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I thunk there's a second "flavor" of arrogance, where a person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room. These people will openly

• emsal 8y ago
  That take might be overly cynical. People who have a jack-of-all-trades skill set might not necessarily build the best components themselves, but might be able to bring some big-picture insight that more specialized developers don't have the awareness for, leading the team in the right direction. I'm not suggesting you transition into becoming a PM or Architect or anything like that, just saying that developers like you count, too. If you have a decent work ethic, then you and your unique brand of knowledge-seeking have something to bring to the table.
• balabaster 8y ago
  > "usually leads to components nobody can understand let alone maintain" As you advance up the mountain, you will learn to see complexity simply. When you make this realization, your components will simplify dramatically. You must learn to see simply before you can design simply. It just takes time. There's nothing wrong with this, humility doesn't mean giving up your belief that you're capable of anything. We were all born without any knowledge. We all learned everything we needed to know to get where we are today. We've put men on the moon. We've sent probes to escape our solar system. We've sent submarines to the bottom of the ocean. Humans have the capability to do anything we put our minds to. You can too. Everything you understand today, you've learned in the short lifespan you've had. Today you will learn more, and tomorrow and the next. Just because you find humility in your place, doesn't mean you're not capable of anything.
  • lolc 8y ago
    As individuals, there's damn little we can achieve.
    • balabaster 8y ago
      Nobody said you must do it alone.
      • lolc 8y ago
        > doesn't mean giving up your belief that you're capable of anything. > Humans have the capability to do anything we put our minds to. You can too. > doesn't mean you're not capable of anything. That does sound like you're talking to individuals. Turn down the hyperbole a notch and I might even agree
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• blackflame7000 8y ago
  Nobody’s mountain has a peak unless you either stop learning or die.
  • blotter_paper 8y ago
    Yes, but different people are climbing different slopes; everyone can keep climbing, but that doesn't mean they'll reach the same height.
    • blackflame7000 8y ago
      Yes, but those slopes are indeterminate from an outside observer because success comes from within. For every person you think you might have pigeon-holed, I'll show you another that broke the mold. You see everyone starts off facing a metaphorical vertical cliff in anything they attempt. It's over time that you learn the passages and tools that make it easier to climb; that lessen the slope. Unless we're talking about physically dunking a basketball, anyone can be a savant in something with enough effort. But again that future effort is not knowable to a 3rd party, they can only base opinions on past observations. People can change and they can change in an instant.
  • ABCLAW 8y ago
    Everyone's mountain has a peak. We have a finite amount of compute power in our heads, and a finite amount of time on the earth. That means we have a fixed amount of complexity we can work through. That said, fixing someone's shitty microservice code is probably not bottlenecked by our cognitive capacities. It's probably bottlenecked by financial constraints.
  • lolc 8y ago
    At the point where all your practicing is just maintaining your performance, you've reached your peak. You can stay there, or you can go higher if you practice more (or better). But there is a finite amount of practicing you can do each day. (Studies argue that 4 hours is plenty.) So there is an absolute limit per individual.
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• daveFNbuck 8y ago
  If you think it's a problem that you have this type of arrogance, what are you doing to improve and seek training about it?
  • vharuck 8y ago
    I keep in mind that I tend toward arrogance and think twice whenever "oh, I can do that" pops in my head. Also, splitting tasks with a team means other people can grab what they do well and I won't overreach.
• ltbarcly3 8y ago
  Arrogance has very little to do with thinking you know a lot, or disagreeing with others, and everything to do with failing to follow social protocol. If you let other people speak, pause long enough that they feel like you are giving their words a fair evaluation, and then don't use words that they must interpret as telling them they are wrong you will not be seen as arrogant. This is true even if you rarely or never agree with anyone. - let people finish their statement: If you don't let someone finish and you interrupt, they will decide that you are just refusing to hear them out rather than disagreeing. It doesn't matter if you can prove mathematically with extensive sources and footnotes, most of the time they won't be able to accept that you understood their point and showed it to be flawed. - pause long enough after they speak: Again, if you instantly explain why they are wrong, most of the time other people will not be able to handle this. They will decide you didn't actually consider what they said. It doesn't matter what is actually true, and if you somehow do convince them that you are right they will be doubly resistant since you are making them feel stupid on top of everything else. A huge benefit of this and the previous bullet is that you will often find that at first you misinterpreted what the person was saying, so you were about to disagree for no reason. - don't force them to admit to themselves that they were wrong: if you let people 'save face' they can just get on board and agree with you. If you force them to grapple with being wrong they will be difficult and will hate your guts. It may seem silly, but replying 'I don't think that will work because ...' is going to be the source of turmoil, when saying 'Interesting. Previously we did something similar to that but we had a problem where ...' is going to win the other person over instantly most of the time. Later they will see that they were wrong, but you didn't rub their nose in it and force them to grapple with it in a social setting where they are going to have to feel shame. Failure to do these things is just what people mean whenever they say someone is arrogant.
  • peteradio 8y ago
    Point 3 though. At some point how can you be so demure? Sometimes people are just stupid and wrong and need to get checked. Some guy working for a year getting nothing done and pretending like its some other problem than what it actually is needs to be forcefully briefed on their ignorance not 'hrmm well you see we tried it this way'.
• jcranberry 8y ago
  Just don't settle for being a 'jack', become an expert, and produce something you think is maintainable for yourself and your colleagues.
  • mgkimsal 8y ago
    > Just don't settle for being a 'jack', become an expert Expert in what? There will always be people "more expert" than me in any particular domain (specific tech, hobbies, whatever). At some point, there's diminishing returns in becoming 'expert' in things you don't need to be an expert in, when "competence" is enough.
    • jcranberry 8y ago
      Enough to produce something maintainable, that you can be proud of
    • pnutjam 8y ago
      In many offices, mere competency makes you the default expert.
      • mgkimsal 8y ago
        Sure. Was just pushing back on the "don't settle for jack-of-all-trades - become the expert". Well... that's a never-ending goal. Perhaps I want to be an expert jack-of-all-trades? I can't be the expert in all things, or even most things I want to be. There's simply not enough time - people with 10 years of experience on me will always be 10 years ahead - and usually that means there's more 'expert' than me on XYZ (not always, time != expertise exactly, but it's often an signal).
  • tlynchpin 8y ago
    The whole point of the arrogance / humility axis is the awareness that there is not a destination to be arrived at named "expert". The DK graph goes up and to the right, to infinity and beyond. We must merely try to do our best, and try again.
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• RyanDagg 8y ago
  I just read the article and was like “I don’t think I suffer from these much at all” then read this comment. This is very insightful and also something I just realized that I greatly suffer from. Thanks.
  • zimablue 8y ago
    I relate to this. I think one of the symptoms is not picking up enough detailed understanding of anything because you keep moving around and don't believe in most external knowledge anyway (eg. don't want to learn [beyond a certain depth] SQL, it's so ugly on some inner level I'd much rather start with datalog and build my own up, don't want to learn economics I don't trust those science cargo-culters). But the other reason you don't want to specialize is that it would be to accept a limit on yourself (OK I'm going to get specialize on getting very good at c++, my upper salary cap is 500k and likely cap 200k, career is mapped out). One of the things that's slowly curing me I think is running into examples of systems that are genuinely very heavy to understand/improve, and examples of people who are just unarguably higher ceiling in different ways than you. eg. go watch a SGM play 30 second hyperbullet chess, I don't think I have either the memory or raw processing speed to do what they do, ever. If those guys exist a lot of other people have way higher ceilings. Also realize that chess (and by extension must be a lot of other activities) rely on both a crazy cpu, an amazing memory and an insanely built-out internal database of positions and ideas, and since my cpu is good but not unbelievable, my memory is nothing special and my time is limited there must be a lot of activities I'll never really be good at. Also just getting older and staying unsuccessful relative to your ego, you just start to compromise I think.
    • gerbilly 8y ago
      > SQL, it's so ugly on some inner level I'd much rather start with datalog and build my own up SQL syntax may be ugly, but for once, it's an example of a widely used technology that is based on a very firm and well thought out theoretical framework. As a developer, it is definitely worth investing time in understanding relational databases and the theory behind them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_calculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_calculus
• dgzl 8y ago
  I see this in my step mother. My family isn't very high in social standing, but she has a nursing degree and a long well paying career, better than anyone else in my family. Now that I have a CS degree with similar pay, she pays me respect but still tangentially riffs on things she only half understands.
• elmomle 8y ago
  I have been concerned about occupying a similar space myself. The great secret that we all do well to remember is that being humble is simply a matter of practicing being humble. In particular, when I treat other team members as experts in what they do, and trust that they'll value me for whatever it is that I do, I become much more efficient, and feel more relaxed too. Yes, there are still times that I notice myself acting vain, but these days a few slow, grounding breaths goes a long way toward resetting me. In fact, I wonder if the narcissism you speak of might have more to do with insecurity, deep down. In my experience, when I see myself taking a behavior that I consciously am against, the cause tends to be emotional and the solution tends to be to gently, curiously observe those situations and start questioning how I feel. When I love and take care of my emotional world, it becomes way easier to interact in a way I feel is more optimal on the fly.
• say-vagnes 8y ago
  This take can cause a pretty unproductive worldview. The trouble is, we've all met different people who fall into broad categories like "jack of all trades". A lot of morons will say this sort of thing. Sometimes it's because they think you think they are dumb, so they want to show you that they are good at other stuff so as to keep their ego happy. However, generalists are a very useful component of a team. They tend to be able to have a higher level view of all the moving parts, and typically are great for, say, proposing integrations, or high level system design. Also, often specialists will solve a problem in their specialization, fit be damned. They need someone to derail them and say e.g. "this would be much, much easier if we leaned on MySQL to do this". So, this feels like a baby and bathwater situation to me. I'm sorry to read so deeply into your anecdote, but there's some interesting stuff to unpack. > This can be nice in small teams, but usually leads to components nobody (not even the arrogant one) can understand This describes nearly every company's MVP, so if you're thinking of a person in particular who had to cobble together some dynamic mess, chances are they have great regret for their design. But remember, tech debt is a luxury in these cases - often the alternative is no job or company, as the runway was exhausted, or investors were not impressed. > A person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room. I think there's no getting around this. In fact, TBH I hope my colleagues feel this way - I want them to advocate for things they think are better, and I don't want them to instead fall prey to their own insecurities. It's actually kind of a little self-help bullshitty -- the "you can do anything" stuff -- but truly it's actually not awful advice. I guarantee there's someone you work with who has a better way of doing things, but isn't confident enough to endorse it. Anyhow... thanks for the writing prompt? ;)
• bgroat 8y ago
  I'm the worst for this. I firmly believe that given a totally novel problem in any domain that neither of us are familiar with. I will always solve it before you. I also believe that whatever domain you're currently in I can outperform you in 5 years MAX. It's crazy the bullshit we believe that 'feels' right day by day
• thegayngler 8y ago
  Thank you for your admission. I too am naturally arrogant. People think I'm being weird if I'm not arrogant. I get weird people saying they don't believe me when I'm being humble. Probably because arrogant is who I am as a person. I feel people like me more when I'm being my arrogant self. Oddly, when I was my least arrogant and most humble I exhibited most of the traits in this article. I was quite sour over the fact that I felt like during the interview process I was lied to about the position and what it would entail. Naturally, I was a bit salty about it and the fact that people were doing things that I would get criticized for. It ultimately hurt my confidence in myself. This made me exhibit most if not all of these traits during my stay at this company. I was trying to make lemons into lemonade. Ultimately I was able help us get on the right path and I was happy with my contributions to the team even if it did ruffle feathers and those people hated me afterwards. I took their criticism and I still try to use it to be a better person to work with.
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