" emotionally.
- resu_nimda 9y ago
  I think you're being overly reactive here. The article really had nothing to do with what you're talking about (though I understand that sentiment exists). It did make a general class-based argument about "emotional IQ," but none of that was directed specifically at analytic programmer types. The reason that programming was mentioned was to illustrate how our culture is currently very focused on knowledge work (programming for everyone!), so they could make the counter-point that another type of work is currently undervalued. You may agree or disagree with that, but it is a huge stretch to take the whole thing as a slight against analytic/less emotional types.

skybrian 9y ago

There's a difference between empathy as a bonus and empathy as a job requirement. Traditionally, people who didn't fit in (the typical nerd stereotype, or maybe someone on the autistic spectrum) could do well as programmers, even if they lacked the sort of soft skills needed to do well in other positions. Of course, it always helps. But being able to accommodate people with different levels of social and/or emotional awareness is a good thing.

Retra 9y ago
I'm reminded of a certain kind of irony I've faced multiple times in my life: people who think they are more "socially intelligent" than I finding the most awkward and graceless way of telling me they think I'm not as skilled at being comfortable and graceful as themselves.

wsinks 9y ago

Totally side question - are you Russian by nature and language? If you are, I'm wondering if you ever feel limited by English as a language. Do you feel like you have bigger, better ideas in Russian?

prodmerc 9y ago
I'm not Russian, but it feels like emotional responses are more... emotional in Russian. Like thinking about something or swearing. English is a more rational language, and my "native" (I don't use it much) language is a bit restrictive when expressing anything, whether logical or emotional.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Strikes me as more of a cultural difference than language. There are certainly English-speaking people who swear a lot, and creatively, and others who rarely utter a profane word.
  - prodmerc 9y ago
    Swearing in English just doesn't have the same effect for me.
paviva 9y ago
You didn't ask me, but I am compelled to answer because its an interesting question, and, well, Russian is my native language. Till the age of eleven, I was essentially speaking only Russian. They did teach us some pretty rudimentary English at school, just enough to ask for directions in a foreign country. Then, my family moved to Canada, and I had to learn French. It took about 2 years to attain a native-level proficiency. Then, I learned English as a "second language" (actually third, of course) here in Canada. French is the language I use most. Thus, my largest and most precise vocabulary is in French, and this is obviously the easiest language to express myself. However, I don't feel constrained by a language while talking/writing in English or Russian. Worst case scenario, I have to turn to Google to translate some precise French word when the English equivalent does not come fast enough. In general, I think in whatever language I am using at the moment, and the best ideas can come in any of those three languages.