3 ms·

I’ve been a manager in tech for the last 11 years full-time Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force Before joining

I’ve been a manager in tech for the last 11 years full-time Prior to that I was a military commander as a Major in the United States Air Force Before joining the AF I had jobs in construction, freelance web design and car stereo installation in high school The singular difference is the personality of tech workers is “I can do this faster and easier by myself - I have no desire to communicate with other people” It seems to stem from a large swath very technical people coming from isolated environments when they were children. Specifically ones in middle to upper middle class families, where the computer was their creative outlet and they were spending more time with a computer and understanding the computer than they were other people. They were able to get excited about and learn and get deep into a topic where you really didn’t need other people — you need to documentation you needed books and you needed time to experiment. Almost every single other job I’ve ever worked in you *need* other people in order to make progress. That is not true for writing really small functional and precise software which is the “job” of most swe. As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position. If you wanna actually make an organization that creates sustainable software, you need an entirely different way of thinking. you need to think organizationally you think you need to think about how to help people how to get things out of their way communication etc. etc. etc. all these things have nothing to do with“shipping code “ And for a lot of people who are good at programming they really genuinely could not care or have the capacity to understand about anything other than their narrow frame of view and they do not see their coworkers as part of their community they see them as competition.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago
> have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position. This will continue to remain true so long as expected pay bumps for job-hopping outpace loyalty raises.
vintermann 2y ago
> As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself Well, the engineering union I was in as a student member was most interested in selling me the great credit card deals they'd negotiated for their members. They were not into any kind of "class solidarity" nationally, much less internationally. They were at best into securing good deals for their members (and not so much that they couldn't still have a VERY cozy relationship with their employer counterpart). The last straw was when they got into promoting climate denialism. So yeah, I didn't think the organization was very valuable in itself, but was I wrong?

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

> have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself as the organization and they are way more excited to jump companies in order to promote themselves because that is how they are incentivized and are happy to find themselves in that position. This will continue to remain true so long as expected pay bumps for job-hopping outpace loyalty raises.

vintermann 2y ago

> As a function of that the majority of SWE’s (and frankly this applies to most technical experts who have a very specific niche) have neither of the interest nor the belief that the organization is valuable in of itself Well, the engineering union I was in as a student member was most interested in selling me the great credit card deals they'd negotiated for their members. They were not into any kind of "class solidarity" nationally, much less internationally. They were at best into securing good deals for their members (and not so much that they couldn't still have a VERY cozy relationship with their employer counterpart). The last straw was when they got into promoting climate denialism. So yeah, I didn't think the organization was very valuable in itself, but was I wrong?