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The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but

The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job. When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time, and especially when interviewers at tech companies unconsciously favor candidates that match what their 'stereotypical' candidate looks like, well, then you get a situation like the one described in the article. But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
xienze 9y ago
No one said you have to be obsessive, but it helps.
- gyardley 9y ago
  No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be.
  - ralfn 9y ago
    Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly. Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you likely want to find the field that does make you that happy. That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up miserable.
    - tptacek 9y ago
      Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!
      - jholman 9y ago
        I think that's very close to what gyardley argued. First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around. That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs. ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.
        gyardley 9y ago
        'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify. It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists, but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers. Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's disease', poor social skills... I'm not saying you're guaranteed to have any or all of those problems if all you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals. It's not like they're actually better at their jobs. I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as 'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.
        9y ago
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    And there's nothing to stop them starting their own companies or being hired by companies that don't subscribe to the prevailing PC orthodoxy. And with their deep obsessiveness they may well write better software. Or are you saying they should not be allowed to? That's not how things work.
    - gyardley 9y ago
      Of course I'm not saying 'they should not be allowed to'. I'm not quite sure how you'd get that. I'm saying that their deep obsessiveness, and issues relating to being deeply obsessed, makes their organization as a whole write worse software. They sometimes write good code on their own, especially if they don't have to work with others, but usually they're a net negative. Honestly, I don't know how this isn't obvious to anyone who's ever worked on a team.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    >It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. So they're possibly better at writing backend code. Let's make an effort to keep them employed by finding positions they can succeed in instead of purging people at the first sign of personality traits we don't like (that they may not have been able to control in the first place).
    - malandrew 9y ago
      Amen. Linux and much of all the open source code in most language ecosystems that people rely on are usually written by such people. Purging them is akin to purging the giants whose shoulders many product engineers stand on.
  - brandonhsiao 9y ago
    This is the sort of convenient take on things that incites immediate curiosity. Forced to its conclusion, you're arguing that people who code for fun in their spare time don't see any substantial increase in their chances of success as an engineer at all. Do you think that's true? I would agree with your original comment that you don't have to be obsessive, but without further substantial reasoning, xienze's position sounds like the more reasonable one here.
  - JohnTClark 9y ago
    I hear this a lot about building products for others and that you need to have a divers team. 1. When you are building the back end of an online shop you don't care if that shop is for women's (makeup shop) or men (guns shop). When you build breaks for cars you don't care if the car is for women's or men. 2. You don't build a product base only on the experience of one person. You go and ask your target demographics what they want from your product. I am a man but I can't speak for all men.
ucaetano 9y ago
> The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. HackerNews seems to largely agree with that idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763182
Individualist 9y ago
This reminds me back when I worked inside the vfx industry. There was always atleast one clique that criticized that others enjoyed film/video games despite us working on them. That it was somehow bad that we were passionate about our field of study and spent our time learning as much as possible. Hell sometimes we would play a game or watch a movie for inspiration god forbid. I'm fresh in this industry and it amazes me to be seeing the same pattern repeat itself here.
leggomylibro 9y ago
So what do you tell someone who does genuinely enjoy doing that sort of thing in their free time? Someone who isn't a workaholic but who, in the article's conversation, would sooner wrestle a cobra than ask a co-worker about romantic issues (especially considering the potential consequences,) and who doesn't know the difference between a bass guitar and a bassoon? Should they be recusing themselves from the organization's social structures entirely, if that's a significant problem for others? There's probably enough seclusion outside of work already, but at some point you just start to feel like you're contributing to the problem by existing.
strken 9y ago
While this is true, knowing someone set up a fibre channel network on the weekend is hardly a reason to call that person an obsessive wretch. I know a very smart woman who's a professor of English literature at a university, and I know for a fact that she goes home on weekends and reads Sue Grafton murder mysteries ("M for Murder" etc.). This doesn't indicate that she's obsessive or wretched or has no life, and I don't think "are you reading anything at the moment?" would be an inappropriate question for someone in her field. Certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read all the time, and certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read Finnegan's Wake on Saturday morning, but for someone who wants to study literature for a living liking literature is important, and realising you don't might cause an epiphany.
brandonhsiao 9y ago
My totally unrigorous theory: you don't have to be obsessive to be a reasonably successful employee, but you probably do in order to have a $1b exit. Those people then set the culture, because a bunch of the next wave of ambitious 20 year olds now want a $1b exit just like them. Some people say this is a bad thing, but what can you do about it? Culturally devalue money/success? How? People don't like impersonal explanations, but I haven't seen a theory on this subject that includes in its model the cultural residue trickling down from the ultimate ability of 23 year olds in our industry to become insanely rich.
kamaal 9y ago
>>The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. Right. But being good in this world is you vs your-peer-group. And if others in your peer group are too awesome, putting in insane hours and time getting ahead, sooner or later the top spots will be taken. And nobody likes to be stuck being ranked average despite the best they can do. >>So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. Reminds me of this movie - "The Gambler"- A literature professor tells his students the difference between somebody who can write good stuff and being the next William Shakespeare. Everybody has to face this fact sooner or later. Special things happen only when you are ready to put in special effort. While reminding them, there is absolutely nothing wrong in being a electrician or a plumber. >>All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job. Being good and not good enough will only take you that far. Of course, you can still do your job and get paid. But remember other people will likely take the top spots. >>When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time Tech and especially fast changing ecosystem in Tech have seen large concentration of Nerds. Kind of people who've wanted to build video games, or win science fairs at school. When too many people of same type arrive at a place it becomes a culture. >>But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself. This is the most important part. I had a friend who quit programming to do MBA and built a career there. He realized there is no way he would like to spend weekends exploring new tools that keep launching every few months and endless push to use bleeding edge stuff, work insane hours, weekends and with the overall fast paced, failure ridden culture of tech. He is doing pretty well with managing business now.
slededit 9y ago
Conversely calling people who enjoy coding as a hobby "obsessive wretches" also perpetuates bias.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

xienze 9y ago

No one said you have to be obsessive, but it helps.

gyardley 9y ago
No, it doesn't. It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. The sooner the tech industry realizes that this sort of person is not an asset and that having too many of them around just drives others away, the better off it'll be.
- ralfn 9y ago
  Are you absolutely sure you arent just convincing yourself? As someone who does actually love all this stuff so much that work doesnt start and hobby doesnt really stop... We meet and work with people like you all the time. We like the diversity. There are many ways to contribute to the end result and any smart company hires both of us. But your resentment is mean spirited. Get over yourself. We are not driving any one away. From operations to sales we are all needed to make the engine work. But if you come here arguing that those who love their job should be fired so there is place for you without you trying so hard, that just silly. Here is the thing: from all disciplines i know there are people who love and breathe their job. If thats not the case in engineering for you, then you likely want to find the field that does make you that happy. That might just be a smarter plan than trying to convince yourself by convincing us that in a field dominated by people who love it, you can be competitive while considering it just a safe career path. You'll just end up miserable.
  - tptacek 9y ago
    Absolutely nobody has argued that people who code in their spare time should be fired. That's something you introduced, pointlessly and disruptively, to the thread. What a tire fire all these threads are. And people are surprised they get flagged!
    - jholman 9y ago
      I think that's very close to what gyardley argued. First paragraph is a claim that people who code in their spare time are liabilities rather than assets. Second paragraph is a claim that the tech industry as a whole should recognize this, and take steps to make sure there aren't too many around. That's not actually arguing for firing (I mean, it might be arguing for that, but not necessarily), but it's at a minimum arguing for actively choosing non-hobby-programmers over hobby-programmers for programming jobs. ralfn is not the one who turned this thread into a tire fire. If it is one, which I dispute, the culprits would be some combination of you and now me.
      - gyardley 9y ago
        'Coding in your spare time' isn't quite as extreme as having no life outside of tech. Hey, I code a bit in my spare time too, so let me clarify. It's the people who don't do anything else but code that I've, in my experience, had real issues with - they might make great computer scientists, but as a group they're not very good in a team of software developers. Arrogance, problems cooperating with others, excessive nitpicking, 'engineer's disease', poor social skills... I'm not saying you're guaranteed to have any or all of those problems if all you do 24/7 is code, but I've seen it one hell of a lot, and I'm perplexed why this type of person tends to be preferred over more well-rounded individuals. It's not like they're actually better at their jobs. I'm not arguing for going through an organization and sacking everyone who codes on the weekend. But I strongly suspect that if interviewers didn't glorify the obsessive 24/7 coder, either deliberately or subconsciously as 'what a real developer looks like', we'd have both a much more diverse tech industry and a much more functional one.
        9y ago
- Boothroid 9y ago
  And there's nothing to stop them starting their own companies or being hired by companies that don't subscribe to the prevailing PC orthodoxy. And with their deep obsessiveness they may well write better software. Or are you saying they should not be allowed to? That's not how things work.
  - gyardley 9y ago
    Of course I'm not saying 'they should not be allowed to'. I'm not quite sure how you'd get that. I'm saying that their deep obsessiveness, and issues relating to being deeply obsessed, makes their organization as a whole write worse software. They sometimes write good code on their own, especially if they don't have to work with others, but usually they're a net negative. Honestly, I don't know how this isn't obvious to anyone who's ever worked on a team.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  >It makes you one-dimensional and particularly poor at building products for others unlike yourself. So they're possibly better at writing backend code. Let's make an effort to keep them employed by finding positions they can succeed in instead of purging people at the first sign of personality traits we don't like (that they may not have been able to control in the first place).
  - malandrew 9y ago
    Amen. Linux and much of all the open source code in most language ecosystems that people rely on are usually written by such people. Purging them is akin to purging the giants whose shoulders many product engineers stand on.
- brandonhsiao 9y ago
  This is the sort of convenient take on things that incites immediate curiosity. Forced to its conclusion, you're arguing that people who code for fun in their spare time don't see any substantial increase in their chances of success as an engineer at all. Do you think that's true? I would agree with your original comment that you don't have to be obsessive, but without further substantial reasoning, xienze's position sounds like the more reasonable one here.
- JohnTClark 9y ago
  I hear this a lot about building products for others and that you need to have a divers team. 1. When you are building the back end of an online shop you don't care if that shop is for women's (makeup shop) or men (guns shop). When you build breaks for cars you don't care if the car is for women's or men. 2. You don't build a product base only on the experience of one person. You go and ask your target demographics what they want from your product. I am a man but I can't speak for all men.

ucaetano 9y ago

> The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. HackerNews seems to largely agree with that idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2763182

Individualist 9y ago

This reminds me back when I worked inside the vfx industry. There was always atleast one clique that criticized that others enjoyed film/video games despite us working on them. That it was somehow bad that we were passionate about our field of study and spent our time learning as much as possible. Hell sometimes we would play a game or watch a movie for inspiration god forbid. I'm fresh in this industry and it amazes me to be seeing the same pattern repeat itself here.

leggomylibro 9y ago

So what do you tell someone who does genuinely enjoy doing that sort of thing in their free time? Someone who isn't a workaholic but who, in the article's conversation, would sooner wrestle a cobra than ask a co-worker about romantic issues (especially considering the potential consequences,) and who doesn't know the difference between a bass guitar and a bassoon? Should they be recusing themselves from the organization's social structures entirely, if that's a significant problem for others? There's probably enough seclusion outside of work already, but at some point you just start to feel like you're contributing to the problem by existing.

strken 9y ago

While this is true, knowing someone set up a fibre channel network on the weekend is hardly a reason to call that person an obsessive wretch. I know a very smart woman who's a professor of English literature at a university, and I know for a fact that she goes home on weekends and reads Sue Grafton murder mysteries ("M for Murder" etc.). This doesn't indicate that she's obsessive or wretched or has no life, and I don't think "are you reading anything at the moment?" would be an inappropriate question for someone in her field. Certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read all the time, and certainly we wouldn't want to force her to read Finnegan's Wake on Saturday morning, but for someone who wants to study literature for a living liking literature is important, and realising you don't might cause an epiphany.

brandonhsiao 9y ago

My totally unrigorous theory: you don't have to be obsessive to be a reasonably successful employee, but you probably do in order to have a $1b exit. Those people then set the culture, because a bunch of the next wave of ambitious 20 year olds now want a $1b exit just like them. Some people say this is a bad thing, but what can you do about it? Culturally devalue money/success? How? People don't like impersonal explanations, but I haven't seen a theory on this subject that includes in its model the cultural residue trickling down from the ultimate ability of 23 year olds in our industry to become insanely rich.

kamaal 9y ago

>>The idea that you've got to be some sort of obsessive wretch with no life outside of tech in order to successfully fill a role at a tech company is nothing but a pernicious myth. Right. But being good in this world is you vs your-peer-group. And if others in your peer group are too awesome, putting in insane hours and time getting ahead, sooner or later the top spots will be taken. And nobody likes to be stuck being ranked average despite the best they can do. >>So is the idea that you've got to be some ridiculous super-genius. Reminds me of this movie - "The Gambler"- A literature professor tells his students the difference between somebody who can write good stuff and being the next William Shakespeare. Everybody has to face this fact sooner or later. Special things happen only when you are ready to put in special effort. While reminding them, there is absolutely nothing wrong in being a electrician or a plumber. >>All you have to do is be reasonably smart and capable of learning on the job. Being good and not good enough will only take you that far. Of course, you can still do your job and get paid. But remember other people will likely take the top spots. >>When interviewers at tech companies mistakenly believe that every successful candidate has to be building atom smashers in their spare time Tech and especially fast changing ecosystem in Tech have seen large concentration of Nerds. Kind of people who've wanted to build video games, or win science fairs at school. When too many people of same type arrive at a place it becomes a culture. >>But this isn't natural or normal or a product of biology - it's just bias perpetuating itself. This is the most important part. I had a friend who quit programming to do MBA and built a career there. He realized there is no way he would like to spend weekends exploring new tools that keep launching every few months and endless push to use bleeding edge stuff, work insane hours, weekends and with the overall fast paced, failure ridden culture of tech. He is doing pretty well with managing business now.

slededit 9y ago

Conversely calling people who enjoy coding as a hobby "obsessive wretches" also perpetuates bias.