10 ms·

The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

125 points by jsonmez 13y ago

programminggeek 13y ago
Replace Software Development with any job and you are really on to something. People are mean and jerks are everywhere. Perhaps somehow society has convinced us otherwise, but there are a lot of terrible people out there. A lot of people do evil things, a lot of people hurt other people. This is not new and it's not a secret, people for whatever reason are more oblivious to it than they should be or perhaps people are so accepting of inappropriate behavior in our entertainment mediums that we are desensitized to it until it happens to us. I really don't know for sure. What I do know is not everybody deserves a say in everything. Sometimes people are wrong, or are trolling, or just have no place in the conversation. The right thing to do is to remove those people from the conversation if they aren't being constructive.
- hga 13y ago
  From the item: "The truth is not everyone has your best interests at heart. The truth is that a large number of people would like nothing more than to see you fail...." Without getting into why, one of the reasons the above is a bit astonishing is that it frequently leads to project failure, and in startups that usually means company failure. You can't depend on simple notions of self-interest even in situations where failure will mean all involved will lose their jobs.
- rco8786 13y ago
  This. Some people are mean.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Doesn't mean I have to put up with it, though. In the same vein as a post linked here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 ) I refuse to play audience to someone insisting on being mean. Maybe that's just the way that person is, I can't change that, but I can change who I choose to interact with. If negative and mean people are happy being just so, they can be that way by themselves.
    - jsonmez 13y ago
      Great point. I agree.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Very few people consider themselves jerks, or go out of their way to be that way. You could argue that I'm wrong in Finance, but I think I'm right in Software. A lot of the solution is getting inside of other people's heads, especially those who may not have great social skills. Being a jerk isn't the same as less developed interpersonal skills.
- georgebonnr 13y ago
  I tend to agree with the article... while people can be mean anywhere, seems like there's a certain confluence of characteristics and circumstances that allows "jerks" to have an outsize place in the tech industry. But I suppose to look on the bright side, I'd rather have somebody be a jerk to my face, even if it is subtle and insidious, than have them pretend to be my buddy and then stab me in the back. I'll take being surrounded by jerks over trying to navigate some of the intricately constructed, intensely political environments that are common in the business world.
  - arthulia 13y ago
    It's weird because when I imagine a young kid who is going to grow up to be a software developer, I tend to imagine the kid who gets picked on, not the one who's picking on people. I wonder why the tables turn. FTA > It is sort of a “kick the dog” syndrome where software developers who were kicked earlier in life, or even earlier in their careers, tend to feel justified in kicking the programmers who they see beneath them. This is what I tend to suspect, also.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  I think that the post over states it but I don't think it's entirely wrong that software developers are atypical in their behaviour, even if it's not exclusive to them. There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy. And this in an area where in many ways there are many similarities which you'd hope fostered friendship and bonding - we're talking about smart people who often share interests. Maybe it is just that software developers are typical but even if that is the case given levels of intelligence, education and so on I still find it disappointing that we can't be better than that.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    >>There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy. Yes. Generally speaking, I refer to this as "lack of social skills." I don't mean that as derogatory, although I know it will come across that way. Most developers have grown up around computers, and in a lot of situations have chosen fiddling with computers to socializing with people. As a result, they don't gain important social skills until later in life, if at all. For example, the software architect for my company's software suite is an absolutely brilliant guy. But he's just incredibly awkward around people. When it comes to working in projects, or even simple things like answering questions from less technical people, he's terribly arrogant and condescending. I experience such attitudes from non-developers much, much less often.
    - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
      I suspect that in part it's more common because demand for skills massively outstripping supply means that organisations have to put up with ahem personality quirks they wouldn't otherwise tolerate (or would at least avoid). That said when I first started in IT I was surprised by how few people conformed to the cliched socially awkward stereotype. Yes it was more noticeable than in a typical a cross section of the general public, but I think that the damage someone being a complete jerk can have in a team context means that even given the difficulty in hiring it's selected out to some degree - you've either got to be really good, or at least be able to hide your true nature at interview.
- tlarkworthy 13y ago
  I might be wrong but I think the average jerkyness has been in decline over the last 10 years. Now that CS is not entirely comprised of the geekiest of the geekiest, there are a few well balanced people present, means that employers have more options, and they increasingly want nice people. 10-15 years ago the internet was just for geeks, but now everyone uses the internet, and and now business people want to learn how to code instead of locking us up in basements. So I am encouraged that the aggressive know-it-all might be slowly going extinct.
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  Having been in the work world for a while, I feel like this is new to an extent. I feel like harsh competition to the level of people being willing to sabotage their own projects and so-forth, is a phenomena of a gradually intensifying market-driven pressure that has been unleashed on society through a variety of forces (take-over focused hedge-funds and investor, market-efficiency ideologies, etc). But reference than anecdotes, I'll give references: David Gordon documents how downsizing produces expertise in sabotaging other rather than efficiency: http://www.amazon.com/FAT-AND-MEAN-Managerial-Downsizing/dp/0684822881 http://www.amazon.com/FAT-AND-MEAN-Managerial-Downsizing/dp/... The Gervais Principle perhaps summarizes the predatory new order. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o... But the point is this a somewhat new order. Of course, competition-so-ruthless-it-produces-bad-behavior has been around forever. But some circumstances allow that truly blossom and I think can argue we have those circumstances now.
  - philangist 13y ago
    That article on the Gervais principle blew my mind and I'd suggest that everyone reads it.
- javert 13y ago
  I don't think your characterization of society is necessarily all that universal. I'm from the southern US, where people are known for hospitality and politeness, and I often see things said on places like the LKML that make me go, "If you said that to me in person in that way, I'd punch you in the face." And, to be clear, to me, punching the person in the face is not nearly as rude or unacceptable as whatever they said. I'm trying to get used to the fact that different people have different social norms. I still think people like Linus have _inferior_ social norms, though. (Though he may be an exception, since his style seems to work so damn well.)
swombat 13y ago
Agree with most of the points, but this certainly not some kind of secret that "no one talks about"...
- georgebonnr 13y ago
  Seems like you don't see as many blog posts or thought pieces about it as opposed to other cultural issues in the industry, like gender imbalances or "startup culture" minutiae.
  - karmajunkie 13y ago
    I'd have to say that's likely because we've been talking about it for as long as there have been software developers working for private companies.
shaggyfrog 13y ago
> Software developers are jerks. > Chances are if you are doing something unique or you propose a new idea, you’ll have more critics than supporters. In my experience, it's not fellow developers who have issues with new (better) ways of doing things -- it's the non-technical management types who see disruption solely in terms of the effect on office politics.
mrchuckmills2 13y ago
"This just in: people are jerks. Film at 11"
ExpiredLink 13y ago
"Hell is other people." Jean-Paul Sartre
- MartinCron 13y ago
  I'm sure if he were working today, he would have amended it to include "other people's code" and "other people's data"
- bqe 13y ago
  Perhaps a more apt quote would be from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil."
xarien 13y ago
There's actually a method that works quite well in dealing with these "jerks." Ironically, it's the same tactic that men need to effectively communicate well with women. Here's the secret: acknowledge them. Acknowledgement doesn't mean you smile and nod nor does it involve using the sentence structure ..., but... Try to understand their perspective and communicate through that perspective. Instead of asking others to see your perspective, it's much easier to do the reverse. Most arguments and personal qualification of someone being a jerk has to do with communicating from 2 different perspectives with neither side willing to take some time to understand the other perspective. Most devs are fairly logical creatures. Understanding their perspective shouldn't be hard. However, it does take a bit of practice. If you can't understand where they are coming from, just ask more questions.
- itsallbs 13y ago
  And some devs have the idea that they are Better Than You, no matter what your skill level or expertise. I'm a web dev and worked on a project recently with a lead who had just enough experience with web dev of the 90's to be dangerous. For example, he fought with me repeatedly about md5 being good enough for password hashing, while I wanted to use bcrypt (or at the very least, SHA1, even though it's almost as bad as md5). It took weeks before he relented, and only after I sent him several articles about how broken md5 is. In the end we wound up removing encryption entirely because it made his deployment process harder. I've got a new job.
  - xarien 13y ago
    It sounds like you cared more about being right than from seeing it from his perspective. Even if you ARE right (keep in mind that right is often incredibly subjective), it's far more important to understand why someone is taking the "wrong" stance. Now, I'm sure you felt quite a bit of frustration over this and possibly other arguments. I'm not trying to dismiss your feelings, but once you understand someone's perspective, you can often turn an "asshole" into a colleague you can work well with. Believe it or not, being "right" all the time doesn't actually garner respect as much as being able to work well with others.
wahsd 13y ago
I have found that the more loudmouth and jerk-like the person is, the more they are covering up the realization that what they have/do is not all that unique, significant, or otherwise difficult yet rather comfortable and lucrative. Thus, they feel compelled to loud mouth barking and posturing to protect their bone. It's probably the same kind of mentality of a dog that snarls at his owner that just put down a bowl of food.
- boomlinde 13y ago
  I see what you mean but I doubt a dog would be able to realize any of that.
  - andrewflnr 13y ago
    That's why they tend to have to learn the hard way, with consistent negative enforcement. Positive reinforcement is nice, but it's not always an option.
- philbarr 13y ago
  If a dog snarls at their owner then that's a badly trained dog. I recommend this book if you have a badly behaved dog [1], or any dog good or bad actually. 1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Listener-Jan-Fennell/dp/0006532365 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Listener-Jan-Fennell/dp/00065323...
- yaddayadda 13y ago
  Off of the main topic: I explicitly worked with my dogs when they were puppies to avoid this 'mentality'. The first big thing is that they are expected to be well behaved while I slowly put their food bowl down. If there is a hint of growl or lunging, the food bowl comes back up again and only when they have restrained themselves does the bowl start to go down again - and slower than before. My dogs are seniors now, but they 'understand' that he who giveth the food can - and will - taketh the food if they give me any grief. The second big thing is that they are expected to give up whatever is in their mouth on command. This requires ongoing training, and also started when they were wee-little pups. They understand that if I put my hand out palm-up, or grip what is in their mouth, and tell them to "release" they are going to loose whatever is in their mouth. If they give it up without a scene, then they get it back in a few moments. If they make a scene, or I have to pry it from their jaws, then they may not get it back. This has helped in situations when they managed to get something they shouldn't have (e.g., a dropped grape).
j_baker 13y ago
I don't have a reference handy, but it's been shown that people are fundamentally ambivalent about creativity. Everybody agrees that creativity is a good thing, but when it comes down to judging a creative idea, most people will be negative. The reason being that creativity necessarily involves uncertainty, which is discomforting. I say this because the things the author mention aren't exclusive to software development. I do buy that software developers have less people skill on average in dismissing creativity than some professions (say PR) though.
ripter 13y ago
Welcome to life. I've been wondering how the "everyone is special" and "everyone wins!" trends that people have been teaching their children would manifest. This looks like a good example. If you do anything that other people will see, some of them will criticize you. That's just life and not necessarily a bad thing. There isn't enough room for everyone to be special and winners. In order for someone to win someone else has to lose. So develop a thick skin. You are not your work. If someone is criticizing you instead of your work, then you learn to ignore them. They just want to be mean. If people are criticizing your work then you learn to pick out the real critiques so you can improve the next one.
- pekk 13y ago
  And we introspect on why there are not many women in this industry. I guess women should all just get a thick skin and stop thinking they are special. Because any abuse they might perceive is illusory, and their bullies are actually superior in knowledge and are justified in acting like jerks whenever they feel like it. After all, this is a meritocracy, how could it be otherwise? Whatever you get, you deserved.
  - liveoneggs 13y ago
    what are you replying to?
  - ripter 13y ago
    What do women have to do with my comment? My comment wasn't even about our industry, it's about creating works that other people will see. This applies to men and women equally.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    I don't know where you get this sexist notion that women are delicate flowers who can't handle criticism, disagreement, or personality conflict in the workplace.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Here's the thing with thick skin. Some people are, from a demonstrative physiological perspective [1], more sensitive than others. Telling people to "just develop a thick skin" is like telling a color-blind person to "just start differentiating colors better". Easy advice to give, totally useless. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person
lighthazard 13y ago
I must have missed it when everyday work-place environments hit the software development world.
unoti 13y ago
If you work in software development for a decade or more in a corporate environment, you will encounter a surprising number of stakeholders who would like for the software project you're doing to fail, and will do everything they can get away with to make it fail. I did ERP implementations of Oracle ERP and SAP for many years, and saw this often. This can happen when the system you are replacing has the developer who wrote it (or a set of close allies) working on the transition project, which happens often when there is a system originally written by an in house IT team being replaced by third party software. It can happen when certain in house people did not want to replace the system, or for whatever reason predicted the new system would not be good-- people want their prophecies to come true, and they want to be consistent, so it can be difficult or impossible to convince them the system is good. There can be bad people, and not just programmers, involved in any business enterprise. I try to look out for them and see what's coming when they want to sink a project I am on. I have also found that there are plenty of people who will not acknowledge the simple truth that I am talking about. They will say, "that is insane; how could any actual stakeholder want to see the project fail?" The answer involves looking at the various definitions of evil, which is a fascinating exercise. Sometimes people want to see harm come to others for various reasons, and that is the real world, sometimes.
- hga 13y ago
  I've seen a similar thing in projects that are in trouble: the relevant manager demotes the person responsible for the failure but leaves them on the project. Only your failure can validate their failure. In your examples, if their ERP software is being replaced, I suspect it's hard not to see it being declared a failure. Another thing I've heard about what some called the "Procrustean bed" of SAP is that it can get terrifically resisted by stakeholders because it insists on rational business processes, and plenty of companies aren't run very rationally. My family saw that while computerizing one doctor's office in 1980: after the data entry was done, the printer would just not stop in the first accounts receivable cycle. Turned out the office workers sent out a fixed number of bills per month (something like 200?), no matter how many actually needed to be sent. They didn't totally understand what was happening, but they knew "the computer would tell all".
nish1500 13y ago
This post should be titled, 'The Dark Side of Work That No Ones Talks About'. Having worked in the accounting / tax field for years, before switching over to programming, I fail to see how these generalized statements don't apply to other fields. It applies to work in general.
dnautics 13y ago
One thing I wish this article talked about: Sometimes, people are brutally honest with little tact. If you're overly sensitive, you might think that such a person is being mean or being a jerk - but they have your best interests in mind, because they are telling you either a factual truth or an unvarnished personal opinion. The reason why they are brusque is not because 'they have been abused' but because, the tolerance for bullshit is low - because of two things 1) they have seen bullshit bring down otherwise promising projects or ideas, and they don't want that to happen; 2) they percieve that varnishing your emotions or opinions with too much tact increases the cognitive load required by the recipient to 'get to the truth'. Whether or not being brusque or diplomatic actually is effective is debatable. Nonetheless, I think missing this very important concept is generally bad. In some fields, like science, having to deal with people who will trash your idea with honest commentary - that makes you think twice about what you are doing - is far, far, far better than having to deal with the silent judgement of a failed experiment that lets you down dispassionately, and wondering, "why didn't anyone care enough to tell me I was stupid to try this".
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- logjam 13y ago
  Wrong. Tact, compassion, and honesty are not in any way incompatible. And no, people who think they are being "brutally honest" while forgetting compassion or even basic fucking manners are not doing so with others' best interests at heart. They are just being assholes. There are bonafide reasons for that behavior, and they deserve a measure of compassion themselves while receiving that message, but don't try gilding the orifice's behavior.
  - ticviking 13y ago
    This. Being "Brutally Honest" while combining that with tact is a rare communication skill that is an essential part of interacting in polite company. Having that skill and developing it has done more for the effectiveness of my teams than any other skill I have ever developed.
  - 13y ago
forgottenpaswrd 13y ago
As someone who manage people in the software world, who created his business from zero coding himself alone for years, I disagree. I had to fight a lot indifference when I started, now it is the opposite problem, when I say something to people in my team, some of them smarter than me they believe it too much, like I was God or something. The same happens with your product, people trust your reputation. "Jerk" is such a victim mentality word, in my opinion, when you want to create something that is new, people can't see it like you do. It is as simple as that. Now when you make it and success everybody says that from the first day they believed in you(not true) and after you make some repeated successes they continue not seeing it but they trust you. The fact is that talking is cheap, and some new developer has no reputation at all, so you will have to prove with code that you can walk your talk.
chrisbennet 13y ago
I feel extremely lucky that I've never had to deal with developers like that. Of course, I just assume everyone is smarter than I am [a pretty safe assumption usually!]. I try not to get to attached "my way" and I genuinely care about and consider my colleagues viewpoints. Call it "ego-less programming" if you will. I generally work in situations where my teammates have complementary skill sets so perhaps that lack of overlap helps reduce potential conflicts. I did have a bad boss once at my first programming job - back in 1987...
losethos 13y ago
God likes bears and elephants. This is disturbing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHiEYGqnEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHiEYGqnEk Teenage males go off on their own. They fight. Thank God they do not gore each other with tusks. God is not a cruel God. None-the-less males are quite expendable. When you think about it, World War I was no big deal. I wonder about polygamy. That means lots of lone males. ---- My ego is hilariously large -- only I know God exists. Everybody is a huge retard. God says... negligence Poland shared Monad deed this_might_end_badly sparrows relaxing Bangladesh cruelty believing talketh ancient churches wrought therefore *Portions ehheh_thats_all_folks energy manifested bickering healthful Ghana gaining
georgemcbay 13y ago
As has been mentioned already in this thread, jerks are in every profession. But after being a software developer for many years and being exposed to other industries both directly and from hearing about it from third parties, the jerkiness in software development is much more palatable to me (though I'm a software developer, so go figure). In a lot of fields people will be very polite to your face while stabbing you in the back and turning the knife. In software the jerks are generally very upfront, showing far less "people skills" but at least showing you their cards. And while I like to think I've never been a jerk (you'd have to ask people who worked with me to be sure), I've noticed there tend to be two classes of jerks in software development and it may be important for you to try to recognize the distinction. The first kind of jerk is the grumpy old coder who shoots down your idea to use the latest wiz-bang tech to rewrite your entire project for the next release. This guy has very little people skills and may not do a great job of explaining his position, so he seems to just be shooting you down for no reason. THIS GUY IS PROBABLY RIGHT, though. And his jerkiness comes from years of battle scars. The second kind of jerk is the cocky (usually younger) developer who is sure he is right about every decision despite having limited real world experience. At first blush he looks like the other kind of jerk (except that he's probably younger). THIS GUY IS PROBABLY WRONG. And his jerkiness comes from a lack of real-world experience combined with an over-inflated sense of confidence coming out of the school years where he was the smartest guy in his school, but mixed with unacknowledged self doubt. Sometimes this kind of jerk grows up to be the first kind of jerk, but sometimes they remain the second kind of jerk.
- altcognito 13y ago
  Strong opinions, weakly held. Be vocal if you think you have a case or don't understand. Stay professional, don't make it personal and you should be ok.
- tsunamifury 13y ago
  Oh please stereotype much? Grumpy old coders want a way to do their job as easily as possible -- which is good. However it becomes bad when they refused to learn new (community accepted) ways of doing things that are either REQUIRED or lead to efficiency down the road. I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of the time. The other 10% I prod them to explore some of those 'wiz-bang' solutions to discover something that they hadn't thought of before.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
I've worked in a few industries, and software developers (plus the associated designers, project managers, etc) have been some of the most fun to work with.
badman_ting 13y ago
I have seen more of people being nice when they shouldn't. Perhaps on balance that's a better work environment, but I really don't like seeing subpar or even downright crappy work being overlooked because it would be mean to point out that it's crappy. The world is full of jerks. Being jerks is their problem, not yours. That's how I feel about it, anyway. Jerks don't hurt me, they hurt themselves.
- 6d0debc071 13y ago
  You can, nicely, ask if someone's considered doing it in another (better) way rather than pointing out that it's crappy.
  - badman_ting 13y ago
    One may, but that wouldn't be "nice", which is what I was talking about. Being able to critique something without being rude is certainly important for professionals, though.
shire 13y ago
It's part of life, you can't expect everyone to like you. It also depends on what kind of people you work with. You will have your ups and downs in life this is true for any field of work not just software development. I think the main reason this happens in Software development is that people have big egos and consider themselves more intelligent than others.
moron4hire 13y ago
I think it has more to do with the prison-syndrome of being forced into a social situation with people you don't like--much like we do to children in schools--than it does to this concept of paying-forward nastiness applied to them. Programmers are a diverse group of people, they aren't all nerds who got picked on in school.
lampe3 13y ago
a lot of people not only software developer are jerks. But i have a tip for you: If you can ignore them! If you can just don't listen,speak or do anything with them. if you must listen to them get a job somewhere else! Life is to short to spend it with jerks!
nickthemagicman 13y ago
Just commenting to say, that in our profession WITHOUT licensure there is not other way to really prove that we're competent except for our reputation. This leads to big egos and constantly trying to make your self look better no matter what. If we were a licensed profession like medicine where you have a third party proof of your competence and you weren't constantly trying to guard your reputation, I bet you that it would lighten people up a lot.
- karmajunkie 13y ago
  Not in my experience. That just lends itself to a lot of protectionism and equally inflated egos (and the piece of paper to prove you earned it.) In fact, only academia tops medicine for inflated egos and self-aggrandizing behavior in my book.
  - nickthemagicman 13y ago
    Ego is not so much the problem, it's that the computer industry is way more cutthroat. Doctor's and Academic's ego's come from having to maintain the same reputation that a computer person has to maintain. However, it's worse for the computer monkeys because we have the same level of intellectual capital to master yet we have no license to protect our years of knowledge which makes the industry way more cutthroat and step on your buddy to get ahead in my opinion. Just my observations.
    - karmajunkie 13y ago
      Man, I just totally disagree with all of that. I wrote medical software for most of my career, except for a brief stint as a pre-med student, and the level of narcissism I found in medical doctors far exceeded anything I came across in technical circles (not counting some percentage of founders). My girlfriend is in academia, and a similar trend prevails there. Contrast this with wanton disdain for credentials in much of the tech community coupled with a great deal of willingness to help each other out. Maybe I'm just blessed to live in a town like Austin, but this industry is anything but cutthroat on technical merits.
- 13y ago
skylan_q 13y ago
I negotiate on mutual goals, and how to achieve them. I also do my best to leave no room for egos. It does cut out a lot of people. But they tend to be the people you really don't want to be dealing with anyways. Egos cloud judgment and lead to more mistakes which is exactly what I want to avoid when I'm trying to achieve goals.
wuliwong 13y ago
Is there a way to comment on an article without giving it more points? This one should just slide away down into obscurity...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
consultant23522 13y ago
This is precisely why I went into programming in the first place. A computer doesn't have feelings. It doesn't lie to me, I don't have to lie to it. It will do exactly what I ask it to do without fail, though I regularly ask it to do the wrong thing. They are completely and totally predictable. People, on the other hand are emotional and mostly stupid (even the smart ones). They are going to lie to you, even if unintentionally, and you're required to lie to them in return. The person you're meeting might have had their family pet die last night and will react to you in completely irrational ways. It's no wonder why when your job is to deal primarily with emotionless computers all day that it's tricky to then context switch back to lying and walking on eggshells.
- avelis 13y ago
  I wish I could upvote this statement more. It is difficult to transition from an environment of honesty and truth then into an environment where lies and deceit are the common denominator of communication.
karmajunkie 13y ago
I think its a bit much to say that people being assholes is the dark side that no one talks about. Truthfully, there aren't a lot of dark sides to software that no one talks about. The dark sides I can think of off the top of my head: misogyny; we consider ourselves successful if we put entire industries out of work; ageism; classism; the myth of the meritocracy; neoliberalism; creation of a private surveillance society; overly dramatic HN headlines; probably more I'll think of in the next five minutes. The thing is, all of these, with the exception of that last one, are talked about quite a bit.
vitd 13y ago
I thought the article was interesting and the eventual conclusion good, but really didn't like the sentiment to "have thicker skin" and to basically just "suck it up" if someone is being mean to you. (He doesn't use those words, but that what he's saying.) That part seems like victim blaming to me. If people are mean to you without reason, you shouldn't put up with it. You should tell someone. Maybe they're approachable and you can confront them directly, or maybe not. But you absolutely should not get used to it or just accept it. You should do something about it.
orionblastar 13y ago
This was worse in the 1990's during when the Dotcom bubble burst. People we worked with were mean to use because 'programmers are a dime a dozen, we get 500+ resumes a week for your job and can easily find someone to replace you who can work for a lower salary.' Mentality that management had towards us programmers. It is odd that management claims there is a lack of qualified programmers out there when so many programmers are out of work and qualified. Me, I am told I am overqualified by companies begging the US government to raise the H1B Visa cap because there are not enough qualified programmers to hire. It is a form of bullying and a slap in the face of anyone qualified who wants to earn a decent wage and benefits but is called overqualified because of past salaries they had earned. Working in an IT department other employees can abuse you, call you names, even physically attack you, and you cannot do anything about it. If you complain to your manager they write you up for 'communication problems'. The average non-IT employee cannot tell the difference between a Microsoft Windows bug or a bug in the custom software that is written and thinks you can fix a bug with Windows or Office, etc. When you tell them you don't have the source code to Windows or Office, they get mad at you. Management tells IT workers to lie to the other employees and tell them you are working on fixing Windows and Office bugs, which is basically lying.
orionblastar 13y ago
IT and suicide. A topic that should be discussed. I had my best friend kill himself on May 31, 1999 when he couldn't find a job and unemployment was running out. He was the best C++ programmer that I knew at the time. He worked at a Startup called Polygon that was mismanaged and abused their employees and then fired them all. I did all I could to help him find a job, but nobody wanted to take a chance and hire him. I had many friends I made working IT jobs end up killing themselves because they couldn't find work. Mostly Generation-Xers. I got suicidal myself sometimes over how management had abused me and treated me. They didn't seem to think I was a human being, just some subhuman third class person they could treat like dirt. Had I worked at a company that treated me a different way I would not have gotten sick and ended up on disability from the stress.
commanda 13y ago
The underlying theme in this post, from what I gather, is "Male programmers are often treated poorly by their peers, so female programmers should have nothing to complain about when they are treated poorly." This is denial of the very real sexism in our industry.
- Paul_S 13y ago
  That is nowhere in the article, not even between the lines, outside the lines, generally implied by the curvature of the lines or audible if played backwards and slowed down by a factor of 10. Don't agree with the blog's author though, arseholes being arseholes is a general fact of life and there's no special link between them and programming.
Maven911 13y ago
I have gotten pretty detrimental health effects to my body becaise of some companies sw dev culture
gscott 13y ago
I imagine out there someplace is a group of developers who are positive, supporting of each other, who check each others work without vile, and who want to see each other succeed... but in my limited experience I have never seen it.
michaelwww 13y ago
What's this guy selling? > I’m actually working on a much bigger project to distill some of these specific software developer career tips into a bigger package. Anyway, he's making general and simplistic arguments for whatever reason. Programmers have strong opinions and will argue them vigorously. I agree with Socrates “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” and we should all not tolerate that, but while the argument is going on, if you can't join in and make yours don't blame the community for being intolerant.
lordofbackland 13y ago
>>We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life. Is this being "victims of aggression and abuse" due to high intelligence and ability is normal phenomena in US or just taking a potshot?
kamakazizuru 13y ago
appropriate title "The Dark Side of any job That No One Talks About"
Vargas 13y ago
"We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life." You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?
adamconroy 13y ago
I agree with this post in general. I am currently working on a project by myself, and have been for the last 4 years. I am getting a bit bored, I don't want to stagnate and I can sort of see the need to get back to working with a team. I have been contemplating this for ~18 months, however I dread the thought of it because I know it is almost certain I will end up working with at least one passive aggressive, insecure, egotistical fuckwit that will drive me to look for another project anyway. I have worked on 13 project teams in the last 20 years. Every single team that has had more than 3 people has contained at least one whacko that has made life miserable for everyone else.
pfh 13y ago
Being a jerk comes naturally with being a journeyman. You've got an idea, and you're out to prove it's the best. Especially so in computing, where the only winning strategy is complete world domination. Mastery of a subject means giving up attachment to favourite ideas and seeing the merits of all of them. But we've not really set up a society acknowledge this, we're stuck in a world of thousands of journeymen, with just a few people who have reached such transcendent heights that their mastery is obvious. We're stuck in a society that values novelty over good taste.
felipeerias 13y ago
Some people are better at systematizing, some are better at empathising, and some are reasonably good at both. Male technologists, which make up the majority of the SW development community, tend to be particularly good at the first and bad at the second: http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf This research looked at the relationship between empathy and technical work among IT workers. For both women and men, less technical work (i.e. public oriented) tended to have those people with more capacity for empathy. For women, there was a small decline in empathy as the researchers moved towards purely technical work. However, this drop in empathy was far, far sharper for men. Take your own conclusions about this, including its relation to the presence (or lack thereof) of women in IT.
joshearl 13y ago
This post really resonated with me. Software development is a second career for me, and I wasn't prepared for the aggressive way that many programmers try to prove that they're smarter than you. What doesn't kill you...

125 points by jsonmez 13y ago

Replace Software Development with any job and you are really on to something. People are mean and jerks are everywhere. Perhaps somehow society has convinced us otherwise, but there are a lot of terrible people out there. A lot of people do evil things, a lot of people hurt other people. This is not new and it's not a secret, people for whatever reason are more oblivious to it than they should be or perhaps people are so accepting of inappropriate behavior in our entertainment mediums that we are desensitized to it until it happens to us. I really don't know for sure. What I do know is not everybody deserves a say in everything. Sometimes people are wrong, or are trolling, or just have no place in the conversation. The right thing to do is to remove those people from the conversation if they aren't being constructive.

hga 13y ago
From the item: "The truth is not everyone has your best interests at heart. The truth is that a large number of people would like nothing more than to see you fail...." Without getting into why, one of the reasons the above is a bit astonishing is that it frequently leads to project failure, and in startups that usually means company failure. You can't depend on simple notions of self-interest even in situations where failure will mean all involved will lose their jobs.
rco8786 13y ago
This. Some people are mean.
- eksith 13y ago
  Doesn't mean I have to put up with it, though. In the same vein as a post linked here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 ) I refuse to play audience to someone insisting on being mean. Maybe that's just the way that person is, I can't change that, but I can change who I choose to interact with. If negative and mean people are happy being just so, they can be that way by themselves.
  - jsonmez 13y ago
    Great point. I agree.
mathattack 13y ago
Very few people consider themselves jerks, or go out of their way to be that way. You could argue that I'm wrong in Finance, but I think I'm right in Software. A lot of the solution is getting inside of other people's heads, especially those who may not have great social skills. Being a jerk isn't the same as less developed interpersonal skills.
georgebonnr 13y ago
I tend to agree with the article... while people can be mean anywhere, seems like there's a certain confluence of characteristics and circumstances that allows "jerks" to have an outsize place in the tech industry. But I suppose to look on the bright side, I'd rather have somebody be a jerk to my face, even if it is subtle and insidious, than have them pretend to be my buddy and then stab me in the back. I'll take being surrounded by jerks over trying to navigate some of the intricately constructed, intensely political environments that are common in the business world.
- arthulia 13y ago
  It's weird because when I imagine a young kid who is going to grow up to be a software developer, I tend to imagine the kid who gets picked on, not the one who's picking on people. I wonder why the tables turn. FTA > It is sort of a “kick the dog” syndrome where software developers who were kicked earlier in life, or even earlier in their careers, tend to feel justified in kicking the programmers who they see beneath them. This is what I tend to suspect, also.
Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
I think that the post over states it but I don't think it's entirely wrong that software developers are atypical in their behaviour, even if it's not exclusive to them. There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy. And this in an area where in many ways there are many similarities which you'd hope fostered friendship and bonding - we're talking about smart people who often share interests. Maybe it is just that software developers are typical but even if that is the case given levels of intelligence, education and so on I still find it disappointing that we can't be better than that.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  >>There is something specific about the way that people in software development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy. Yes. Generally speaking, I refer to this as "lack of social skills." I don't mean that as derogatory, although I know it will come across that way. Most developers have grown up around computers, and in a lot of situations have chosen fiddling with computers to socializing with people. As a result, they don't gain important social skills until later in life, if at all. For example, the software architect for my company's software suite is an absolutely brilliant guy. But he's just incredibly awkward around people. When it comes to working in projects, or even simple things like answering questions from less technical people, he's terribly arrogant and condescending. I experience such attitudes from non-developers much, much less often.
  - Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
    I suspect that in part it's more common because demand for skills massively outstripping supply means that organisations have to put up with ahem personality quirks they wouldn't otherwise tolerate (or would at least avoid). That said when I first started in IT I was surprised by how few people conformed to the cliched socially awkward stereotype. Yes it was more noticeable than in a typical a cross section of the general public, but I think that the damage someone being a complete jerk can have in a team context means that even given the difficulty in hiring it's selected out to some degree - you've either got to be really good, or at least be able to hide your true nature at interview.
tlarkworthy 13y ago
I might be wrong but I think the average jerkyness has been in decline over the last 10 years. Now that CS is not entirely comprised of the geekiest of the geekiest, there are a few well balanced people present, means that employers have more options, and they increasingly want nice people. 10-15 years ago the internet was just for geeks, but now everyone uses the internet, and and now business people want to learn how to code instead of locking us up in basements. So I am encouraged that the aggressive know-it-all might be slowly going extinct.
joe_the_user 13y ago
Having been in the work world for a while, I feel like this is new to an extent. I feel like harsh competition to the level of people being willing to sabotage their own projects and so-forth, is a phenomena of a gradually intensifying market-driven pressure that has been unleashed on society through a variety of forces (take-over focused hedge-funds and investor, market-efficiency ideologies, etc). But reference than anecdotes, I'll give references: David Gordon documents how downsizing produces expertise in sabotaging other rather than efficiency: http://www.amazon.com/FAT-AND-MEAN-Managerial-Downsizing/dp/0684822881 http://www.amazon.com/FAT-AND-MEAN-Managerial-Downsizing/dp/... The Gervais Principle perhaps summarizes the predatory new order. http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-o... But the point is this a somewhat new order. Of course, competition-so-ruthless-it-produces-bad-behavior has been around forever. But some circumstances allow that truly blossom and I think can argue we have those circumstances now.
- philangist 13y ago
  That article on the Gervais principle blew my mind and I'd suggest that everyone reads it.
javert 13y ago
I don't think your characterization of society is necessarily all that universal. I'm from the southern US, where people are known for hospitality and politeness, and I often see things said on places like the LKML that make me go, "If you said that to me in person in that way, I'd punch you in the face." And, to be clear, to me, punching the person in the face is not nearly as rude or unacceptable as whatever they said. I'm trying to get used to the fact that different people have different social norms. I still think people like Linus have _inferior_ social norms, though. (Though he may be an exception, since his style seems to work so damn well.)

swombat 13y ago

Agree with most of the points, but this certainly not some kind of secret that "no one talks about"...

georgebonnr 13y ago
Seems like you don't see as many blog posts or thought pieces about it as opposed to other cultural issues in the industry, like gender imbalances or "startup culture" minutiae.
- karmajunkie 13y ago
  I'd have to say that's likely because we've been talking about it for as long as there have been software developers working for private companies.

shaggyfrog 13y ago

> Software developers are jerks. > Chances are if you are doing something unique or you propose a new idea, you’ll have more critics than supporters. In my experience, it's not fellow developers who have issues with new (better) ways of doing things -- it's the non-technical management types who see disruption solely in terms of the effect on office politics.

mrchuckmills2 13y ago

"This just in: people are jerks. Film at 11"

ExpiredLink 13y ago

"Hell is other people." Jean-Paul Sartre

MartinCron 13y ago
I'm sure if he were working today, he would have amended it to include "other people's code" and "other people's data"
bqe 13y ago
Perhaps a more apt quote would be from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil."

xarien 13y ago

There's actually a method that works quite well in dealing with these "jerks." Ironically, it's the same tactic that men need to effectively communicate well with women. Here's the secret: acknowledge them. Acknowledgement doesn't mean you smile and nod nor does it involve using the sentence structure ..., but... Try to understand their perspective and communicate through that perspective. Instead of asking others to see your perspective, it's much easier to do the reverse. Most arguments and personal qualification of someone being a jerk has to do with communicating from 2 different perspectives with neither side willing to take some time to understand the other perspective. Most devs are fairly logical creatures. Understanding their perspective shouldn't be hard. However, it does take a bit of practice. If you can't understand where they are coming from, just ask more questions.

itsallbs 13y ago
And some devs have the idea that they are Better Than You, no matter what your skill level or expertise. I'm a web dev and worked on a project recently with a lead who had just enough experience with web dev of the 90's to be dangerous. For example, he fought with me repeatedly about md5 being good enough for password hashing, while I wanted to use bcrypt (or at the very least, SHA1, even though it's almost as bad as md5). It took weeks before he relented, and only after I sent him several articles about how broken md5 is. In the end we wound up removing encryption entirely because it made his deployment process harder. I've got a new job.
- xarien 13y ago
  It sounds like you cared more about being right than from seeing it from his perspective. Even if you ARE right (keep in mind that right is often incredibly subjective), it's far more important to understand why someone is taking the "wrong" stance. Now, I'm sure you felt quite a bit of frustration over this and possibly other arguments. I'm not trying to dismiss your feelings, but once you understand someone's perspective, you can often turn an "asshole" into a colleague you can work well with. Believe it or not, being "right" all the time doesn't actually garner respect as much as being able to work well with others.

wahsd 13y ago

I have found that the more loudmouth and jerk-like the person is, the more they are covering up the realization that what they have/do is not all that unique, significant, or otherwise difficult yet rather comfortable and lucrative. Thus, they feel compelled to loud mouth barking and posturing to protect their bone. It's probably the same kind of mentality of a dog that snarls at his owner that just put down a bowl of food.

boomlinde 13y ago
I see what you mean but I doubt a dog would be able to realize any of that.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  That's why they tend to have to learn the hard way, with consistent negative enforcement. Positive reinforcement is nice, but it's not always an option.
philbarr 13y ago
If a dog snarls at their owner then that's a badly trained dog. I recommend this book if you have a badly behaved dog [1], or any dog good or bad actually. 1. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Listener-Jan-Fennell/dp/0006532365 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dog-Listener-Jan-Fennell/dp/00065323...
yaddayadda 13y ago
Off of the main topic: I explicitly worked with my dogs when they were puppies to avoid this 'mentality'. The first big thing is that they are expected to be well behaved while I slowly put their food bowl down. If there is a hint of growl or lunging, the food bowl comes back up again and only when they have restrained themselves does the bowl start to go down again - and slower than before. My dogs are seniors now, but they 'understand' that he who giveth the food can - and will - taketh the food if they give me any grief. The second big thing is that they are expected to give up whatever is in their mouth on command. This requires ongoing training, and also started when they were wee-little pups. They understand that if I put my hand out palm-up, or grip what is in their mouth, and tell them to "release" they are going to loose whatever is in their mouth. If they give it up without a scene, then they get it back in a few moments. If they make a scene, or I have to pry it from their jaws, then they may not get it back. This has helped in situations when they managed to get something they shouldn't have (e.g., a dropped grape).

j_baker 13y ago

I don't have a reference handy, but it's been shown that people are fundamentally ambivalent about creativity. Everybody agrees that creativity is a good thing, but when it comes down to judging a creative idea, most people will be negative. The reason being that creativity necessarily involves uncertainty, which is discomforting. I say this because the things the author mention aren't exclusive to software development. I do buy that software developers have less people skill on average in dismissing creativity than some professions (say PR) though.

ripter 13y ago

Welcome to life. I've been wondering how the "everyone is special" and "everyone wins!" trends that people have been teaching their children would manifest. This looks like a good example. If you do anything that other people will see, some of them will criticize you. That's just life and not necessarily a bad thing. There isn't enough room for everyone to be special and winners. In order for someone to win someone else has to lose. So develop a thick skin. You are not your work. If someone is criticizing you instead of your work, then you learn to ignore them. They just want to be mean. If people are criticizing your work then you learn to pick out the real critiques so you can improve the next one.

pekk 13y ago
And we introspect on why there are not many women in this industry. I guess women should all just get a thick skin and stop thinking they are special. Because any abuse they might perceive is illusory, and their bullies are actually superior in knowledge and are justified in acting like jerks whenever they feel like it. After all, this is a meritocracy, how could it be otherwise? Whatever you get, you deserved.
- liveoneggs 13y ago
  what are you replying to?
- ripter 13y ago
  What do women have to do with my comment? My comment wasn't even about our industry, it's about creating works that other people will see. This applies to men and women equally.
- philwelch 13y ago
  I don't know where you get this sexist notion that women are delicate flowers who can't handle criticism, disagreement, or personality conflict in the workplace.
MartinCron 13y ago
Here's the thing with thick skin. Some people are, from a demonstrative physiological perspective [1], more sensitive than others. Telling people to "just develop a thick skin" is like telling a color-blind person to "just start differentiating colors better". Easy advice to give, totally useless. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person

lighthazard 13y ago

I must have missed it when everyday work-place environments hit the software development world.

unoti 13y ago

If you work in software development for a decade or more in a corporate environment, you will encounter a surprising number of stakeholders who would like for the software project you're doing to fail, and will do everything they can get away with to make it fail. I did ERP implementations of Oracle ERP and SAP for many years, and saw this often. This can happen when the system you are replacing has the developer who wrote it (or a set of close allies) working on the transition project, which happens often when there is a system originally written by an in house IT team being replaced by third party software. It can happen when certain in house people did not want to replace the system, or for whatever reason predicted the new system would not be good-- people want their prophecies to come true, and they want to be consistent, so it can be difficult or impossible to convince them the system is good. There can be bad people, and not just programmers, involved in any business enterprise. I try to look out for them and see what's coming when they want to sink a project I am on. I have also found that there are plenty of people who will not acknowledge the simple truth that I am talking about. They will say, "that is insane; how could any actual stakeholder want to see the project fail?" The answer involves looking at the various definitions of evil, which is a fascinating exercise. Sometimes people want to see harm come to others for various reasons, and that is the real world, sometimes.

hga 13y ago
I've seen a similar thing in projects that are in trouble: the relevant manager demotes the person responsible for the failure but leaves them on the project. Only your failure can validate their failure. In your examples, if their ERP software is being replaced, I suspect it's hard not to see it being declared a failure. Another thing I've heard about what some called the "Procrustean bed" of SAP is that it can get terrifically resisted by stakeholders because it insists on rational business processes, and plenty of companies aren't run very rationally. My family saw that while computerizing one doctor's office in 1980: after the data entry was done, the printer would just not stop in the first accounts receivable cycle. Turned out the office workers sent out a fixed number of bills per month (something like 200?), no matter how many actually needed to be sent. They didn't totally understand what was happening, but they knew "the computer would tell all".

nish1500 13y ago

This post should be titled, 'The Dark Side of Work That No Ones Talks About'. Having worked in the accounting / tax field for years, before switching over to programming, I fail to see how these generalized statements don't apply to other fields. It applies to work in general.

dnautics 13y ago

One thing I wish this article talked about: Sometimes, people are brutally honest with little tact. If you're overly sensitive, you might think that such a person is being mean or being a jerk - but they have your best interests in mind, because they are telling you either a factual truth or an unvarnished personal opinion. The reason why they are brusque is not because 'they have been abused' but because, the tolerance for bullshit is low - because of two things 1) they have seen bullshit bring down otherwise promising projects or ideas, and they don't want that to happen; 2) they percieve that varnishing your emotions or opinions with too much tact increases the cognitive load required by the recipient to 'get to the truth'. Whether or not being brusque or diplomatic actually is effective is debatable. Nonetheless, I think missing this very important concept is generally bad. In some fields, like science, having to deal with people who will trash your idea with honest commentary - that makes you think twice about what you are doing - is far, far, far better than having to deal with the silent judgement of a failed experiment that lets you down dispassionately, and wondering, "why didn't anyone care enough to tell me I was stupid to try this".

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
logjam 13y ago
Wrong. Tact, compassion, and honesty are not in any way incompatible. And no, people who think they are being "brutally honest" while forgetting compassion or even basic fucking manners are not doing so with others' best interests at heart. They are just being assholes. There are bonafide reasons for that behavior, and they deserve a measure of compassion themselves while receiving that message, but don't try gilding the orifice's behavior.
- ticviking 13y ago
  This. Being "Brutally Honest" while combining that with tact is a rare communication skill that is an essential part of interacting in polite company. Having that skill and developing it has done more for the effectiveness of my teams than any other skill I have ever developed.
- 13y ago

forgottenpaswrd 13y ago

As someone who manage people in the software world, who created his business from zero coding himself alone for years, I disagree. I had to fight a lot indifference when I started, now it is the opposite problem, when I say something to people in my team, some of them smarter than me they believe it too much, like I was God or something. The same happens with your product, people trust your reputation. "Jerk" is such a victim mentality word, in my opinion, when you want to create something that is new, people can't see it like you do. It is as simple as that. Now when you make it and success everybody says that from the first day they believed in you(not true) and after you make some repeated successes they continue not seeing it but they trust you. The fact is that talking is cheap, and some new developer has no reputation at all, so you will have to prove with code that you can walk your talk.

chrisbennet 13y ago

I feel extremely lucky that I've never had to deal with developers like that. Of course, I just assume everyone is smarter than I am [a pretty safe assumption usually!]. I try not to get to attached "my way" and I genuinely care about and consider my colleagues viewpoints. Call it "ego-less programming" if you will. I generally work in situations where my teammates have complementary skill sets so perhaps that lack of overlap helps reduce potential conflicts. I did have a bad boss once at my first programming job - back in 1987...

losethos 13y ago

God likes bears and elephants. This is disturbing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHiEYGqnEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrHiEYGqnEk Teenage males go off on their own. They fight. Thank God they do not gore each other with tusks. God is not a cruel God. None-the-less males are quite expendable. When you think about it, World War I was no big deal. I wonder about polygamy. That means lots of lone males. ---- My ego is hilariously large -- only I know God exists. Everybody is a huge retard. God says... negligence Poland shared Monad deed this_might_end_badly sparrows relaxing Bangladesh cruelty believing talketh ancient churches wrought therefore *Portions ehheh_thats_all_folks energy manifested bickering healthful Ghana gaining

georgemcbay 13y ago

As has been mentioned already in this thread, jerks are in every profession. But after being a software developer for many years and being exposed to other industries both directly and from hearing about it from third parties, the jerkiness in software development is much more palatable to me (though I'm a software developer, so go figure). In a lot of fields people will be very polite to your face while stabbing you in the back and turning the knife. In software the jerks are generally very upfront, showing far less "people skills" but at least showing you their cards. And while I like to think I've never been a jerk (you'd have to ask people who worked with me to be sure), I've noticed there tend to be two classes of jerks in software development and it may be important for you to try to recognize the distinction. The first kind of jerk is the grumpy old coder who shoots down your idea to use the latest wiz-bang tech to rewrite your entire project for the next release. This guy has very little people skills and may not do a great job of explaining his position, so he seems to just be shooting you down for no reason. THIS GUY IS PROBABLY RIGHT, though. And his jerkiness comes from years of battle scars. The second kind of jerk is the cocky (usually younger) developer who is sure he is right about every decision despite having limited real world experience. At first blush he looks like the other kind of jerk (except that he's probably younger). THIS GUY IS PROBABLY WRONG. And his jerkiness comes from a lack of real-world experience combined with an over-inflated sense of confidence coming out of the school years where he was the smartest guy in his school, but mixed with unacknowledged self doubt. Sometimes this kind of jerk grows up to be the first kind of jerk, but sometimes they remain the second kind of jerk.

altcognito 13y ago
Strong opinions, weakly held. Be vocal if you think you have a case or don't understand. Stay professional, don't make it personal and you should be ok.
tsunamifury 13y ago
Oh please stereotype much? Grumpy old coders want a way to do their job as easily as possible -- which is good. However it becomes bad when they refused to learn new (community accepted) ways of doing things that are either REQUIRED or lead to efficiency down the road. I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of the time. The other 10% I prod them to explore some of those 'wiz-bang' solutions to discover something that they hadn't thought of before.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

I've worked in a few industries, and software developers (plus the associated designers, project managers, etc) have been some of the most fun to work with.

badman_ting 13y ago

I have seen more of people being nice when they shouldn't. Perhaps on balance that's a better work environment, but I really don't like seeing subpar or even downright crappy work being overlooked because it would be mean to point out that it's crappy. The world is full of jerks. Being jerks is their problem, not yours. That's how I feel about it, anyway. Jerks don't hurt me, they hurt themselves.

6d0debc071 13y ago
You can, nicely, ask if someone's considered doing it in another (better) way rather than pointing out that it's crappy.
- badman_ting 13y ago
  One may, but that wouldn't be "nice", which is what I was talking about. Being able to critique something without being rude is certainly important for professionals, though.

shire 13y ago

It's part of life, you can't expect everyone to like you. It also depends on what kind of people you work with. You will have your ups and downs in life this is true for any field of work not just software development. I think the main reason this happens in Software development is that people have big egos and consider themselves more intelligent than others.

moron4hire 13y ago

I think it has more to do with the prison-syndrome of being forced into a social situation with people you don't like--much like we do to children in schools--than it does to this concept of paying-forward nastiness applied to them. Programmers are a diverse group of people, they aren't all nerds who got picked on in school.

lampe3 13y ago

a lot of people not only software developer are jerks. But i have a tip for you: If you can ignore them! If you can just don't listen,speak or do anything with them. if you must listen to them get a job somewhere else! Life is to short to spend it with jerks!

nickthemagicman 13y ago

Just commenting to say, that in our profession WITHOUT licensure there is not other way to really prove that we're competent except for our reputation. This leads to big egos and constantly trying to make your self look better no matter what. If we were a licensed profession like medicine where you have a third party proof of your competence and you weren't constantly trying to guard your reputation, I bet you that it would lighten people up a lot.

karmajunkie 13y ago
Not in my experience. That just lends itself to a lot of protectionism and equally inflated egos (and the piece of paper to prove you earned it.) In fact, only academia tops medicine for inflated egos and self-aggrandizing behavior in my book.
- nickthemagicman 13y ago
  Ego is not so much the problem, it's that the computer industry is way more cutthroat. Doctor's and Academic's ego's come from having to maintain the same reputation that a computer person has to maintain. However, it's worse for the computer monkeys because we have the same level of intellectual capital to master yet we have no license to protect our years of knowledge which makes the industry way more cutthroat and step on your buddy to get ahead in my opinion. Just my observations.
  - karmajunkie 13y ago
    Man, I just totally disagree with all of that. I wrote medical software for most of my career, except for a brief stint as a pre-med student, and the level of narcissism I found in medical doctors far exceeded anything I came across in technical circles (not counting some percentage of founders). My girlfriend is in academia, and a similar trend prevails there. Contrast this with wanton disdain for credentials in much of the tech community coupled with a great deal of willingness to help each other out. Maybe I'm just blessed to live in a town like Austin, but this industry is anything but cutthroat on technical merits.
13y ago

skylan_q 13y ago

I negotiate on mutual goals, and how to achieve them. I also do my best to leave no room for egos. It does cut out a lot of people. But they tend to be the people you really don't want to be dealing with anyways. Egos cloud judgment and lead to more mistakes which is exactly what I want to avoid when I'm trying to achieve goals.

wuliwong 13y ago

Is there a way to comment on an article without giving it more points? This one should just slide away down into obscurity...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

consultant23522 13y ago

This is precisely why I went into programming in the first place. A computer doesn't have feelings. It doesn't lie to me, I don't have to lie to it. It will do exactly what I ask it to do without fail, though I regularly ask it to do the wrong thing. They are completely and totally predictable. People, on the other hand are emotional and mostly stupid (even the smart ones). They are going to lie to you, even if unintentionally, and you're required to lie to them in return. The person you're meeting might have had their family pet die last night and will react to you in completely irrational ways. It's no wonder why when your job is to deal primarily with emotionless computers all day that it's tricky to then context switch back to lying and walking on eggshells.

avelis 13y ago
I wish I could upvote this statement more. It is difficult to transition from an environment of honesty and truth then into an environment where lies and deceit are the common denominator of communication.

karmajunkie 13y ago

I think its a bit much to say that people being assholes is the dark side that no one talks about. Truthfully, there aren't a lot of dark sides to software that no one talks about. The dark sides I can think of off the top of my head: misogyny; we consider ourselves successful if we put entire industries out of work; ageism; classism; the myth of the meritocracy; neoliberalism; creation of a private surveillance society; overly dramatic HN headlines; probably more I'll think of in the next five minutes. The thing is, all of these, with the exception of that last one, are talked about quite a bit.

vitd 13y ago

I thought the article was interesting and the eventual conclusion good, but really didn't like the sentiment to "have thicker skin" and to basically just "suck it up" if someone is being mean to you. (He doesn't use those words, but that what he's saying.) That part seems like victim blaming to me. If people are mean to you without reason, you shouldn't put up with it. You should tell someone. Maybe they're approachable and you can confront them directly, or maybe not. But you absolutely should not get used to it or just accept it. You should do something about it.

orionblastar 13y ago

This was worse in the 1990's during when the Dotcom bubble burst. People we worked with were mean to use because 'programmers are a dime a dozen, we get 500+ resumes a week for your job and can easily find someone to replace you who can work for a lower salary.' Mentality that management had towards us programmers. It is odd that management claims there is a lack of qualified programmers out there when so many programmers are out of work and qualified. Me, I am told I am overqualified by companies begging the US government to raise the H1B Visa cap because there are not enough qualified programmers to hire. It is a form of bullying and a slap in the face of anyone qualified who wants to earn a decent wage and benefits but is called overqualified because of past salaries they had earned. Working in an IT department other employees can abuse you, call you names, even physically attack you, and you cannot do anything about it. If you complain to your manager they write you up for 'communication problems'. The average non-IT employee cannot tell the difference between a Microsoft Windows bug or a bug in the custom software that is written and thinks you can fix a bug with Windows or Office, etc. When you tell them you don't have the source code to Windows or Office, they get mad at you. Management tells IT workers to lie to the other employees and tell them you are working on fixing Windows and Office bugs, which is basically lying.

orionblastar 13y ago

IT and suicide. A topic that should be discussed. I had my best friend kill himself on May 31, 1999 when he couldn't find a job and unemployment was running out. He was the best C++ programmer that I knew at the time. He worked at a Startup called Polygon that was mismanaged and abused their employees and then fired them all. I did all I could to help him find a job, but nobody wanted to take a chance and hire him. I had many friends I made working IT jobs end up killing themselves because they couldn't find work. Mostly Generation-Xers. I got suicidal myself sometimes over how management had abused me and treated me. They didn't seem to think I was a human being, just some subhuman third class person they could treat like dirt. Had I worked at a company that treated me a different way I would not have gotten sick and ended up on disability from the stress.

commanda 13y ago

The underlying theme in this post, from what I gather, is "Male programmers are often treated poorly by their peers, so female programmers should have nothing to complain about when they are treated poorly." This is denial of the very real sexism in our industry.

Paul_S 13y ago
That is nowhere in the article, not even between the lines, outside the lines, generally implied by the curvature of the lines or audible if played backwards and slowed down by a factor of 10. Don't agree with the blog's author though, arseholes being arseholes is a general fact of life and there's no special link between them and programming.

Maven911 13y ago

I have gotten pretty detrimental health effects to my body becaise of some companies sw dev culture

gscott 13y ago

I imagine out there someplace is a group of developers who are positive, supporting of each other, who check each others work without vile, and who want to see each other succeed... but in my limited experience I have never seen it.

michaelwww 13y ago

What's this guy selling? > I’m actually working on a much bigger project to distill some of these specific software developer career tips into a bigger package. Anyway, he's making general and simplistic arguments for whatever reason. Programmers have strong opinions and will argue them vigorously. I agree with Socrates “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” and we should all not tolerate that, but while the argument is going on, if you can't join in and make yours don't blame the community for being intolerant.

lordofbackland 13y ago

>>We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life. Is this being "victims of aggression and abuse" due to high intelligence and ability is normal phenomena in US or just taking a potshot?

kamakazizuru 13y ago

appropriate title "The Dark Side of any job That No One Talks About"

Vargas 13y ago

"We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression and abuse earlier in life." You USA-nians really have to work on changing your high school culture. Statements like this are so frequent yet so foreign to me... why is aggression and abuse frequent? Why is it tolerated? Why is it aimed towards those with "intelligence and ability"? Why don't you work on changing your society once you grow up? women rights, end of racial segregation, etc. prove that you can change the society you live in in a relatively short period of time. Why you all complain but don't try to change it?

adamconroy 13y ago

I agree with this post in general. I am currently working on a project by myself, and have been for the last 4 years. I am getting a bit bored, I don't want to stagnate and I can sort of see the need to get back to working with a team. I have been contemplating this for ~18 months, however I dread the thought of it because I know it is almost certain I will end up working with at least one passive aggressive, insecure, egotistical fuckwit that will drive me to look for another project anyway. I have worked on 13 project teams in the last 20 years. Every single team that has had more than 3 people has contained at least one whacko that has made life miserable for everyone else.

pfh 13y ago

Being a jerk comes naturally with being a journeyman. You've got an idea, and you're out to prove it's the best. Especially so in computing, where the only winning strategy is complete world domination. Mastery of a subject means giving up attachment to favourite ideas and seeing the merits of all of them. But we've not really set up a society acknowledge this, we're stuck in a world of thousands of journeymen, with just a few people who have reached such transcendent heights that their mastery is obvious. We're stuck in a society that values novelty over good taste.

felipeerias 13y ago

Some people are better at systematizing, some are better at empathising, and some are reasonably good at both. Male technologists, which make up the majority of the SW development community, tend to be particularly good at the first and bad at the second: http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf This research looked at the relationship between empathy and technical work among IT workers. For both women and men, less technical work (i.e. public oriented) tended to have those people with more capacity for empathy. For women, there was a small decline in empathy as the researchers moved towards purely technical work. However, this drop in empathy was far, far sharper for men. Take your own conclusions about this, including its relation to the presence (or lack thereof) of women in IT.

joshearl 13y ago

This post really resonated with me. Software development is a second career for me, and I wasn't prepared for the aggressive way that many programmers try to prove that they're smarter than you. What doesn't kill you...