7 ms·

I'm constantly amazed by how self-entitled my fellow developers can be when it comes to anything offered as a perk. The coffee machine on a floor breaks and you

I'm constantly amazed by how self-entitled my fellow developers can be when it comes to anything offered as a perk. The coffee machine on a floor breaks and you'd think someone had asked them to take a 20% pay cut by their reaction. Maybe I'm just getting old.

jayd16 7y ago
Certainly don't be a jerk to your office manager about it but every perk is compensation. Why shouldn't you take it seriously?
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I don't think that developers, that's every office ever. It's an office full of smeagols anytime any privilege is taken away.
baud147258 7y ago
A coffee machine breakage would be treated as a work-stopping issue where I work, considering our consumption. But I don't think it would be treated like a 20% cut (which would most likely impossible here), it would be just a big annoyance.
- bcrosby95 7y ago
  Its weird how it's socially acceptable to admit you're reliant upon this specific drug to get work done. But any others and it's bad.
  - baud147258 7y ago
    I don't think we're that reliant here (even excluding those who don't drink coffee), it's rather closer to an annoyance (a big one, like dealing with slow computer/bad network), but we could still get work done. It's just that since the coffee is free (and good), we're drinking a lot of it.
  - aesh2Xa1 7y ago
    After reading "Why We Sleep" I've been led to believe it really ought to be just socially acceptable to consume this drug. Unless we challenge the culture of working early then it seems to be the case that many of us are physiologically dependent on caffeine because our work culture demands it. Or we could fix the culture problem.
  - corobo 7y ago
    The day schedules stop being set by morning people is the day I’ll give up caffeine
  - wccrawford 7y ago
    I was strongly anti-caffeine for most of my life. Then, in my 30s, I started getting so sleep at work that I'd fall asleep at my desk. I went to the doctor and got drugs and vitamins. One of the drugs was supposed to be for erectile dysfunction, but had the side effect of keeping people awake. I tried it anyhow. They didn't work. I ended up drinking a little caffeine to fix it. It worked really well. Now I drink a lot of caffeine to fix it, and if I stop, I go back to falling asleep in the middle of the day. If I could, I'd gladly just take a nap in the middle of the day to "fix" this problem. I get plenty of sleep at night, and I have a regular schedule. I don't work overtime and my job isn't abusive on my work-life balance. But now I just need caffeine to keep going all day. And so I deal with that instead, and I no longer tell people that I don't like caffeine. When someone says that they need caffeine to wake up, I certainly don't tell them that they should get off caffeine... And I don't even think it anymore. They might actually need it.
    - freedomben 7y ago
      I've had a similar experience. Caffeine is probably the greatest tool in my belt. Something you may want to look into is how many carbs you are eating for lunch, and whether your blood sugar is being affected. An amazing number of people have minor hypoglycemia and a carb-heavy lunch can leave them falling asleep at their desk. When I switched to a low/no-carb breakfast/lunch it did help (tho did not cure).
      - wccrawford 7y ago
        In the last few years, I've started getting migraines from sugar. That caused me to look at carbs and start reducing them as well. I still consume more carbs than I'd like, but I think I'm definitely below average on that scale. That said, you've made me think and it's worth seeing if I can't further move my intake towards proteins safely and cost-effectively. And then maybe next time I try to reduce caffeine, it'll actually work. Thanks!
        Moru 7y ago
        I had the same idea and tried lchf and it works great. Caffeine never did anything for me.
  - pathseeker 7y ago
    Coffee machines make decaf and it's quite popular where I work.
  - metalchianti 7y ago
    Probably because the benefits heavily outweigh the negatives. Combine that with the cultural/historical significance of coffee and tea and I think we have a solid explanation.
  - vageli 7y ago
    > Its weird how it's socially acceptable to admit you're reliant upon this specific drug to get work done. But any others and it's bad. The most interesting aspect is that this acceptance is near universe across cultures.
  - tracker1 7y ago
    I treat it as such... I avoid it for the most part, but will use it a couple times a week. I don't tend to have it too often. The diuretic effect doesn't hurt either.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  As the old joke goes: programmers are just machines that turn caffeine into computer code.
mothsonasloth 7y ago
OP here: maybe when the dev market gets saturated it will humble us all?
- duxup 7y ago
  As someone who worked in support and recently moved into the dev world. I both get why folks get concerned about all the perks, it can be a sort of canary in the coal mine signal about values and financials when you see things vanish, even if minor things. At the same time I worked in a support department where getting one lunch of garbage quality pizza every quarter was seen as "too expensive", so they cut that.... so I also chuckle at other developers when they complain about their mountain of perks. I think many really don't realize that most people don't get, squat outside of a place to go work.
zinclozenge 7y ago
Because everything else being mostly equal, why would I stay at a company that cuts a perk, or doesn't offer one at all?
a-wu 7y ago
That reminds me of the time that the free bagels weren’t delivered to a few floors of my office once on accident. It was an absolute riot on Slack (ok I’m exaggerating but I’m serious when the complaints had >100 reactions). God forbid the people walk to another floor.
pjc50 7y ago
I think a lot of this is due to developers having an odd fit in the office class system. They don't direct other humans, so they're not management; but they're not process-followers either who could be treated as interchangeable. They're not union labour and they're not chartered professionals. They're at the "bottom" of the hierarchy but their individual insight and contribution is indispensable. They tend to get high pay, but not participate in the normal status hierarchy - "normal" professionals buy nicer suits if you pay them more. The perks are the claim to status. At the same time many people's choice of perks is a bit infantilising, which confuses people outside it. (There is another, nastier kind of "perk" in many jobs which a few developers indulge in, which is the freedom to abuse lower status staff without real reproach.)
- asark 7y ago
  Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development? I guess maybe some very experienced skilled tradespeople, but even those folks are probably pretty high-status when around others in their business. Software dev is weird. Mostly sneered at or patronized by those up the hierarchy, yet paid really well. Not especially well-regarded outside business hierarchies considering how high the comp is, in no small part due to its acquisition, deserved or not, of a reputation for being a He-Man Woman Haters' club, and also, you know, for being generally nerdy (which was entirely the historical reason for its being low on the social status ladder, until relatively recently).
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development? Garbage collectors fit this description in every city I've lived in.
    - TulliusCicero 7y ago
      Where do you live that garbage collectors make as much as programmers?
      - 7y ago
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> The coffee machine on a floor breaks and you'd think someone had asked them to take a 20% pay cut by their reaction. It's a piece of infrastructure. It may not seem like 20% pay cut, but it might very well be bleeding out 20%+ of productivity of the floor until the problem is fixed or people find workarounds. Same with network issues or outage, or crappy work hardware.

jayd16 7y ago

Certainly don't be a jerk to your office manager about it but every perk is compensation. Why shouldn't you take it seriously?

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

I don't think that developers, that's every office ever. It's an office full of smeagols anytime any privilege is taken away.

baud147258 7y ago

A coffee machine breakage would be treated as a work-stopping issue where I work, considering our consumption. But I don't think it would be treated like a 20% cut (which would most likely impossible here), it would be just a big annoyance.

bcrosby95 7y ago
Its weird how it's socially acceptable to admit you're reliant upon this specific drug to get work done. But any others and it's bad.
- baud147258 7y ago
  I don't think we're that reliant here (even excluding those who don't drink coffee), it's rather closer to an annoyance (a big one, like dealing with slow computer/bad network), but we could still get work done. It's just that since the coffee is free (and good), we're drinking a lot of it.
- aesh2Xa1 7y ago
  After reading "Why We Sleep" I've been led to believe it really ought to be just socially acceptable to consume this drug. Unless we challenge the culture of working early then it seems to be the case that many of us are physiologically dependent on caffeine because our work culture demands it. Or we could fix the culture problem.
- corobo 7y ago
  The day schedules stop being set by morning people is the day I’ll give up caffeine
- wccrawford 7y ago
  I was strongly anti-caffeine for most of my life. Then, in my 30s, I started getting so sleep at work that I'd fall asleep at my desk. I went to the doctor and got drugs and vitamins. One of the drugs was supposed to be for erectile dysfunction, but had the side effect of keeping people awake. I tried it anyhow. They didn't work. I ended up drinking a little caffeine to fix it. It worked really well. Now I drink a lot of caffeine to fix it, and if I stop, I go back to falling asleep in the middle of the day. If I could, I'd gladly just take a nap in the middle of the day to "fix" this problem. I get plenty of sleep at night, and I have a regular schedule. I don't work overtime and my job isn't abusive on my work-life balance. But now I just need caffeine to keep going all day. And so I deal with that instead, and I no longer tell people that I don't like caffeine. When someone says that they need caffeine to wake up, I certainly don't tell them that they should get off caffeine... And I don't even think it anymore. They might actually need it.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    I've had a similar experience. Caffeine is probably the greatest tool in my belt. Something you may want to look into is how many carbs you are eating for lunch, and whether your blood sugar is being affected. An amazing number of people have minor hypoglycemia and a carb-heavy lunch can leave them falling asleep at their desk. When I switched to a low/no-carb breakfast/lunch it did help (tho did not cure).
    - wccrawford 7y ago
      In the last few years, I've started getting migraines from sugar. That caused me to look at carbs and start reducing them as well. I still consume more carbs than I'd like, but I think I'm definitely below average on that scale. That said, you've made me think and it's worth seeing if I can't further move my intake towards proteins safely and cost-effectively. And then maybe next time I try to reduce caffeine, it'll actually work. Thanks!
      - Moru 7y ago
        I had the same idea and tried lchf and it works great. Caffeine never did anything for me.
- pathseeker 7y ago
  Coffee machines make decaf and it's quite popular where I work.
- metalchianti 7y ago
  Probably because the benefits heavily outweigh the negatives. Combine that with the cultural/historical significance of coffee and tea and I think we have a solid explanation.
- vageli 7y ago
  > Its weird how it's socially acceptable to admit you're reliant upon this specific drug to get work done. But any others and it's bad. The most interesting aspect is that this acceptance is near universe across cultures.
- tracker1 7y ago
  I treat it as such... I avoid it for the most part, but will use it a couple times a week. I don't tend to have it too often. The diuretic effect doesn't hurt either.
JohnFen 7y ago
As the old joke goes: programmers are just machines that turn caffeine into computer code.

mothsonasloth 7y ago

OP here: maybe when the dev market gets saturated it will humble us all?

duxup 7y ago
As someone who worked in support and recently moved into the dev world. I both get why folks get concerned about all the perks, it can be a sort of canary in the coal mine signal about values and financials when you see things vanish, even if minor things. At the same time I worked in a support department where getting one lunch of garbage quality pizza every quarter was seen as "too expensive", so they cut that.... so I also chuckle at other developers when they complain about their mountain of perks. I think many really don't realize that most people don't get, squat outside of a place to go work.

zinclozenge 7y ago

Because everything else being mostly equal, why would I stay at a company that cuts a perk, or doesn't offer one at all?

a-wu 7y ago

That reminds me of the time that the free bagels weren’t delivered to a few floors of my office once on accident. It was an absolute riot on Slack (ok I’m exaggerating but I’m serious when the complaints had >100 reactions). God forbid the people walk to another floor.

pjc50 7y ago

I think a lot of this is due to developers having an odd fit in the office class system. They don't direct other humans, so they're not management; but they're not process-followers either who could be treated as interchangeable. They're not union labour and they're not chartered professionals. They're at the "bottom" of the hierarchy but their individual insight and contribution is indispensable. They tend to get high pay, but not participate in the normal status hierarchy - "normal" professionals buy nicer suits if you pay them more. The perks are the claim to status. At the same time many people's choice of perks is a bit infantilising, which confuses people outside it. (There is another, nastier kind of "perk" in many jobs which a few developers indulge in, which is the freedom to abuse lower status staff without real reproach.)

asark 7y ago
Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development? I guess maybe some very experienced skilled tradespeople, but even those folks are probably pretty high-status when around others in their business. Software dev is weird. Mostly sneered at or patronized by those up the hierarchy, yet paid really well. Not especially well-regarded outside business hierarchies considering how high the comp is, in no small part due to its acquisition, deserved or not, of a reputation for being a He-Man Woman Haters' club, and also, you know, for being generally nerdy (which was entirely the historical reason for its being low on the social status ladder, until relatively recently).
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > Is there a lower-status job that pays as well as software development? Garbage collectors fit this description in every city I've lived in.
  - TulliusCicero 7y ago
    Where do you live that garbage collectors make as much as programmers?
    - 7y ago

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> The coffee machine on a floor breaks and you'd think someone had asked them to take a 20% pay cut by their reaction. It's a piece of infrastructure. It may not seem like 20% pay cut, but it might very well be bleeding out 20%+ of productivity of the floor until the problem is fixed or people find workarounds. Same with network issues or outage, or crappy work hardware.