13 ms·

What happened to all the non-programmers? (2015)

102 points by harporoeder 6y ago

AmericanChopper 6y ago
The tech community does everything in its power to set up echo chambers and marginalize outside views as much as possible, then somebody wonders why everybody in their in-group is all the same as them... It’s not terribly shocking.
- bovermyer 6y ago
  Replace "tech community" with "literally any human social group" and you're more accurate.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    Perhaps the tech community is simply better at it than everybody else. But I find that hard to believe. The monoculture in the tech community is blindingly obvious to anybody who cares to notice it. It’s especially true in the Bay Area, but not much different elsewhere. Personally I’d suggest that intolerance is the most important ingredient in establishing a robust monoculture, of which Silicon Valley certainly isn’t lacking.
hprotagonist 6y ago
Antidotes include: - join the YMCA or other community gym: It’s true that some of my experience could be related to Oakland as a whole, which is an exceptionally diverse city. But I’ve visited other gyms and workout facilities in my area, and none of them look anything like the YMCA. They all lack the wide range of age, race, gender, and ability. I’ve also visited YMCAs in other states, most recently in Michigan and North Carolina, and they had a very similar vibe to my own. I’ve come to conclude that whatever I lose out on from not going to an upscale or hyperspecialized gym, the YMCA makes up for, because it gives me a much broader sense of community and allows me to interact with people—in real life, no less—who I otherwise wouldn’t. Does this solve all of the world’s problems? Of course not. But I think it’s a small step in the right direction. https://www.outsideonline.com/2403867/ymca-local-gyms-good-world https://www.outsideonline.com/2403867/ymca-local-gyms-good-w... - spend more time in civic spaces like libraries and public parks. Or just being outside in public with an open mind. - speaking of civic involvement, active participation in your local government will for sure broaden your social circles. - religious organizations -- at least, good ones -- are cross-sectional in this way too. Quoting MLK Jr, "... any [church] that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold thing, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity." - community work, like habitat for humanity or the like, will put you in a new sphere of folks too.
EVdotIO 6y ago
Monoculture basically just means upper middle class men in tech coupled with the argument of implicit negation that less diverse == bad. This self flagellation from the PMC and tech is just really... I don't know what to make of it, but I would say is harmful. If you really want to break out of your professional cohort, pick up a hobby which requires other people like sports/music/civic activities/religion/car meets/quilting/neighborhood gardening/whatever. You'll find most of those folk tend to be somewhat like minded as well, but how we spend our free time basically boils down "doing what I enjoy doing around others that respect me on some level". You do you, and let's not get too caught up with having the correct friends.
- landryraccoon 6y ago
  I didn’t read it as a moral argument. It’s simply that if you only hang out with people that are very similar to you, you are very unlikely to encounter a diverse set of viewpoints and are more vulnerable to group think. This isn’t isolated to tech, it would apply to any insular community. To use a tech analogy, if you trained a machine learning model based on the preferences and viewpoints of only people who worked in tech, you’d end up with an overfitted and not very general model. Your brain is trained on viewpoints you are exposed to as well, and you risk over fitting your brain to a narrow set of viewpoints if you never leave an insular community.
- selestify 6y ago
  Isn’t the author’s point that the hobbies he picks are also filled with people from the same profession? He could pick a hobby he doesn’t enjoy, but that would defeat the point of a hobby...
  - selfinvariant 6y ago
    I'm wondering how much of it is a form of filtering based on a social bias. There are a lot of hobbies in the world (that the author would potentially enjoy), but the ones that first come to mind are ones that have an examples nearby (e.g. my teammate Dan mentioned he went rock climbing on Sunday)
- 6y ago
macspoofing 6y ago
Join a church (or synagogue or mosque). Secularism has a societal cost, one of which is the loss of community institutions like churches, where you have a wide variety of people, from different classes, mixing in a common space. Also ... start a family.
- zapita 6y ago
  It's not at all guaranteed that joining a religious community will diversify your social circle. It may very well have the opposite effect depending on the particular community you join.
- dathanb82 6y ago
  It’s true, the professional backgrounds at my church are much more diverse than any other social group I belong to.
- afarrell 6y ago
  Knowing Ben, following this advice would probably lead him to join a Quaker meeting house in his area. While that would probably lead to some interesting discussions about Agile[1][2], I think it would have the same problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_x1hUeIZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_x1hUeIZ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
- ardit33 6y ago
  or play co-ed sports, and you can meet from recent immigrants to trust fund babies and everything in between.... and from all kinds of profession (at least in NYC). A good team will organize the ocasional drinking/get together, parties, etc... you don't have to go to church to meet different set of folks
- WillDaSilva 6y ago
  Your suggestion to join a church doesn't really make sense unless you're proselytizing. If they don't believe in any religions, then they wouldn't join a church no matter how good the social benefits might be. If they do believe in some religion, they have probably already joined a church.
babesh 6y ago
It’s because the author isn’t an independent, rational thinker and still hasn’t realized that. You aren’t a slave to your current social setting. For instance, sports. There are far more than football and ultimate. Kind of irrational to stop at 2? Here’s some help. Sailing. Soccer. Baseball. Softball. Tennis. Golf. Basketball. Table tennis. Badminton. Rock climbing. Bicycling. Trail running. Cricket. Swimming. Diving. Fishing. Roller blading. Dancing. Martial arts. Boxing. Bowling. The author doesn’t realize that football even at 150lbs is dangerous. Try flag football.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  That was partly the point he was making. When selecting a sport, he immediately gravitated to sports that are popular with tech people (i.e. ultimate, rock-climbing).
  - babesh 6y ago
    Because he or she wasn’t thinking rationally. He or she was just using their sheep brain.
    - sushid 6y ago
      You’re the one thinking irrationally. You’re completing missing the poster’s point.
      - babesh 6y ago
        No. I know the poster’s point. It’s argued badly. The poster is trying to argue that tech is a monoculture using their perspective as a lens. The author instead looks like a sheep and doesn’t notice all the other tech that are not like them. The real problem is lack of rationality.
      - babesh 6y ago
        The author’s point is a chain of shit thinking.
  - 6y ago
Barrin92 6y ago
>I’m barely 150 pounds and don’t like traumatic brain injuries. Preferably a more elegant sport that doesn’t require a bunch of awkward equipment. Maybe Ultimate or rock climbing– Wait, crap. hit the gym and do some weight-lifting, solve two problems at once. Also just go out and hit the bars. (okay maybe not the greatest advice right now). Unlike the author my parents were solidly working class so I always was very aware of straddling two very different social circles, between academia and tech work and the people I grew up with. There's no reason to live in either bubble really and in a big city it's not that hard to have a healthy social circle, just requires leaving your comfort zone.
- diego 6y ago
  I am 145 lbs, live in San Francisco, I used to be a programmer (basically retired now). I met the mother of my son while bouldering at Mission Cliffs. She has nothing to do with the tech sector. Bouldering requires just a pair of shoes. The author of this post is just a whiner. It's never been easier to meet people outside of your bubble than now.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Ultimate also just requires a pair of shoes. I mean, one person has to have a disc and some cones, but not everybody.
  - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
    >It's never been easier to meet people outside of your bubble than now. I mean - now - like this year, probably pretty hard. now - last few decades before this year, maybe so.
- selestify 6y ago
  As someone who has this problem to a lesser extent than the author, the question is how to have that healthy social circle. I’ve never met anyone at a gym or bar before. Other than hitting on girls at bars, I’ve never seen anyone else in my social circle meet anybody else at any gyms or bars. I’ve certainly never seen anyone approach me at a gym or a bar. Has your experience been much different? I don’t mind leaving my comfort zone, but to do what, exactly?
screye 6y ago
My solution was to find an international/group home. Your roommates friends become your friends and suddenly you are in a diverse group. Over the last year I stayed with 9 people in 1 house. 2 school teachers, 1 in CSR, 1 lecturer, 1 grad student, 3 in tech (and only 1 in big-tech: Me) and 1 in pharmacy. To-be-fair, I was in Boston . But, my peers ended up in far more homogeneous peer groups when they just stayed with people they knew or other 1/2 random strangers. Pick-up sports or Adult-sports-leagues have worked well for this purpose too. I play(ed) soccer, but Basketball or the like would also work. Lastly, just date someone not-in-tech. Dating apps are great for this. If it turns into a relationship, your partner will make sure their friends become your friends. It is a story as old as time. Although dating-outside-tech can be tricky for some. Not every group is as open to brutally honest and logic-1st/ empathy-2nd style of communication in tech.
pmiller2 6y ago
I'm also a programmer, but I have quite a few friends who are very different from me in a lot of ways. For instance, my main hobby brings me into contact with a lot of people who are 20+ years older than me. I did not engineer this, nor do I have any particular interest in knowing a bunch of older, white men. It just happened that way, because my hobby is popular with this particular demographic. If the author is bothered by their lack of non-programmer friends, surely the easiest way to correct that would be to find a hobby that attracts a different sort of folk. That might not be a viable solution right now due to COVID restrictions, but we're not going to all be stuck in our homes forever.
ummonk 6y ago
Does he hang out in the east bay? Oakland / Berkeley is way less techie than SF so combining the three cities would yield artificially low stats.
MattGaiser 6y ago
In an Internet world, you can find friends who are a perfect fit, so you might never need to find others. I was visiting my grandparents a couple weeks ago and they were baffled at how young people never know their neighbours. And it is true. I know the one neighbour that has lived to the right of my parents house. Nowhere else that I have lived have I even known the names of the people across the hall. I tend to just have 6 friends at any given time who consume 3 hours a day in total. There isn’t room for more people without sacrificing other conversations. And yes, most are software engineers/otherwise in tech.
- m463 6y ago
  I just remember the "7 habits" progression: 1. dependent 2. independent 3. interdependent I think when people are young, they're trying really hard to leave #1 behind and be #2... to the exclusion of #3. #3 might be where you meet your neighbors.
bovermyer 6y ago
Get out of California. As fast as you can, preferably at a cost that's not easy to justify.
jimrandomh 6y ago
The 10% estimate is likely too low. Looking around my social circle, I see: * A grad student neuroscientist (which actually means "Matlab programmer") * A statistician (which actually means "R programmer") * Various other kinds of scientists and mathematicians, whose day-to-day work is actually programming * A rabbi (who is applying to programming boot camps) * A number of unemployed people, trying to learn to program in various ways (from self-study to degree programs to bootcamps) Most of these would not be counted, but if I talked to them at a dinner party, I would count them as programmers.
- in3d 6y ago
  If the author added “male” to the criteria, the percentage would be something like 18%.
Haydos585x2 6y ago
It might be that I live on the other side of the world to the author but this hasn't really been a problem for me. I've been a developer for 10 years or so and find that in Brazilian jiu jitsu there's a pretty even split between university/not-university educated people resulting in a social circle that is pretty diverse, at least from a formal education point of view. In my case the city is somewhat expensive to live in so most of the people that can afford hobbies in this area will earn a similar income and have similar schedules. The article also felt like there was a weird bit of class focus and as other commenters have said the author needs to expand their thoughts on what sports are available and the lives other "non-tech" people live.
jayd16 6y ago
I guess the author didn't keep up with anyone interesting from high school or college? And I guess they don't talk to anyone outside of engineering at their workplace? No HR, no producers, no designers? (Also dinner party? ...ah March 2015)
- cottonseed 6y ago
  > college The author specifically mentions college friends. Sounds like they were only friends with CS majors even then.
- selestify 6y ago
  Not the author, but: No, nobody else moved to the same city I moved to, so even if I kept up with classmates remotely, it wouldn’t be the same as in-person interactions. And also no, I never really interact professionally with any of those other roles at my company. And even if I did, they’re still working inside the tech industry, so that’s not really breaking out of the bubble all that much. Plus, I don’t hang out with most people I work with anyways, nor do they hang out with each other. I’m guessing your experience been quite different?
lcc 6y ago
Maybe don't rule sports out entirely. I accidentally joined a hockey team full of lawyers in Oakland. I guess similar people tend to clump even outside of the tech bubble; it's easiest to recruit people in your network. They would get their summer interns to fill in if we were short players. I also know several teachers who rock climb though of course there are plenty of techies too.
wakawaka1 6y ago
>” In fact, just the fact that I’m interested in doing sports for leisure is associated with class, since it’s not something that would be so easy for, say, manual laborers or shift workers.” I think the bias here is the opposite: the author is politically biased to believe this “classism struggle” somehow doesn’t enable manual Labors to play sports? I think the author should visit the developing world more frequently to realize how common futbol is here, for example. I’ve been invited to pickup futbol (soccer) games in Mexico and Panama. From what I can tell, it’s a sport played around the world, including in the poorest parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is all too frequent—- a politically biased author is unable to face their own biases and instead attempts to enforce them? Yes, there are socioeconomic differences between world regions. But that doesn’t preclude people from enjoying sports. Not everything is a consequence of neomarxist political thought. Perhaps explore the world, before making biased presuppositions, author.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  > I think the bias here is the opposite: the author is politically biased to believe this “classism struggle” somehow doesn’t enable manual Labors to play sports? It's funny coz statistically speaking these "manual laborers" are likely to kick the author's ass in whatever sport he wants to do for leisure.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Or just find the local ball parks and look for the amateur teams.
Animats 6y ago
I never felt that. Few of my friends are programmers. Horse trainer, corporate lawyer, landlord, city building inspector, medical illustrator.
dijit 6y ago
I'm glad I read the article, I thought this was about the death of sysadmins at first glance. Speaking to the content though; and it may seem dismissive or odd but: I tend to make friends with random people I meet. For instance going the extra mile to be friendly with service workers (remembering names, asking about family and following up later, generally having good memory for birthdays etc) has landed me a fair crop of friends. People are rarely in the service industry long and they tend to be wildly different, person-to-person, and they have extended friend groups too which if you get very friendly may end up increasing your circles even further. It sounds weird typing this out, like I consider them some kind of resource to be tapped, but what I'm trying to get across is to be kind to people and friendship will happen. I've never gone looking for friends and almost my entire friend group (outside of IRC) has nothing to do with tech. Some of the people I was just friendly with and became friends with are now personal trainers, nutritionists, nurses and architects. It's almost a problem because we have very little in common, we can only share lamentation about things like open offices and the country we live in. :P
- dctas 6y ago
  This may be my lack of social skills speaking, but would you mind sharing a little more information on how this works in practice? In general when I interact with service workers, we tend to be focused on the service at hand - there isn't very much spare time for making friends. And I can't help but feel they are being paid to be friendly. (I am not from the US, if this makes any difference) Also, how much time would you say you spend with new friends? I find that between work, family, personal projects, and a stable of few but close friends, my time is pretty well spoken for. But the idea of having more friends is certainly a nice one.
  - dijit 6y ago
    Jesus wept, who downvotes legit questions? I'm more than happy to answer, but it might sound sociopathic in isolation and without context. Also I used "service workers" as an example of people I interact with daily, but it can be anyone really and my point was more general. Regarding my service worker friends specifically (usually they work at my local food places): if I go places more than once I'll ask how things are that day, if it was busy, if there's any time that is overly annoying, basic small talk stuff. Maybe another day I'll ask their name, but I must have already asked a question on another day, so that a question like this doesn't come out of the blue.. it's a natural progression, and this is so that I can greet them by name next time I see them. After I'm talking with names then I'll ask weird questions like if they had a favourite customer, maybe make a cheesy joke about it not being me because I'm annoying with questions. Maybe later I'll ask if they have any family in the area, or something stupid about star signs. If their birth month is coming up I'll comment on it and make a mental note to bring it up later to figure out their birthday and get them some small gift. Even later, if I have an event planned or something I'll invite them out- I always offer 2 or 3 different times/things before I stop offering, when/if they reject it can be a reason to ask more pointed questions about what they normally do as activity; the last time you offer you can suggest that they show you what they're interested in or something. It helps that I genuinely care for the people I interact with, I really consider everyone a friend I haven't gotten to know yet. I know it sounds formulaic, but it's not and I'm just recollecting. As for hanging out, maybe once every 2 weeks? not sure, certainly not often. I have a girlfriend who is very demanding of my time. And, for context, I live in Sweden, so- also not US. :)
sokoloff 6y ago
I played adult baseball for a few years. Incredibly enjoyable and kept me grounded with a bunch of people from all walks of life. We had a doctor, a programmer (me), an assistant prof, a plumber, a couple of carpenters, an auto body tech, a DJ, a security guard, and a couple guys who filtered in and out where I didn’t know their jobs. It wasn’t gender balanced at all, of course. Adult softball gives a slightly less diverse in some ways but adds gender diversity. Neither is particularly dangerous among sports. (I’d put them as less risk than hockey or soccer and way less than football.)
thekashifmalik 6y ago
> "Obviously not football, since I’m barely 150 pounds and don’t like traumatic brain injuries." That's exactly something a programmer (or an academic) would say. I box and I hear the same words from my coworkers. If you stopped treating your brain as the most important fucking organ in your body (not that it isn't), you might open yourself up to hobbies that emphasize other aspects of your person. You would probably meet new kinds of people in those activities.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I mean, is he wrong? And I'm pretty sure he could find plenty of other activities that don't involve a high risk of brain damage.
- porknubbins 6y ago
  The football comment struck me as wildly out of touch. In my entire life I’ve never heard of any organized adult football- its obviously way too dangerous and inconvenient to be anything but a pro or school sport.
  - derwiki 6y ago
    It's generally "flag" football--no hard contact. A quick search reveals many leagues in San Francisco.
    - paulcole 6y ago
      Do you think the comment you replied to was about flag football?
  - strken 6y ago
    I've got a double-digit number of friends who play Australian rules football, and elsewhere in the country a lot of 20-somethings play rugby, both sports with a reasonably high risk of head injury, not to mention broken bones and torn ligaments. It's not obvious to me that gridiron is so much worse as to be unplayable. Amusingly enough, there's a USAFL team in San Francisco, although it's almost certainly full of programmers.
davidbanham 6y ago
Try volunteering. I had this exact conversation yesterday on a firetruck on the way back from a hazard reduction burn, that one of the things we all valued most about our volunteering experience was that we were exposed to people we wouldn't normally hang out with in our professional or social circles. That said, on this particular truck three people out of the crew of four were programmers. We thankfully pulled up the conversation about the merits of Jupyter Notebooks for BI tooling before the fourth crew member, who is studying forensics, got so bored her eyes rolled right out of her head.
war1025 6y ago
> - are under 35 > - live in San Francisco, Berkeley or Oakland With those criteria, assuming you are in the tech field, you're probably making an order of magnitude more than your age-group peers. It seems entirely reasonable that you wouldn't bump into the non-tech crowd since they can't afford the same lifestyle as you. Over here in the Midwest, software jobs pay much more in line with other college-educated professions. As a result, I'm the only programmer in my friend group, and most of the people make the same ballpark of money as I do.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  Or you could engage in hobbies that aren't expensive. why waste your money on a "lifestyle" that alienated you from human beings?
- throw51319 6y ago
  How much does a software engineer make in the midwest?
  - war1025 6y ago
    I'm making right around $100k. I believe that's a pretty average market rate for the area, but I really don't know. I see a lot of job listings in the $80-$120k range.
    - throw51319 6y ago
      How many years experience? Senior? That's pretty solid... I guess would be comparable to like $150k in a place like nyc?
      - war1025 6y ago
        Yea I think generally they are advertised as Senior level roles. I have ~10 years experience.
geogra4 6y ago
It's odd because I have never really felt this living outside of sf. my personal circles include lots of other professionals like doctors, lawyers, consultants, accountants, (non software) engineers, etc. Don't these people exist in San Francisco too?
jpzisme 6y ago
I found that doing activities not related to nerd culture really helps you connect with non-programmers. Dancing, sports, volunteering (aside from Code for America, which is great, but filled with programmers) all help. Also, regularly socializing with non-programmers seems to be a check against some of the anti-social habits we're all prone to pick up
- tayo42 6y ago
  > activities not related to nerd culture maybe, counter intuitively I was playing mtg in SF and didnt run into many programmers.
bsder 6y ago
Well, it sounds like the author is 1) single and 2) above 30. That's going to screen most "families" out of your social circle and that's a LOT of people. Most folks (tech and non-tech) start getting pressured to have families by the age of 30. However, the whole premise of the article is that only being surrounded by techies is bad. Why? Would he feel the same if he was only surrounded by musicians?
toyg 6y ago
Lol, I wish I had that problem. Where I live, it's finding like-minded geeks that requires actual effort. IT people are largely social pariahs, unless they are on the business side of things. And it's really been the case for most of my life, over two different countries. It's just that the Bay Area is an economic district, that's all. There are districts in Europe where everyone is somehow involved in making pipes and faucets, others where everyone works in the clothing industry, even some where everyone is into the business of fantasy miniatures.... SF "makes bits", so chances are that if you throw a stone there you'll hit 3 developers, 2 "product guys", and 4 devops (insert a basement-dweller-sysadmin-joke here). I actually found it pretty exciting the few times I was over there - a land where nerds don't have to be ashamed of "being in IT"! Talking coding and gadgets over dinner is socially accepted! How refreshing! Obviously there is a degree of class selection in place, but it was always such. Did your parents know a lot of homeless people or fruit-pickers? I wouldn't think so.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  >Did your parents know a lot of homeless people Not that long ago, I read a news story about a homeless guy. He used to be a pro baseball player. So, I guess maybe my parents didn't know a lot of homeless people because they didn't play pro sports... Which is to say, there's something odd about the way you see the world, or the way I do. One or the other.
  - toyg 6y ago
    The odd thing is why you’d want to force a false dichotomy through anecdata.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      I don't even know what it means to "force a false dichotomy". Obviously nobody, least of all me, believes that all homeless people are millionaires or baseball players. The point is, most homeless people, in general, have family, relatives who are "normal" people, who may have any sort of profession or economic class.
- 6y ago
dang 6y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9146034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9146034
altitudinous 6y ago
Hacker News (or indeed anywhere online) is probably not going to be the space to resolve this issue! Those who weren't at the dinner party are not here to provide insight!
topkai22 6y ago
I was at my engineering college reunion around the time this piece was written. It was shocking the number of people that had pivoted from chemistry, physics, biology, or engineering into "software engineering", including people who hold PhDs in non-CS fields. It does feel like the programming profession has been sucking up talent left and right. I live in a non-coastal tech center and have the opposite problem- I love my friends, but almost none of my social circle programs for a living. It would be nice to be able to talk tech more outside of dedicated meetups or hackathons.
prettycolors 6y ago
Do a combat sport. I've been doing various combat sports for 20 years now and I hardly ever run into people in tech. Plus, it's incredibly fun, useful (self-defense) and interesting; there is a lot of strategy and creativity involved. Jiu Jitsu is super popular most everywhere now, but Judo is really fun too, as well as wrestling. Striking sports are great as well, but you can't really go live in practice in a striking sport. You can spar in striking at 50% a few times a week (and that's pushing it), but you can roll at 100% in Jiu Jitsu up to every day. I always found the latter much more fun.
LurkerAtTheGate 6y ago
Clearly not considered: new acquaintances may be filtering out the author. I was in SF less than a week and found locals were friendlier if they didn't know I worked in tech, doubly so with the Bay area natives. If you don't want to be pigeon-holed as the stereotypical Tech worker ('the ones ruining SF'), then show you have other interests and qualities. Author has done a fine job of defining the edges of that particular mould. The fix is the same as the other comments - break the mould, get outside the comfort zone.
tylerjwilk00 6y ago
Interesting read. Honestly I never took stock of my "social network occupational diversity" but after reading this I feel lucky. Almost no one in my circle of friends shares the same industry, let alone job title. It has a wide range of age groups -1 decade / + 2 decades which may explain it. I'm rural so age isn't very homogenized and any local bars or clubs have a wide spread. We don't talk much about work... I'm now wondering if this is because our professions don't overlap.
ezoe 6y ago
I regularly go to the climbing gym. I couldn't help noticing that there are so many programmers in the climbing gym. People talk about programming related topic all the time. I also went to a dancing school for a year, but I hardly saw any programmer there. I also like snowboarding but it's hard to interact with people around you so I don't know. Outside of sports, I like board games and there are more programmers than average.
poulsbohemian 6y ago
My brother-in-law is a plumber. Guess what? All of his buddies are in the trades. My mom was a school teacher. Guess what? All her friends were school teachers. When I was a software developer, I ran in circles with a lot of other tech people. Now that I'm in real estate, we hang out with a lot of other real estate agents (especially given that my partner was formerly in real estate and all her closest friends were in the business too). Point being - for a good many people, given well-documented challenges of making adult friends, our work / industry creates a natural social circle. Our best friends from outside those work circles came from when she ran an AirBnB back in the day and met people from all over the world.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Half of my friends are landscapers. Why? Hobbies and volunteer work. A friend of mine was best friends with someone she sold a piece of crafting equipment to. Showed up and didn't leave for four hours. If all you do is eat, sleep, and drink software, then you aren't going to know anybody outside of software. It's one of the things we mean when we say that doing software as a profession and your main hobby can be harmful. Doing other things doesn't mean you never work on software outside of work. It means you do it when you have other things sorted out.
loopz 6y ago
If you have to whip up R to confirm your social immaturity, what hope is there to break out of the shell and experience life's diversity? But you can be glad for the friends you have anyways.
ck425 6y ago
I get round this by doing amateur theatre. Most of my friends are from theatre and they're a varied bunch. Doctors, Teachers, Vets and Lawyers are the most common professions but also lots of random jobs such as train Conductor, HR manager, entrepreneur, music instructor, charity worker and marketing execs. There are a few techies but it's rare, and those that are tend more towards management type roles that IC engineers. Unfortunately theatre is likely the last industry that'll recover from covid but once it does I thoroughly recommend it.
- toyg 6y ago
  I have childhood friends whose personal life was literally changed (for the better) by theatre. For some of them, their "real job" is now basically a side activity to their theatre stuff. But it takes a certain type of personality, I think. Actors can be super-annoying to me.
  - ck425 6y ago
    That pretty much describes me to a t. Discovering theatre was the best thing that ever happened to me and I absolutely work so I can go do theatre in my spare time. I aim to FIRE so I can go to drama school for fun.
pvaldes 6y ago
There is a definitive social glue that will introduce yourself to lots of people with a wide spectrum of different interests and is a crazy, always smiling, thing called dog Dogs are NOT for everybody. Having a dog is a 10-15 years commitment and shouldn't be done by impulse, specially if you work from home. Could bark at 4AM, the owner will need to remove a lot of s*t and wake up early each day of the weeks, (Sundays also) and definitely can damage seriously your capability to focus in remote working from home. But nothing prevents you to volunteer to walk a pooch or just borrow one once a month from a friend or grandma to go out and take a walk. A friendly middle sized dog will love to tell everybody how awesome is their father. Is the second best visiting card that a human can show after babies (Money would be the third).

102 points by harporoeder 6y ago

The tech community does everything in its power to set up echo chambers and marginalize outside views as much as possible, then somebody wonders why everybody in their in-group is all the same as them... It’s not terribly shocking.

bovermyer 6y ago
Replace "tech community" with "literally any human social group" and you're more accurate.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  Perhaps the tech community is simply better at it than everybody else. But I find that hard to believe. The monoculture in the tech community is blindingly obvious to anybody who cares to notice it. It’s especially true in the Bay Area, but not much different elsewhere. Personally I’d suggest that intolerance is the most important ingredient in establishing a robust monoculture, of which Silicon Valley certainly isn’t lacking.

hprotagonist 6y ago

Antidotes include: - join the YMCA or other community gym: It’s true that some of my experience could be related to Oakland as a whole, which is an exceptionally diverse city. But I’ve visited other gyms and workout facilities in my area, and none of them look anything like the YMCA. They all lack the wide range of age, race, gender, and ability. I’ve also visited YMCAs in other states, most recently in Michigan and North Carolina, and they had a very similar vibe to my own. I’ve come to conclude that whatever I lose out on from not going to an upscale or hyperspecialized gym, the YMCA makes up for, because it gives me a much broader sense of community and allows me to interact with people—in real life, no less—who I otherwise wouldn’t. Does this solve all of the world’s problems? Of course not. But I think it’s a small step in the right direction. https://www.outsideonline.com/2403867/ymca-local-gyms-good-world https://www.outsideonline.com/2403867/ymca-local-gyms-good-w... - spend more time in civic spaces like libraries and public parks. Or just being outside in public with an open mind. - speaking of civic involvement, active participation in your local government will for sure broaden your social circles. - religious organizations -- at least, good ones -- are cross-sectional in this way too. Quoting MLK Jr, "... any [church] that violates the "whosoever will, let him come" doctrine is a dead, cold thing, and nothing but a little social club with a thin veneer of religiosity." - community work, like habitat for humanity or the like, will put you in a new sphere of folks too.

EVdotIO 6y ago

Monoculture basically just means upper middle class men in tech coupled with the argument of implicit negation that less diverse == bad. This self flagellation from the PMC and tech is just really... I don't know what to make of it, but I would say is harmful. If you really want to break out of your professional cohort, pick up a hobby which requires other people like sports/music/civic activities/religion/car meets/quilting/neighborhood gardening/whatever. You'll find most of those folk tend to be somewhat like minded as well, but how we spend our free time basically boils down "doing what I enjoy doing around others that respect me on some level". You do you, and let's not get too caught up with having the correct friends.

landryraccoon 6y ago
I didn’t read it as a moral argument. It’s simply that if you only hang out with people that are very similar to you, you are very unlikely to encounter a diverse set of viewpoints and are more vulnerable to group think. This isn’t isolated to tech, it would apply to any insular community. To use a tech analogy, if you trained a machine learning model based on the preferences and viewpoints of only people who worked in tech, you’d end up with an overfitted and not very general model. Your brain is trained on viewpoints you are exposed to as well, and you risk over fitting your brain to a narrow set of viewpoints if you never leave an insular community.
selestify 6y ago
Isn’t the author’s point that the hobbies he picks are also filled with people from the same profession? He could pick a hobby he doesn’t enjoy, but that would defeat the point of a hobby...
- selfinvariant 6y ago
  I'm wondering how much of it is a form of filtering based on a social bias. There are a lot of hobbies in the world (that the author would potentially enjoy), but the ones that first come to mind are ones that have an examples nearby (e.g. my teammate Dan mentioned he went rock climbing on Sunday)
6y ago

macspoofing 6y ago

Join a church (or synagogue or mosque). Secularism has a societal cost, one of which is the loss of community institutions like churches, where you have a wide variety of people, from different classes, mixing in a common space. Also ... start a family.

zapita 6y ago
It's not at all guaranteed that joining a religious community will diversify your social circle. It may very well have the opposite effect depending on the particular community you join.
dathanb82 6y ago
It’s true, the professional backgrounds at my church are much more diverse than any other social group I belong to.
afarrell 6y ago
Knowing Ben, following this advice would probably lead him to join a Quaker meeting house in his area. While that would probably lead to some interesting discussions about Agile[1][2], I think it would have the same problem. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_x1hUeIZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_x1hUeIZ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
ardit33 6y ago
or play co-ed sports, and you can meet from recent immigrants to trust fund babies and everything in between.... and from all kinds of profession (at least in NYC). A good team will organize the ocasional drinking/get together, parties, etc... you don't have to go to church to meet different set of folks
WillDaSilva 6y ago
Your suggestion to join a church doesn't really make sense unless you're proselytizing. If they don't believe in any religions, then they wouldn't join a church no matter how good the social benefits might be. If they do believe in some religion, they have probably already joined a church.

babesh 6y ago

It’s because the author isn’t an independent, rational thinker and still hasn’t realized that. You aren’t a slave to your current social setting. For instance, sports. There are far more than football and ultimate. Kind of irrational to stop at 2? Here’s some help. Sailing. Soccer. Baseball. Softball. Tennis. Golf. Basketball. Table tennis. Badminton. Rock climbing. Bicycling. Trail running. Cricket. Swimming. Diving. Fishing. Roller blading. Dancing. Martial arts. Boxing. Bowling. The author doesn’t realize that football even at 150lbs is dangerous. Try flag football.

macspoofing 6y ago
That was partly the point he was making. When selecting a sport, he immediately gravitated to sports that are popular with tech people (i.e. ultimate, rock-climbing).
- babesh 6y ago
  Because he or she wasn’t thinking rationally. He or she was just using their sheep brain.
  - sushid 6y ago
    You’re the one thinking irrationally. You’re completing missing the poster’s point.
    - babesh 6y ago
      No. I know the poster’s point. It’s argued badly. The poster is trying to argue that tech is a monoculture using their perspective as a lens. The author instead looks like a sheep and doesn’t notice all the other tech that are not like them. The real problem is lack of rationality.
    - babesh 6y ago
      The author’s point is a chain of shit thinking.
- 6y ago

Barrin92 6y ago

>I’m barely 150 pounds and don’t like traumatic brain injuries. Preferably a more elegant sport that doesn’t require a bunch of awkward equipment. Maybe Ultimate or rock climbing– Wait, crap. hit the gym and do some weight-lifting, solve two problems at once. Also just go out and hit the bars. (okay maybe not the greatest advice right now). Unlike the author my parents were solidly working class so I always was very aware of straddling two very different social circles, between academia and tech work and the people I grew up with. There's no reason to live in either bubble really and in a big city it's not that hard to have a healthy social circle, just requires leaving your comfort zone.

diego 6y ago
I am 145 lbs, live in San Francisco, I used to be a programmer (basically retired now). I met the mother of my son while bouldering at Mission Cliffs. She has nothing to do with the tech sector. Bouldering requires just a pair of shoes. The author of this post is just a whiner. It's never been easier to meet people outside of your bubble than now.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Ultimate also just requires a pair of shoes. I mean, one person has to have a disc and some cones, but not everybody.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  >It's never been easier to meet people outside of your bubble than now. I mean - now - like this year, probably pretty hard. now - last few decades before this year, maybe so.
selestify 6y ago
As someone who has this problem to a lesser extent than the author, the question is how to have that healthy social circle. I’ve never met anyone at a gym or bar before. Other than hitting on girls at bars, I’ve never seen anyone else in my social circle meet anybody else at any gyms or bars. I’ve certainly never seen anyone approach me at a gym or a bar. Has your experience been much different? I don’t mind leaving my comfort zone, but to do what, exactly?

screye 6y ago

My solution was to find an international/group home. Your roommates friends become your friends and suddenly you are in a diverse group. Over the last year I stayed with 9 people in 1 house. 2 school teachers, 1 in CSR, 1 lecturer, 1 grad student, 3 in tech (and only 1 in big-tech: Me) and 1 in pharmacy. To-be-fair, I was in Boston . But, my peers ended up in far more homogeneous peer groups when they just stayed with people they knew or other 1/2 random strangers. Pick-up sports or Adult-sports-leagues have worked well for this purpose too. I play(ed) soccer, but Basketball or the like would also work. Lastly, just date someone not-in-tech. Dating apps are great for this. If it turns into a relationship, your partner will make sure their friends become your friends. It is a story as old as time. Although dating-outside-tech can be tricky for some. Not every group is as open to brutally honest and logic-1st/ empathy-2nd style of communication in tech.

pmiller2 6y ago

I'm also a programmer, but I have quite a few friends who are very different from me in a lot of ways. For instance, my main hobby brings me into contact with a lot of people who are 20+ years older than me. I did not engineer this, nor do I have any particular interest in knowing a bunch of older, white men. It just happened that way, because my hobby is popular with this particular demographic. If the author is bothered by their lack of non-programmer friends, surely the easiest way to correct that would be to find a hobby that attracts a different sort of folk. That might not be a viable solution right now due to COVID restrictions, but we're not going to all be stuck in our homes forever.

ummonk 6y ago

Does he hang out in the east bay? Oakland / Berkeley is way less techie than SF so combining the three cities would yield artificially low stats.

MattGaiser 6y ago

In an Internet world, you can find friends who are a perfect fit, so you might never need to find others. I was visiting my grandparents a couple weeks ago and they were baffled at how young people never know their neighbours. And it is true. I know the one neighbour that has lived to the right of my parents house. Nowhere else that I have lived have I even known the names of the people across the hall. I tend to just have 6 friends at any given time who consume 3 hours a day in total. There isn’t room for more people without sacrificing other conversations. And yes, most are software engineers/otherwise in tech.

m463 6y ago
I just remember the "7 habits" progression: 1. dependent 2. independent 3. interdependent I think when people are young, they're trying really hard to leave #1 behind and be #2... to the exclusion of #3. #3 might be where you meet your neighbors.

bovermyer 6y ago

Get out of California. As fast as you can, preferably at a cost that's not easy to justify.

jimrandomh 6y ago

The 10% estimate is likely too low. Looking around my social circle, I see: * A grad student neuroscientist (which actually means "Matlab programmer") * A statistician (which actually means "R programmer") * Various other kinds of scientists and mathematicians, whose day-to-day work is actually programming * A rabbi (who is applying to programming boot camps) * A number of unemployed people, trying to learn to program in various ways (from self-study to degree programs to bootcamps) Most of these would not be counted, but if I talked to them at a dinner party, I would count them as programmers.

in3d 6y ago
If the author added “male” to the criteria, the percentage would be something like 18%.

Haydos585x2 6y ago

It might be that I live on the other side of the world to the author but this hasn't really been a problem for me. I've been a developer for 10 years or so and find that in Brazilian jiu jitsu there's a pretty even split between university/not-university educated people resulting in a social circle that is pretty diverse, at least from a formal education point of view. In my case the city is somewhat expensive to live in so most of the people that can afford hobbies in this area will earn a similar income and have similar schedules. The article also felt like there was a weird bit of class focus and as other commenters have said the author needs to expand their thoughts on what sports are available and the lives other "non-tech" people live.

jayd16 6y ago

I guess the author didn't keep up with anyone interesting from high school or college? And I guess they don't talk to anyone outside of engineering at their workplace? No HR, no producers, no designers? (Also dinner party? ...ah March 2015)

cottonseed 6y ago
> college The author specifically mentions college friends. Sounds like they were only friends with CS majors even then.
selestify 6y ago
Not the author, but: No, nobody else moved to the same city I moved to, so even if I kept up with classmates remotely, it wouldn’t be the same as in-person interactions. And also no, I never really interact professionally with any of those other roles at my company. And even if I did, they’re still working inside the tech industry, so that’s not really breaking out of the bubble all that much. Plus, I don’t hang out with most people I work with anyways, nor do they hang out with each other. I’m guessing your experience been quite different?

lcc 6y ago

Maybe don't rule sports out entirely. I accidentally joined a hockey team full of lawyers in Oakland. I guess similar people tend to clump even outside of the tech bubble; it's easiest to recruit people in your network. They would get their summer interns to fill in if we were short players. I also know several teachers who rock climb though of course there are plenty of techies too.

wakawaka1 6y ago

>” In fact, just the fact that I’m interested in doing sports for leisure is associated with class, since it’s not something that would be so easy for, say, manual laborers or shift workers.” I think the bias here is the opposite: the author is politically biased to believe this “classism struggle” somehow doesn’t enable manual Labors to play sports? I think the author should visit the developing world more frequently to realize how common futbol is here, for example. I’ve been invited to pickup futbol (soccer) games in Mexico and Panama. From what I can tell, it’s a sport played around the world, including in the poorest parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is all too frequent—- a politically biased author is unable to face their own biases and instead attempts to enforce them? Yes, there are socioeconomic differences between world regions. But that doesn’t preclude people from enjoying sports. Not everything is a consequence of neomarxist political thought. Perhaps explore the world, before making biased presuppositions, author.

kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
> I think the bias here is the opposite: the author is politically biased to believe this “classism struggle” somehow doesn’t enable manual Labors to play sports? It's funny coz statistically speaking these "manual laborers" are likely to kick the author's ass in whatever sport he wants to do for leisure.
hinkley 6y ago
Or just find the local ball parks and look for the amateur teams.

Animats 6y ago

I never felt that. Few of my friends are programmers. Horse trainer, corporate lawyer, landlord, city building inspector, medical illustrator.

dijit 6y ago

I'm glad I read the article, I thought this was about the death of sysadmins at first glance. Speaking to the content though; and it may seem dismissive or odd but: I tend to make friends with random people I meet. For instance going the extra mile to be friendly with service workers (remembering names, asking about family and following up later, generally having good memory for birthdays etc) has landed me a fair crop of friends. People are rarely in the service industry long and they tend to be wildly different, person-to-person, and they have extended friend groups too which if you get very friendly may end up increasing your circles even further. It sounds weird typing this out, like I consider them some kind of resource to be tapped, but what I'm trying to get across is to be kind to people and friendship will happen. I've never gone looking for friends and almost my entire friend group (outside of IRC) has nothing to do with tech. Some of the people I was just friendly with and became friends with are now personal trainers, nutritionists, nurses and architects. It's almost a problem because we have very little in common, we can only share lamentation about things like open offices and the country we live in. :P

dctas 6y ago
This may be my lack of social skills speaking, but would you mind sharing a little more information on how this works in practice? In general when I interact with service workers, we tend to be focused on the service at hand - there isn't very much spare time for making friends. And I can't help but feel they are being paid to be friendly. (I am not from the US, if this makes any difference) Also, how much time would you say you spend with new friends? I find that between work, family, personal projects, and a stable of few but close friends, my time is pretty well spoken for. But the idea of having more friends is certainly a nice one.
- dijit 6y ago
  Jesus wept, who downvotes legit questions? I'm more than happy to answer, but it might sound sociopathic in isolation and without context. Also I used "service workers" as an example of people I interact with daily, but it can be anyone really and my point was more general. Regarding my service worker friends specifically (usually they work at my local food places): if I go places more than once I'll ask how things are that day, if it was busy, if there's any time that is overly annoying, basic small talk stuff. Maybe another day I'll ask their name, but I must have already asked a question on another day, so that a question like this doesn't come out of the blue.. it's a natural progression, and this is so that I can greet them by name next time I see them. After I'm talking with names then I'll ask weird questions like if they had a favourite customer, maybe make a cheesy joke about it not being me because I'm annoying with questions. Maybe later I'll ask if they have any family in the area, or something stupid about star signs. If their birth month is coming up I'll comment on it and make a mental note to bring it up later to figure out their birthday and get them some small gift. Even later, if I have an event planned or something I'll invite them out- I always offer 2 or 3 different times/things before I stop offering, when/if they reject it can be a reason to ask more pointed questions about what they normally do as activity; the last time you offer you can suggest that they show you what they're interested in or something. It helps that I genuinely care for the people I interact with, I really consider everyone a friend I haven't gotten to know yet. I know it sounds formulaic, but it's not and I'm just recollecting. As for hanging out, maybe once every 2 weeks? not sure, certainly not often. I have a girlfriend who is very demanding of my time. And, for context, I live in Sweden, so- also not US. :)

sokoloff 6y ago

I played adult baseball for a few years. Incredibly enjoyable and kept me grounded with a bunch of people from all walks of life. We had a doctor, a programmer (me), an assistant prof, a plumber, a couple of carpenters, an auto body tech, a DJ, a security guard, and a couple guys who filtered in and out where I didn’t know their jobs. It wasn’t gender balanced at all, of course. Adult softball gives a slightly less diverse in some ways but adds gender diversity. Neither is particularly dangerous among sports. (I’d put them as less risk than hockey or soccer and way less than football.)

thekashifmalik 6y ago

> "Obviously not football, since I’m barely 150 pounds and don’t like traumatic brain injuries." That's exactly something a programmer (or an academic) would say. I box and I hear the same words from my coworkers. If you stopped treating your brain as the most important fucking organ in your body (not that it isn't), you might open yourself up to hobbies that emphasize other aspects of your person. You would probably meet new kinds of people in those activities.

TulliusCicero 6y ago
I mean, is he wrong? And I'm pretty sure he could find plenty of other activities that don't involve a high risk of brain damage.
porknubbins 6y ago
The football comment struck me as wildly out of touch. In my entire life I’ve never heard of any organized adult football- its obviously way too dangerous and inconvenient to be anything but a pro or school sport.
- derwiki 6y ago
  It's generally "flag" football--no hard contact. A quick search reveals many leagues in San Francisco.
  - paulcole 6y ago
    Do you think the comment you replied to was about flag football?
- strken 6y ago
  I've got a double-digit number of friends who play Australian rules football, and elsewhere in the country a lot of 20-somethings play rugby, both sports with a reasonably high risk of head injury, not to mention broken bones and torn ligaments. It's not obvious to me that gridiron is so much worse as to be unplayable. Amusingly enough, there's a USAFL team in San Francisco, although it's almost certainly full of programmers.

davidbanham 6y ago

Try volunteering. I had this exact conversation yesterday on a firetruck on the way back from a hazard reduction burn, that one of the things we all valued most about our volunteering experience was that we were exposed to people we wouldn't normally hang out with in our professional or social circles. That said, on this particular truck three people out of the crew of four were programmers. We thankfully pulled up the conversation about the merits of Jupyter Notebooks for BI tooling before the fourth crew member, who is studying forensics, got so bored her eyes rolled right out of her head.

war1025 6y ago

> - are under 35 > - live in San Francisco, Berkeley or Oakland With those criteria, assuming you are in the tech field, you're probably making an order of magnitude more than your age-group peers. It seems entirely reasonable that you wouldn't bump into the non-tech crowd since they can't afford the same lifestyle as you. Over here in the Midwest, software jobs pay much more in line with other college-educated professions. As a result, I'm the only programmer in my friend group, and most of the people make the same ballpark of money as I do.

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Or you could engage in hobbies that aren't expensive. why waste your money on a "lifestyle" that alienated you from human beings?
throw51319 6y ago
How much does a software engineer make in the midwest?
- war1025 6y ago
  I'm making right around $100k. I believe that's a pretty average market rate for the area, but I really don't know. I see a lot of job listings in the $80-$120k range.
  - throw51319 6y ago
    How many years experience? Senior? That's pretty solid... I guess would be comparable to like $150k in a place like nyc?
    - war1025 6y ago
      Yea I think generally they are advertised as Senior level roles. I have ~10 years experience.

geogra4 6y ago

It's odd because I have never really felt this living outside of sf. my personal circles include lots of other professionals like doctors, lawyers, consultants, accountants, (non software) engineers, etc. Don't these people exist in San Francisco too?

jpzisme 6y ago

I found that doing activities not related to nerd culture really helps you connect with non-programmers. Dancing, sports, volunteering (aside from Code for America, which is great, but filled with programmers) all help. Also, regularly socializing with non-programmers seems to be a check against some of the anti-social habits we're all prone to pick up

tayo42 6y ago
> activities not related to nerd culture maybe, counter intuitively I was playing mtg in SF and didnt run into many programmers.

bsder 6y ago

Well, it sounds like the author is 1) single and 2) above 30. That's going to screen most "families" out of your social circle and that's a LOT of people. Most folks (tech and non-tech) start getting pressured to have families by the age of 30. However, the whole premise of the article is that only being surrounded by techies is bad. Why? Would he feel the same if he was only surrounded by musicians?

toyg 6y ago

Lol, I wish I had that problem. Where I live, it's finding like-minded geeks that requires actual effort. IT people are largely social pariahs, unless they are on the business side of things. And it's really been the case for most of my life, over two different countries. It's just that the Bay Area is an economic district, that's all. There are districts in Europe where everyone is somehow involved in making pipes and faucets, others where everyone works in the clothing industry, even some where everyone is into the business of fantasy miniatures.... SF "makes bits", so chances are that if you throw a stone there you'll hit 3 developers, 2 "product guys", and 4 devops (insert a basement-dweller-sysadmin-joke here). I actually found it pretty exciting the few times I was over there - a land where nerds don't have to be ashamed of "being in IT"! Talking coding and gadgets over dinner is socially accepted! How refreshing! Obviously there is a degree of class selection in place, but it was always such. Did your parents know a lot of homeless people or fruit-pickers? I wouldn't think so.

perl4ever 6y ago
>Did your parents know a lot of homeless people Not that long ago, I read a news story about a homeless guy. He used to be a pro baseball player. So, I guess maybe my parents didn't know a lot of homeless people because they didn't play pro sports... Which is to say, there's something odd about the way you see the world, or the way I do. One or the other.
- toyg 6y ago
  The odd thing is why you’d want to force a false dichotomy through anecdata.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I don't even know what it means to "force a false dichotomy". Obviously nobody, least of all me, believes that all homeless people are millionaires or baseball players. The point is, most homeless people, in general, have family, relatives who are "normal" people, who may have any sort of profession or economic class.
6y ago

dang 6y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9146034 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9146034

altitudinous 6y ago

Hacker News (or indeed anywhere online) is probably not going to be the space to resolve this issue! Those who weren't at the dinner party are not here to provide insight!

topkai22 6y ago

I was at my engineering college reunion around the time this piece was written. It was shocking the number of people that had pivoted from chemistry, physics, biology, or engineering into "software engineering", including people who hold PhDs in non-CS fields. It does feel like the programming profession has been sucking up talent left and right. I live in a non-coastal tech center and have the opposite problem- I love my friends, but almost none of my social circle programs for a living. It would be nice to be able to talk tech more outside of dedicated meetups or hackathons.

prettycolors 6y ago

Do a combat sport. I've been doing various combat sports for 20 years now and I hardly ever run into people in tech. Plus, it's incredibly fun, useful (self-defense) and interesting; there is a lot of strategy and creativity involved. Jiu Jitsu is super popular most everywhere now, but Judo is really fun too, as well as wrestling. Striking sports are great as well, but you can't really go live in practice in a striking sport. You can spar in striking at 50% a few times a week (and that's pushing it), but you can roll at 100% in Jiu Jitsu up to every day. I always found the latter much more fun.

LurkerAtTheGate 6y ago

Clearly not considered: new acquaintances may be filtering out the author. I was in SF less than a week and found locals were friendlier if they didn't know I worked in tech, doubly so with the Bay area natives. If you don't want to be pigeon-holed as the stereotypical Tech worker ('the ones ruining SF'), then show you have other interests and qualities. Author has done a fine job of defining the edges of that particular mould. The fix is the same as the other comments - break the mould, get outside the comfort zone.

tylerjwilk00 6y ago

Interesting read. Honestly I never took stock of my "social network occupational diversity" but after reading this I feel lucky. Almost no one in my circle of friends shares the same industry, let alone job title. It has a wide range of age groups -1 decade / + 2 decades which may explain it. I'm rural so age isn't very homogenized and any local bars or clubs have a wide spread. We don't talk much about work... I'm now wondering if this is because our professions don't overlap.

ezoe 6y ago

I regularly go to the climbing gym. I couldn't help noticing that there are so many programmers in the climbing gym. People talk about programming related topic all the time. I also went to a dancing school for a year, but I hardly saw any programmer there. I also like snowboarding but it's hard to interact with people around you so I don't know. Outside of sports, I like board games and there are more programmers than average.

poulsbohemian 6y ago

My brother-in-law is a plumber. Guess what? All of his buddies are in the trades. My mom was a school teacher. Guess what? All her friends were school teachers. When I was a software developer, I ran in circles with a lot of other tech people. Now that I'm in real estate, we hang out with a lot of other real estate agents (especially given that my partner was formerly in real estate and all her closest friends were in the business too). Point being - for a good many people, given well-documented challenges of making adult friends, our work / industry creates a natural social circle. Our best friends from outside those work circles came from when she ran an AirBnB back in the day and met people from all over the world.

hinkley 6y ago
Half of my friends are landscapers. Why? Hobbies and volunteer work. A friend of mine was best friends with someone she sold a piece of crafting equipment to. Showed up and didn't leave for four hours. If all you do is eat, sleep, and drink software, then you aren't going to know anybody outside of software. It's one of the things we mean when we say that doing software as a profession and your main hobby can be harmful. Doing other things doesn't mean you never work on software outside of work. It means you do it when you have other things sorted out.

loopz 6y ago

If you have to whip up R to confirm your social immaturity, what hope is there to break out of the shell and experience life's diversity? But you can be glad for the friends you have anyways.

ck425 6y ago

I get round this by doing amateur theatre. Most of my friends are from theatre and they're a varied bunch. Doctors, Teachers, Vets and Lawyers are the most common professions but also lots of random jobs such as train Conductor, HR manager, entrepreneur, music instructor, charity worker and marketing execs. There are a few techies but it's rare, and those that are tend more towards management type roles that IC engineers. Unfortunately theatre is likely the last industry that'll recover from covid but once it does I thoroughly recommend it.

toyg 6y ago
I have childhood friends whose personal life was literally changed (for the better) by theatre. For some of them, their "real job" is now basically a side activity to their theatre stuff. But it takes a certain type of personality, I think. Actors can be super-annoying to me.
- ck425 6y ago
  That pretty much describes me to a t. Discovering theatre was the best thing that ever happened to me and I absolutely work so I can go do theatre in my spare time. I aim to FIRE so I can go to drama school for fun.

pvaldes 6y ago

There is a definitive social glue that will introduce yourself to lots of people with a wide spectrum of different interests and is a crazy, always smiling, thing called dog Dogs are NOT for everybody. Having a dog is a 10-15 years commitment and shouldn't be done by impulse, specially if you work from home. Could bark at 4AM, the owner will need to remove a lot of s*t and wake up early each day of the weeks, (Sundays also) and definitely can damage seriously your capability to focus in remote working from home. But nothing prevents you to volunteer to walk a pooch or just borrow one once a month from a friend or grandma to go out and take a walk. A friendly middle sized dog will love to tell everybody how awesome is their father. Is the second best visiting card that a human can show after babies (Money would be the third).