Excellent points, but how often have you heard of programmers being hired because of objectivity, honesty, and empathy? Change the context to construction: how

Excellent points, but how often have you heard of programmers being hired because of objectivity, honesty, and empathy? Change the context to construction: how long will a team of objective, honest, empathetic builders last who can't complete the construction of a building last before they are either fired or the company folds because nobody wants to hire a group of nice but inept builders? Perhaps another analogy is worth considering: the military. How can a group of incredibly diverse individuals form effective teams? Things aren't always socially rosy but there are two things which allow them to gel as a team: common purpose and they are stuck with each other. How often do programmers find common purpose with the other members of their team or the company as a whole? Maybe this was the genius of Steve Jobs, turning Apple (and later Pixar) into a revolutionary crusade and preaching sermons more than giving leadership at times. As programmers we're frequently hired to solve a problem nobody else could or had time for. When's the last time a new hire was put on new feature development so that more seasoned devs could go tackle technical debt? I'm not saying that would be a good thing but without a sense of common purpose it's hard to build a team. And that second aspect that allows military teams to gel... we're not stuck with our co-workers in civilian life -- we're free to leave (or be let go) at any time. It's very rare to find teams where three or more programmers (who are keen on keeping up with technology) have been there for more than ten years. I can only think of two where I've worked: one was an RPG/AS-400 shop and I was the boat-rocker being brought in to move things to .NET (and was resisted every step of the way until I left) and the other was a shop where I was brought in to help convert a VB6 app to .NET Core microservices.