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Things my dog taught me about software development
- awillen 5y agoWhile I don't think this has any wildly profound revelations, I would highly recommend reading it because it contains reasonable advice punctuated by really, really adorable pictures of the author's puppy.
- amelius 5y agoWhat this really taught me is that you can use puppies to hack into people's minds and make them upvote stories.
- Stampo00 5y agoIn software development, nobody knows you're a dog.
- type0 5y agoIt's been broader than that before https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_... Unfortunately even in some open source projects you can't be a pseudonymous dog anymore, you have to declare your pronouns, sometimes even ethnicity etc all in the name of equity. I don't like these kind of development and urge more more people to abandon such projects.
- smoldesu 5y agoMy bigger concern is having some other dog commit a change to my Terms of Conduct without prior experience in the org, and then witch-hunting me when I mark their PR as wontfix.
- forgingahead 5y agoYes, the identity politics seeping into what was previously an anonymous, decentralised, and democratic process of software development has been both sickening and infuriating. I echo the call to abandon such politicised projects, and also to immediately cut out those for who identity is more important than meritocracy of work.
- baremetal 5y agoyeah seeing this transpire serves to confirm the decision to move to another line of work. i have only enough energy to solve real problems, cant be wasting energy on made up ones.
- Igelau 5y agoGender: Bitch Pronouns: Who's a good girl Ethnicity: Rottweiler
- Guthur 5y agoIt's sort of strange that this selective pronoun approach only really works in an online context and doesn't scale appropriately to real life interactions, to the point where pronouns become useless as an information compression and so we would be better off not using them at all and just use proper nouns. But this is where it gets funny because that's easiest in most online comms with the use of @. It's quite clear no one has any idea what they are doing.
- treeman79 5y agoIt’s a way to force people to participate and to alienate those that don’t want to. Lost my job because I didn’t want to participate.
- Eldt 5y agoIf you don't want to be kind to others then that's on you
- nuerow 5y ago> If you don't want to be kind to others then that's on you Kindness has really nothing to do with persecuting and punishing anyone who doesn't comply with arbitrary demands regarding etiquette.
- vibrato2 5y agoIt’s not kind to encourage delusions or mental illness. Loving someone enough to tell them the truth is kind.
- lostcolony 5y agoEven if you're against trans people, in an online forum, normalizing calling out pronouns allows cisgendered women to say "I'm a woman and would like to be called as such" without it being disruptive or cause men to view her as pushy.
- upofadown 5y ago>...you have to declare your pronouns, sometimes even ethnicity etc all in the name of equity. Where and how would you do this? How would anyone know if you just made stuff up?
- FearlessNebula 5y agoNot a FOSS project, but the black people twitter subreddit apparently does photo confirmation of your wrist.
- baremetal 5y agoi identify as amish. my pronouns are "builds stuff" and "feeds people". ;) you know im not making it up because you can live in the houses ive built, run the code ive written, and eat the food ive grown. i dont know what everyone else is up to though with their "identity politics". seems irrelevant to anything productive. why would anyone care what your pronouns are? you arent special.
- pavlov 5y agoIsn’t the whole point of declaring pronouns that it gives you the option not to be gendered, if you prefer? If you’re a pseudonymous dog, your pronouns can be “they/them”.
- lostcolony 5y agoThat, and to prevent it from being presumed all male. That is, without calling out pronouns, people will either default to "he/him" (which presumes everyone is male), or "they/them". If you don't want to identify a gender, "they/them" doesn't. But it normalizes calling out pronouns such that someone can say "I am a woman and would like to be called as such" without sticking out. That's really the intention; by making it so everyone, even those who legitimately don't care how they're identified (which is a smaller number than those who are fine being 'defaulted' to 'he/him' or 'they/them'; most who don't want to call out a pronoun will object to being referred to as 'she/her') define a pronoun, it normalizes it for those to whom it is important. And it doesn't de-anonymize anything; "they/them" is an option, as is asking "please don't use pronouns when referring solely to me; use my username").
- type0 5y ago> as is asking "please don't use pronouns when referring solely to me; use my username"). Often it's not considered as an option though.
- lostcolony 5y agoSure, but it still would need to be provided pre-emptively; it doesn't really avoid the issue that some people have of having to upfront declare preferred mode of address. Even though that's perfectly normal even in day to day conversation, i.e., "Hi, I'm (name)".
- nuerow 5y ago> Isn’t the whole point of declaring pronouns that it gives you the option not to be gendered, if you prefer? English already supported gender neutrality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English Enforcing arbitrary pronouns aims to achieve the exact opposite: enforce the use of gender-specific pronouns to third-parties based on someone's preferences.
- Igelau 5y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20060203045552/http://modernarthur.com/blog/christwhatanasshole.html https://web.archive.org/web/20060203045552/http://modernarth... Yep, works here too.
- nyanpasu64 5y agoAs a pseudonymous cat, the issues I've seen aren't being required (not just normalized) to supply a pronoun, but rather being expected to supply a human name to the KDE project for copyright tracking purposes.
- type0 5y agoIn the name of equity I would suggest not promoting cats on the Internet and software projects since your species already over-represented in picture on the web, we all know we should reverse the bias in favor of dogs. /s > but rather being expected to supply a human name For the record my cat is called Cat (that's short Catherine) and agrees with me.
- tomjen3 5y agoAs I am not a dog, I usually search for the other option on race and write down "human". Granted it is fraud, as I am a Vulcan, but I can't say that.
- detaro 5y agoWhat open-source projects are those? Never encountered that.
- h2odragon 5y agoEat enough bug reports and people begin to have suspicions.
- SPascareli13 5y agoI am in a position now where I have a few Jrs that I have to care for, any more advice?
- KineticLensman 5y agoOne difference between puppies and junior developers is that you can discuss career aspirations with the latter. If you have juniors AND you can influence resourcing decisions in your company, then you can try to align the work given to the juniors with available projects that could best support their skillset / career development.
- formerly_proven 5y agoYou guys have career development without changing jobs? :o
- Nextgrid 5y agoNot a dig to the parent post but in general, plenty of companies have "career development". What's lacking is the appropriate salary increases, which is why changing jobs is common.
- smusamashah 5y agoThe title of article reminds of this book "Everything I Know about Women I Learned from My Tractor" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-about-Women-Learned-Tractor/dp/0760311498 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everything-about-Women-Learned-Trac...
- crate_barre 5y agoDon’t hold grudges Sadly, human memory is just so damn strong. It’s stored with emotional context, and I really wish I could turn it off without becoming completely sociopathic.
- maccard 5y agoYou don't need to turn it off, you do need to make an effort to look past it.
- lostcolony 5y agoForgive, not forget, so to speak. Or at least pretend to.
- floe 5y agoOTOH, you do have a lot of control in many cases. I realized that I was way too emotionally invested in a lot of work interactions because I just hadn't thought through what I actually wanted. Once I realized that, I was able to dial down my emotional investment and I stopped forming grudges at least in those cases.
- crate_barre 5y agoI’ve tried this successfully over vast stretches of time at work. However, the human element always gives way for me and I do eventually crack. Sometimes I do think it’s ok to feel the emotion because it’s not just business when humans are involved.
- rented_mule 5y agoFor me, getting better at this came out of introspecting on a song lyric... "I crucified my hate and held the world within my hand." My introspection started with committing to not using the word "hate" for a year, but instead find ways to express what was bothering me rather than jumping to judgement (that was hard work). Through the introspection that resulted from that exercise, I came to understand that a lot of it is framing. When someone cuts me off on the road, it's easy to judge them because they think they are the only one in a hurry and they are willing to risk harm to others. But it's possible that their child is dying in the hospital and they are trying to get there so the child won't spend their last moments alone. I can't know which it is. Would I rather give the inconsiderate driver a break they might not deserve or the grief stricken parent judgement they don't deserve? Since I can't know which it is, I have to choose which side I'd prefer to err on. That's an extreme example, but once I figured this out, I found that it gave me more peace to not judge in such situations. It's much better for my own mental health to hope their loved ones are okay than to be angry. And my choice doesn't affect the other driver at all. Without judgement, there isn't anything to hold a grudge about. Once I had practice with highly provocative situations like that, work was easy by comparison.
- AlbertCory 5y agoAs someone who successfully raised one puppy (disgustingly shameless clickbait: [1]) I can recommend a critical principle that applies to software developers as well: Only positive reinforcement: for the dog, you don't even express disapproval when they mess in the house. You just carry them outside, plus express wild approval when they do it outside. I don't recommend picking up your developers and carrying them around, but you get the idea. "But they have to learn what's bad, too!" you're saying. Yes, but they'll notice that you're not doing that "wild approval" thing for certain behaviors, and instead showing them the correct one. They're a lot smarter than laboratory rats. Most developers are as well. But the overriding reason is: you want the dog to be happy. Because then he'll make you happy. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GhuA-XPj932SRtnVLReOBYXt0wbovM1r/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GhuA-XPj932SRtnVLReOBYXt0wb...
- vhjkhjg 5y agoI'd have nervous breakdown if my boss intentionally hid it from me that he disapproved of my actions.
- beaconstudios 5y agoI think the idea is to correct incorrect actions, not to emotionally penalise them - this is basically the same as no-blame culture where you change the processes that enabled the mistake to be made rather than punishing the person who happened to make it.
- AlbertCory 5y agoNote I don't say "intentionally hide it." I suggest leaving it to the dog (person) to notice the absence of approval, and also that he showed a better action.