3 ms·

> "...as well as a handful of unlucky folks who deliver solid results but lack social grace and self-promotion skills." Ironic that what was once the character

> "...as well as a handful of unlucky folks who deliver solid results but lack social grace and self-promotion skills." Ironic that what was once the character archetype for geeky programmers have now become pariahs in the industry they pioneered. Now we all toot our own horns as loudly as we can, hoping to drown out our fellows, in search of the next bonus or job hop and devil take the hindmost. Introverted, have social anxiety, not neurotypical or simply don't like self-promotion, as is common among nerds? Yup, expect to get screwed good and hard.

rramadass 3y ago
The original archetype was a completely overblown caricature (based on some outliers) and wasn't true mostly. It was just an image pushed by the industry so that "Engineers" can be kept out of "Business Decision-Making" and thus Controlled/Managed easily. But now as you say, self promotion is everything and has been taken so far that one cannot call oneself "A Programmer" but a "Rockstar/Ninja/10x/whatever Programmer" with superlative knowledge and insight into every problem domain and Technology. We all know our limitations but are not allowed to admit/work on them publicly since that might "out" oneself as "not good enough"; we have to become "posers/fakers" if we want to "play the game" and get ahead.
- jupp0r 3y ago
  > are not allowed to admit/work on them publicly since that might "out" oneself as "not good enough"; we have to become "posers/fakers" if we want to "play the game" and get ahead. I don't think that is true in the places I've worked at. Whether in interviews or in daily work, people only pretending to know things are not rewarded (unless nobody notices, but that means that nobody in the room is knowledgeable, which is a problem in itself). People not being transparent about the limits of their knowledge is a big red flag for me in interviews.
  - rramadass 3y ago
    You have either been very lucky or have a very optimistic viewpoint :-) These things are never overt (they get weeded out early) but subtle and one has to read between the lines (and take into consideration one's own biases) to correctly gauge someone else's depth. Enthusiasm should not be mistaken for Capability. The key for proper Management is to read Engineers correctly and provide Training (introductory or more) where they might be deficient/needed/based-on-company-domain without anybody asking for it explicitly. AFAIK nobody does this; you are supposed to be magically "productive" from day 1 and are expected to continue at a "high-level of productivity" independent of the stage of the project/product/your life problems/etc. which is an impossibility.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      > AFAIK nobody does this; you are supposed to be magically "productive" from day 1 and are expected to continue at a "high-level of productivity" independent of the stage of the project/product/your life problems/etc. which is an impossibility. This is clearly possible, if we assume literal geniuses are 1 in a thousand, then there are 8 million actual bonafide geniuses in the world, maybe a quarter million of which are in tech in some fashion.
      - rramadass 3y ago
        No, this is not a Numbers Game but Human Factors. No living organism can be at their best w.r.t. a given task every day over long periods of Time. There are too many Environmental/Contextual factors at play here.
        MichaelZuo 3y ago
        They can be the best every day for a few decades at least and from day 1 of joining too. I'm not claiming it from cradle to grave here.
  - badpun 3y ago
    Knowledge is easy. In most places, the pretenders don’t pretend to have knowledge, but pretend to have a much larger impact that they actually have. This is how you get a promo, or don’t get fired if your actual output is miniscule.
- 946789987649 3y ago
  > The original archetype was a completely overblown caricature (based on some outliers) and wasn't true mostly. I disagree. As someone with a CS degree, this was and is a stereotype for a reason. > so that "Engineers" can be kept out of "Business Decision-Making" and thus Controlled/Managed easily. This sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, how have the "industry" come to this conclusion together exactly?
  - rramadass 3y ago
    > I disagree. As someone with a CS degree, this was and is a stereotype for a reason. Absolutely false! This is a canard which has been spread and repeated again and again so often that people are not challenging it but accepting it on face value. I have worked across a lot of companies across two countries and never have i encountered somebody with so bad social/communication skills etc. that you could not interact with them. People are spread across a spectrum and in many cases they choose not to socialize due to "learned helplessness" from past experiences. One you understand and empathize with their pov they almost always open up and are very communicative. You should also understand that "stereotypes" are very insidious and hence one needs to be careful in interpreting them. For example, here is the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED talk The Danger of the Single Story - https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_dange... “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren't true, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” > This sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, how have the "industry" come to this conclusion together exactly? Simple "Organizational Politics". If i want to grow my power/fiefdom/etc. i need to keep decision-making to myself and given that Engineers are busy with Engineering it is easy to take it away from them. Makeup and sell the stereotype given above and you have the status-quo. Here is a relevant article by Gary Hamel from HBR which presents an alternative; First, Let’s Fire All the Managers - https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers. Your might also want to look at the resources mentioned in my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39086359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39086359
paulddraper 3y ago
That's not really new is it? Do you think Steve Wosniak's career would have been different if he had had those promotional soft skills?
- p1esk 3y ago
  Yes. He would have become Steve Jobs.
justapassenger 3y ago
[dead]
badpun 3y ago
As long as „getting screwed good and hard” means making merely $300k and not $400k or $500k you’d get with a promotion. Not to mention, higher levels in a company involve a ton of working with other people, so somebody with social anxiety or heavy introvertism should not be promoted to them, as they’re beyond his/her competence.
shermantanktop 3y ago
This is an industry with multiple subgroups. What you describe is more common in US or Western Europe. The profile of talent from other countries has changed the mix somewhat. If you are from East or South Asia, a US tech job comes at the end of a grueling competitive educational, hiring, and visa process. If you really struggle with self-promotion you'll get filtered out.
kylebenzle 3y ago
This user has been shilling his ideas on HN for literally years. If you vouched for his comments you literally got suckered into helping out a spammer.

rramadass 3y ago

The original archetype was a completely overblown caricature (based on some outliers) and wasn't true mostly. It was just an image pushed by the industry so that "Engineers" can be kept out of "Business Decision-Making" and thus Controlled/Managed easily. But now as you say, self promotion is everything and has been taken so far that one cannot call oneself "A Programmer" but a "Rockstar/Ninja/10x/whatever Programmer" with superlative knowledge and insight into every problem domain and Technology. We all know our limitations but are not allowed to admit/work on them publicly since that might "out" oneself as "not good enough"; we have to become "posers/fakers" if we want to "play the game" and get ahead.

jupp0r 3y ago
> are not allowed to admit/work on them publicly since that might "out" oneself as "not good enough"; we have to become "posers/fakers" if we want to "play the game" and get ahead. I don't think that is true in the places I've worked at. Whether in interviews or in daily work, people only pretending to know things are not rewarded (unless nobody notices, but that means that nobody in the room is knowledgeable, which is a problem in itself). People not being transparent about the limits of their knowledge is a big red flag for me in interviews.
- rramadass 3y ago
  You have either been very lucky or have a very optimistic viewpoint :-) These things are never overt (they get weeded out early) but subtle and one has to read between the lines (and take into consideration one's own biases) to correctly gauge someone else's depth. Enthusiasm should not be mistaken for Capability. The key for proper Management is to read Engineers correctly and provide Training (introductory or more) where they might be deficient/needed/based-on-company-domain without anybody asking for it explicitly. AFAIK nobody does this; you are supposed to be magically "productive" from day 1 and are expected to continue at a "high-level of productivity" independent of the stage of the project/product/your life problems/etc. which is an impossibility.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    > AFAIK nobody does this; you are supposed to be magically "productive" from day 1 and are expected to continue at a "high-level of productivity" independent of the stage of the project/product/your life problems/etc. which is an impossibility. This is clearly possible, if we assume literal geniuses are 1 in a thousand, then there are 8 million actual bonafide geniuses in the world, maybe a quarter million of which are in tech in some fashion.
    - rramadass 3y ago
      No, this is not a Numbers Game but Human Factors. No living organism can be at their best w.r.t. a given task every day over long periods of Time. There are too many Environmental/Contextual factors at play here.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        They can be the best every day for a few decades at least and from day 1 of joining too. I'm not claiming it from cradle to grave here.
- badpun 3y ago
  Knowledge is easy. In most places, the pretenders don’t pretend to have knowledge, but pretend to have a much larger impact that they actually have. This is how you get a promo, or don’t get fired if your actual output is miniscule.
946789987649 3y ago
> The original archetype was a completely overblown caricature (based on some outliers) and wasn't true mostly. I disagree. As someone with a CS degree, this was and is a stereotype for a reason. > so that "Engineers" can be kept out of "Business Decision-Making" and thus Controlled/Managed easily. This sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, how have the "industry" come to this conclusion together exactly?
- rramadass 3y ago
  > I disagree. As someone with a CS degree, this was and is a stereotype for a reason. Absolutely false! This is a canard which has been spread and repeated again and again so often that people are not challenging it but accepting it on face value. I have worked across a lot of companies across two countries and never have i encountered somebody with so bad social/communication skills etc. that you could not interact with them. People are spread across a spectrum and in many cases they choose not to socialize due to "learned helplessness" from past experiences. One you understand and empathize with their pov they almost always open up and are very communicative. You should also understand that "stereotypes" are very insidious and hence one needs to be careful in interpreting them. For example, here is the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her TED talk The Danger of the Single Story - https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_dange... “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren't true, but they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” > This sounds almost like a conspiracy theory, how have the "industry" come to this conclusion together exactly? Simple "Organizational Politics". If i want to grow my power/fiefdom/etc. i need to keep decision-making to myself and given that Engineers are busy with Engineering it is easy to take it away from them. Makeup and sell the stereotype given above and you have the status-quo. Here is a relevant article by Gary Hamel from HBR which presents an alternative; First, Let’s Fire All the Managers - https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers. Your might also want to look at the resources mentioned in my comment here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39086359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39086359

paulddraper 3y ago

That's not really new is it? Do you think Steve Wosniak's career would have been different if he had had those promotional soft skills?

p1esk 3y ago
Yes. He would have become Steve Jobs.

justapassenger 3y ago

[dead]

badpun 3y ago

As long as „getting screwed good and hard” means making merely $300k and not $400k or $500k you’d get with a promotion. Not to mention, higher levels in a company involve a ton of working with other people, so somebody with social anxiety or heavy introvertism should not be promoted to them, as they’re beyond his/her competence.

shermantanktop 3y ago

This is an industry with multiple subgroups. What you describe is more common in US or Western Europe. The profile of talent from other countries has changed the mix somewhat. If you are from East or South Asia, a US tech job comes at the end of a grueling competitive educational, hiring, and visa process. If you really struggle with self-promotion you'll get filtered out.

kylebenzle 3y ago

This user has been shilling his ideas on HN for literally years. If you vouched for his comments you literally got suckered into helping out a spammer.