5 ms·

Fun story I like to tell people about exactly this. A little over a decade ago I was working a gig at the software subsidiary of a fairly large non-tech multin

Fun story I like to tell people about exactly this. A little over a decade ago I was working a gig at the software subsidiary of a fairly large non-tech multinational. It was a lot of mostly nice people and a mix of skills and experience as you’d expect. Anyway - there was a manager (M) on a project I was on who was.. unpleasant. They had quite an ego, and were very much the type to pass blame down the chain. Regardless, there was a student on one of their projects who was struggling - I had spoken to this person a few times and they seemed eager enough to learn and had a friendly manner. I never worked with them directly so couldn’t comment on their capability - but even then, they were at the start of their career and still learning so obviously you would have tempered expectations. Anyway, one day M comes in and people ask if newbie is out sick or is coming in later that day. M proudly exclaims that they won’t be coming back as they had a heart-to-heart the day before and M let them know that software development was not the career for them, that they didn’t have the right skills for it, and that they should pursue a career doing something else instead. M was saying this with a grin, not out of malice, but as if they’d just saved this poor soul from wasting their time trying to succeed at a career that this expert of the craft could tell they were unfit for. I was utterly dumbfounded that someone could be so incredibly conceited as to think they could possibly make a determination like that of someone just starting out that was getting no support from their boss. I left soon after in no small part because I actually felt nauseous being around the person after that. I don’t think they stayed around for long but I heard from long-term folks in the same place that the distaste of this individual was fairly widespread. tldr; we’re all just bags of meat, eating and pooping on a ball of rock flying through the cosmos. Be kind to people, and pull your head out of your ass.

Aeolun 5y ago
I was really hoping for some karma in this story, but it wasn’t there :(
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Thanks for sharing that. It makes me angry; just hearing this, thirdhand, and a decade later. I was a manager at a company that paid “competitive” (i.e. “low”) salaries. A significant part of my job was identifying “diamonds in the rough,” and helping to train and nurture them; then, encourage them to stay. I feel that I did fairly well, here. When they finally shut down our team, the person with the least seniority had a decade. These were senior C++ developers. They could have gone anywhere.
- nelc 5y ago
  As a young kid on one of those "competitive" jobs, I've always wondered about this. Do you genuinely encourage them to stay, or do you secretly wish them to move on to better work as well? Surely getting stuck there for a decade isn't the best thing for their career.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    Yes, and no. A few did move on, and had well-paying careers, but it took them a long time to find happiness, and they tell me that they never found a situation that was as comfortable as when they worked in my team. The final team members have moved on to do fairly well, although it took a while. They are brilliant engineers, and will be a credit to any organization that hires them. The pay wasn’t awful, but I was a good manager, and worked hard to accommodate things like family obligations, and, in a couple of cases, serious medical issues. The company had its flaws, but, for the most part, treated its employees well. As time went on, that became less and less. By the time I left, I felt as if the company had become quite rapacious, in its HR policies, and that made me sad. The pay may not have been that great, but the work was very interesting. We were a marquee brand imaging corporation (which is why they felt they could get away with mediocre pay), and the technology was pretty awesome. We regularly worked with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world. It was an excellent line in your CV. I have come to learn that money isn’t everything. There’s a tremendous amount of cynicism in our industry, and that is really pretty discouraging. Money has been quite corrosive to the joy of software development, in my opinion. Real damoclean sword.
mjburgess 5y ago
I can't speak to this story itself, but I wonder about the general principal underneath these sorts of objections. That is: we should just be naively encouraging of people to pursue whatever they happen to be trying to pursue. This seems born of a boomer-era "be yourself" world view in which "anything is possible". I think this cheats people a great deal. When physics is demonstrated in schools and TV as some game, it shouldnt take until Masters to figure out it isnt. Programming likewise. What I see in this culture of "be yourself" is really an admonishment for not "trying to be successful", in the narrowest sense, ie., blindly pursuing programming even though you're not suited to it. People shouldn't be hoodwinked into careers they arent going to like on the basis they "should like them" because presumably "anyone can be successful" and "everyone needs encouragement". Underneath this ideology is a very narrow notion of success, and a very concerning lack of empathy. "Encouragement" isnt a neutral good; it's an instrument to develop people -- often in one's own image. There's a lot of people "encouraged" into career's that depress them.
- deleted 5y ago
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- thewakalix 5y ago
  Maybe some people take to programming like a fish to water, but plenty of others struggled at first. Knowing when to give up is important, but part of that is knowing when not to give up. That is a complicated and individual question; an ignorant gatekeeper who discourages anyone who's not immediately successful isn't helping here.
  - mjburgess 5y ago
    The gordon-ramsey (army coach, sports coach, theatre director, ballet director...) school of "encouragement" prescribes the opposite. That is: if you arent passionate enough to overcome discouragement, you arent passionate enough to excel. Of course, we dont need excellent programmers en-mass. However, it is interesting to observe that this "egotistic troupe leader" is a fairly common form of small-group excellence-seeking human organization -- and appears to work. It gets more-and-more common when looking at how the best "troupe-sized" groups in the world are organized. I'd be interested in research on this area.

Aeolun 5y ago

I was really hoping for some karma in this story, but it wasn’t there :(

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Thanks for sharing that. It makes me angry; just hearing this, thirdhand, and a decade later. I was a manager at a company that paid “competitive” (i.e. “low”) salaries. A significant part of my job was identifying “diamonds in the rough,” and helping to train and nurture them; then, encourage them to stay. I feel that I did fairly well, here. When they finally shut down our team, the person with the least seniority had a decade. These were senior C++ developers. They could have gone anywhere.

nelc 5y ago
As a young kid on one of those "competitive" jobs, I've always wondered about this. Do you genuinely encourage them to stay, or do you secretly wish them to move on to better work as well? Surely getting stuck there for a decade isn't the best thing for their career.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  Yes, and no. A few did move on, and had well-paying careers, but it took them a long time to find happiness, and they tell me that they never found a situation that was as comfortable as when they worked in my team. The final team members have moved on to do fairly well, although it took a while. They are brilliant engineers, and will be a credit to any organization that hires them. The pay wasn’t awful, but I was a good manager, and worked hard to accommodate things like family obligations, and, in a couple of cases, serious medical issues. The company had its flaws, but, for the most part, treated its employees well. As time went on, that became less and less. By the time I left, I felt as if the company had become quite rapacious, in its HR policies, and that made me sad. The pay may not have been that great, but the work was very interesting. We were a marquee brand imaging corporation (which is why they felt they could get away with mediocre pay), and the technology was pretty awesome. We regularly worked with some of the top engineers and scientists in the world. It was an excellent line in your CV. I have come to learn that money isn’t everything. There’s a tremendous amount of cynicism in our industry, and that is really pretty discouraging. Money has been quite corrosive to the joy of software development, in my opinion. Real damoclean sword.

mjburgess 5y ago

I can't speak to this story itself, but I wonder about the general principal underneath these sorts of objections. That is: we should just be naively encouraging of people to pursue whatever they happen to be trying to pursue. This seems born of a boomer-era "be yourself" world view in which "anything is possible". I think this cheats people a great deal. When physics is demonstrated in schools and TV as some game, it shouldnt take until Masters to figure out it isnt. Programming likewise. What I see in this culture of "be yourself" is really an admonishment for not "trying to be successful", in the narrowest sense, ie., blindly pursuing programming even though you're not suited to it. People shouldn't be hoodwinked into careers they arent going to like on the basis they "should like them" because presumably "anyone can be successful" and "everyone needs encouragement". Underneath this ideology is a very narrow notion of success, and a very concerning lack of empathy. "Encouragement" isnt a neutral good; it's an instrument to develop people -- often in one's own image. There's a lot of people "encouraged" into career's that depress them.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thewakalix 5y ago
Maybe some people take to programming like a fish to water, but plenty of others struggled at first. Knowing when to give up is important, but part of that is knowing when not to give up. That is a complicated and individual question; an ignorant gatekeeper who discourages anyone who's not immediately successful isn't helping here.
- mjburgess 5y ago
  The gordon-ramsey (army coach, sports coach, theatre director, ballet director...) school of "encouragement" prescribes the opposite. That is: if you arent passionate enough to overcome discouragement, you arent passionate enough to excel. Of course, we dont need excellent programmers en-mass. However, it is interesting to observe that this "egotistic troupe leader" is a fairly common form of small-group excellence-seeking human organization -- and appears to work. It gets more-and-more common when looking at how the best "troupe-sized" groups in the world are organized. I'd be interested in research on this area.