6 ms·

What I mean is, writing software with other people is about as intimate as you can get, you are literally combining your thoughts on paper and creating a shared

What I mean is, writing software with other people is about as intimate as you can get, you are literally combining your thoughts on paper and creating a shared paradigm If you believe that can be done while simulateously avoiding all intimacy on a personal level, the irony will defeat you every time and your software will fail Being a true software dev means warts and all or not at all

snagglegaggle 7y ago
Hmm, this does explain what I had experienced. Most of my friends are not in IT. There are people I eventually get to know (and that others I know get to know) it's just going into a job trying to make friends can be an extremely bad idea, at least from what I have seen. Thanks for the comments
- artsyca 7y ago
  Hey you seem relatively new to HN -- welcome to Hotel California
  - artsyca 7y ago
    It's like a git repo.. you can check out, but you can never leave
- artsyca 7y ago
  Work people ought to be closer than family and friends if you really think about it --
  - artsyca 7y ago
    Hear me out: assuming we have some kind of freedom and actually choose to work at a company and we're not slaves -- We are investing the vast majority of our efforts on work, even 8 hours per day, not to mention most of our productive moments and brain cycles. Our immediate family comes a distant second in many cases If the people we work with mean nothing to us, how can we justify investing so much of our best selves with them? What does that mean for our so called loved ones whom we sacrifice continuously? Are we sacrificing them for people we hardly care about? That means we hardly care about them even less! The only way this works is if we actually care about the people we work with and the mission of the company, otherwise stay home
    - bigred100 7y ago
      The reason I invest my time and energy in my job is because working and maintaining a career is generally necessary for someone in my position. Within limits the people (I don’t want extraordinarily unpleasant coworkers) and the mission (I probably won’t do anything I find immoral) aren’t extraordinarily important to me. I generally like the word “professional”.
      - artsyca 7y ago
        bigred100, you've expressed the general consensus and I can't disagree with you, most of us are mildly detached and don't care about the 'soft' stuff but.. like.. hmmm.. all things considered, if you were to be paid the exact same amount for the exact same of effort, would you rather work for a company that makes things somewhat better for the world at large or somewhat worse
      - artsyca 7y ago
        I too like the word professional very much, to me it means that I'm staking more than my reputation on something, I'm staking my clients' reputation as well I've made many sacrifices along the way to call myself a professional and the more I think about it, I want the people around me to care about professionalism as much as I do..
        bigred100 7y ago
        I agree with you on this point. I believe that’s part of doing a reasonably good job as an employee.
      - artsyca 7y ago
        Let me give a little anecdote -- Apparently according to a previous post, there are three tribes of programmers[1] The hackers, the makers and the poets In my view there are actually other tribes, for example `the fixers` which I personally feel I naturally belong to -- Well I used to work with a fellow from Spain, he was a great coder and all, but he called himself a Punk, a Programming Punk and any time he'd show up it would be in some oversized T-shirt of some esoteric punk band Not that I didn't like the guy, but I simply didn't relate to his sense of professionalism which I found rather brash and arrogant -- I felt like he would harm my relationships with certain kinds of clients by what amounted to egotism Well, we were thrust together due to managerial allocations and I was forced to work with him, but I wasn't very glad about it. I kept thinking like "I'm sacrificing time with my kids to be with this Lone Ranger and he's not really giving me the emotional surface area I need to get my job done expediently' A lot of rookies would internalize this and tell themselves whatever they need but as an adult I found his behaviour simply moronic and that is one albeit small example of why I actually care about the behaviour and attitude of the people around me edit: [1] https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/
meowface 7y ago
I completely disagree. I can work closely with someone without being friends with them, or sharing anything personal about myself. That's one reason I like open source development. You can treat everyone, including yourself, as formless brains in a vat, and just focus on the tasks at hand. If it's something like co-founding a startup, that's different. But I don't work a day job to form "intimate relationships". I've found the less intimate and personal, the more productive and smooth things go. But maybe I'm abnormal.
- artsyca 7y ago
  I'm of the opinion that sharing code is the most intimate act that people can engage in, it's like writing a story and you both have to agree on the plot, the characters, the layout.. now you might say you can spend 8 - 10 hours a day in isolation writing code but I'm telling you that's impossible -- even if I allude to the old adage 'to go quickly go alone, to go far travel with company' eventually you're going to need to know the person you're travelling with because holding back is actually much harder than simply putting down your defences Admittedly, remote work is something different but being colocated for extended periods of time even if you are an island, most people are not and you ought to give a care to your fellow human beings because any one could be going through some shit, as we are all wont to do -- look at TechLead for example.. his wife left him!! did he even mention it to his cubicle mates or did he just maintain a stiff upper lip?
- artsyca 7y ago
  As well, even if you yourself disagree, can you imagine that some percentage of human beings might disagree with your disagreement? I view humans in a systems-based perspective, you can't possibly assume everyone thinks the same way you do?

snagglegaggle 7y ago

Hmm, this does explain what I had experienced. Most of my friends are not in IT. There are people I eventually get to know (and that others I know get to know) it's just going into a job trying to make friends can be an extremely bad idea, at least from what I have seen. Thanks for the comments

artsyca 7y ago
Hey you seem relatively new to HN -- welcome to Hotel California
- artsyca 7y ago
  It's like a git repo.. you can check out, but you can never leave
artsyca 7y ago
Work people ought to be closer than family and friends if you really think about it --
- artsyca 7y ago
  Hear me out: assuming we have some kind of freedom and actually choose to work at a company and we're not slaves -- We are investing the vast majority of our efforts on work, even 8 hours per day, not to mention most of our productive moments and brain cycles. Our immediate family comes a distant second in many cases If the people we work with mean nothing to us, how can we justify investing so much of our best selves with them? What does that mean for our so called loved ones whom we sacrifice continuously? Are we sacrificing them for people we hardly care about? That means we hardly care about them even less! The only way this works is if we actually care about the people we work with and the mission of the company, otherwise stay home
  - bigred100 7y ago
    The reason I invest my time and energy in my job is because working and maintaining a career is generally necessary for someone in my position. Within limits the people (I don’t want extraordinarily unpleasant coworkers) and the mission (I probably won’t do anything I find immoral) aren’t extraordinarily important to me. I generally like the word “professional”.
    - artsyca 7y ago
      bigred100, you've expressed the general consensus and I can't disagree with you, most of us are mildly detached and don't care about the 'soft' stuff but.. like.. hmmm.. all things considered, if you were to be paid the exact same amount for the exact same of effort, would you rather work for a company that makes things somewhat better for the world at large or somewhat worse
    - artsyca 7y ago
      I too like the word professional very much, to me it means that I'm staking more than my reputation on something, I'm staking my clients' reputation as well I've made many sacrifices along the way to call myself a professional and the more I think about it, I want the people around me to care about professionalism as much as I do..
      - bigred100 7y ago
        I agree with you on this point. I believe that’s part of doing a reasonably good job as an employee.
    - artsyca 7y ago
      Let me give a little anecdote -- Apparently according to a previous post, there are three tribes of programmers[1] The hackers, the makers and the poets In my view there are actually other tribes, for example `the fixers` which I personally feel I naturally belong to -- Well I used to work with a fellow from Spain, he was a great coder and all, but he called himself a Punk, a Programming Punk and any time he'd show up it would be in some oversized T-shirt of some esoteric punk band Not that I didn't like the guy, but I simply didn't relate to his sense of professionalism which I found rather brash and arrogant -- I felt like he would harm my relationships with certain kinds of clients by what amounted to egotism Well, we were thrust together due to managerial allocations and I was forced to work with him, but I wasn't very glad about it. I kept thinking like "I'm sacrificing time with my kids to be with this Lone Ranger and he's not really giving me the emotional surface area I need to get my job done expediently' A lot of rookies would internalize this and tell themselves whatever they need but as an adult I found his behaviour simply moronic and that is one albeit small example of why I actually care about the behaviour and attitude of the people around me edit: [1] https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/ https://josephg.com/blog/3-tribes/

meowface 7y ago

I completely disagree. I can work closely with someone without being friends with them, or sharing anything personal about myself. That's one reason I like open source development. You can treat everyone, including yourself, as formless brains in a vat, and just focus on the tasks at hand. If it's something like co-founding a startup, that's different. But I don't work a day job to form "intimate relationships". I've found the less intimate and personal, the more productive and smooth things go. But maybe I'm abnormal.

artsyca 7y ago
I'm of the opinion that sharing code is the most intimate act that people can engage in, it's like writing a story and you both have to agree on the plot, the characters, the layout.. now you might say you can spend 8 - 10 hours a day in isolation writing code but I'm telling you that's impossible -- even if I allude to the old adage 'to go quickly go alone, to go far travel with company' eventually you're going to need to know the person you're travelling with because holding back is actually much harder than simply putting down your defences Admittedly, remote work is something different but being colocated for extended periods of time even if you are an island, most people are not and you ought to give a care to your fellow human beings because any one could be going through some shit, as we are all wont to do -- look at TechLead for example.. his wife left him!! did he even mention it to his cubicle mates or did he just maintain a stiff upper lip?
artsyca 7y ago
As well, even if you yourself disagree, can you imagine that some percentage of human beings might disagree with your disagreement? I view humans in a systems-based perspective, you can't possibly assume everyone thinks the same way you do?