9 ms·

'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

133 points by a_w 13y ago

gargarplex 13y ago
Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low. * Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow. ^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out! - just donated £10 to the charity at http://www.beatbullying.org http://www.beatbullying.org .. which is (broken-linked) at the bottom of the op
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  One word: therapy. It's your baggage. Either you own up to it and continually work on it, or you let it fester and run your life. I meet so many people who are terrified of being the type of person that goes to therapy despite significant issues. And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
  - Dewie 13y ago
    Why is therapy necessarily the only, or the best solution? Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations? I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically. > And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life. And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.
    - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
      What are other modes of treatment? Genuinely curious.
      - Dewie 13y ago
        I don't know about treatment specifically. But outside of therapy and psychology, there are a lot of schools of thought, methods, authors, etc. that have to do with this kind of thing. You might dismiss this as no good because there is no science behind, perhaps nothing scholarly, or no professional accountability. But even so - is there necessarily anything better? Therapy has failed to convince the public of its utility. Self-help also has a bad reputation, but that might only cost you the price of some books, as opposed to expensive sessions with a licensed professional. Self help might be a farce. There might be no viable alternative to therapy. But most don't have any grounds to judge these kinds of things. We think that people know too little about physical health, but holy shit we laymen don't know anything about mental health. The only (false) dichotomy we often see is "talk about it" vs "don't and let it fester". I don't know much myself. But I've preferred - so far - to keep it a private matter, between me and my diary or various other techniques I use for processing things and self-reflection.
- dasil003 13y ago
  > Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low. Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading to a negative feedback loop.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    And non techies seem surprised when some of us react so aggressively to the trustifariajn bus protestors those are the kids that bullied is at school.
- how_gauche 13y ago
  > if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out! I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing. The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier. I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better. As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing. The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc. Sorry for the mega-post.
TheBiv 13y ago
Great read and even greater story, thank you for sharing! When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain. The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from freeing himself of the bullying. Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this from happening to kids in the future. I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.
emersonrsantos 13y ago
Yet one more great undervoted post I've seen in HN. No, I didn't identify myself with the bullying story (thankfully), but with the freedom and self-expression he found on programming.
appreneur 13y ago
I am 37,I am fat and I am not programmer and I have been bullied for 20 years.I just became CEO of my own software firm finally and it doesnt do that well but I am fine,I feel life is far more easier and simpler, no more bullying. I have few recommendations: 1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble. 2.No matter what anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion neurons .... 3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow. 5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help. 6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).
- lafar6502 13y ago
  It's easy to say 'dont cruble', but your self esteem will go down if you cant find any help. I had some similar trouble in a primary school, and fortunately it ended after moving to another school, but it took a long time until i realized the problem was not in me.
yetanotherphd 13y ago
A powerful reminder that our society still doesn't offer adequate protection, even of their basic right to safety, to all its members.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  Haunting. Probably why I'm terrified of weakness: the abuse of the 'lower' class is supported at a collective unconscious level. "At least it's not me..."
byuu 13y ago
Yep, exactly. You go to the adults, and they don't help you at all. So you stand up for yourself, and now you're the one in trouble. I can't possibly think of a more backwards model for encouraging bullying. Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least some level of pain on an aggressor. It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is ever really done about it. Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly, and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd flip out completely. But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace. Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores while pretending to be at work. But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.
- yetanotherphd 13y ago
  Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue. Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure. Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues. Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority). However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.
  - 13y ago
UK-AL 13y ago
The problem with this, is that when he enters the workforce a lot of that social awkwardness and bulling problems could come back again. So it's a short lived victory. In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if he tried probably would be fired. The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies. A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career. School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it was like being thrown back into school.
- dave1010uk 13y ago
  I'm Dan's manager and tech lead at the company. We're going to look after Dan as best we can.
- DanBC 13y ago
  English companies have a legal duty to protect staff from harm. This includes bullying in the workplace. Any company that fires a victim of bullying leaves themselves open to compensation claims. Any company that does nothing likewise leaves themselves open to legal action.
  - UK-AL 13y ago
    The hard part is proving it(Bullying is subtle). The next hard part is stumping up the courage to take legal action.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      The person being bullied keeps a log of what happens. They then go to HR (or whatever the proceedure is -and companies need to have a proceedure) to talk about it. They present a copy of their ongoing log and ask for help. If the person has seen a doctor they can ask that doctor to write a supporting letter. Being a member of a union is helpful here because they will help. Taking legal action is an absolute last resort!
jpgvm 13y ago
This rings very true of my life. I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me. The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home. I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university. Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr. Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong. So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.
bananas 13y ago
The difference between then (believe me I was there) and now is that the teachers get stick for allowing this to happen instantly. I've personally got into several shouting matches with teachers over how they treat my children and deal with these situations. I'm usually in a queue of other parents doing exactly the same. People don't take any shit these days.
- dasil003 13y ago
  Now and then? This kid is 17 now. Have things really changed that much? I think it's more likely he went to a different school and his parents had a different temperament than you and your fellow parents.
  - bananas 13y ago
    Definitely have changed. There is less respect for teachers, the school system and people communicate more. This has happened because there were a hell of a lot of victims. Also communication between parents is now at an all time high. I've seen this change in just the last two years.
  - GuiA 13y ago
    I think the 17 in the article is a typo for 27. He picked up programming in his teenage years, and the article mentions a "10 years later". Also, it'd be extremely surprising (possible, but surprising) that a 17 year old would have "won awards and travelled all around the country to meet people and attend or speak at conferences."
    - DanielTomlinson 13y ago
      Hey! Writer here, I just thought it might be worth saying that I am indeed 17! :) I started programming aged around 7 or 8, and have won a couple of awards (Most recently a Google Code Award for ProjectHermes - a natural language analysing bullying detector for twitter), and spoken at a few events as well. I'm incredibly surprised myself by the things I've done over the years, it's a pretty awesome world!
  - 13y ago
mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Been there, had it nowhere near as bad as Dan did. Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this abuse. On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.
- tinco 13y ago
  Don't do that, you can't just assume your kids are going to be bullied. I wasn't bullied on primary school, and primary school was one of the safest and happiest periods of my life, I still have some friends from primary school even. There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then you get the chance to really set things right. Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
  - crankpot 13y ago
    I'm homeschooled and I'm not fragile. I know a lot of men and women who were homeschooled and they aren't fragile either. Being frequently bullied may be one way to learn about life, but it isn't the only way. In fact I don't think it's even the best way. > What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled? Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life. There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing (contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something else that I can't remember the name of); and much more. Edit: added word "frequently"
    - tinco 13y ago
      I didn't say a homeschooled kid would be fragile. I just think that not being homeschooled might prepare them a bit better for highschool life. But perhaps I'm totally wrong. I'm just reacting to the idea that sending your kids to school is sending them to be bullied. I definitely do not think being bullied is a good way to learn about life.
human_waste 13y ago
I was bullied at grade school all the time, I was a poor, fat kid and my parents had just divorced, I was happy and optimistic, but very vulnerable. I won't go too much into the details of this, because this post is already too long. But as a result and the point of this post is that I became a bully myself. I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it consciously, it just had became a part of how I act. Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school. The way the school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in. What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy target. Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father. Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my original bully, had a very abusive big brother. I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual from my childhood, as it usually is. I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.
- penguindev 13y ago
PaulAJ 13y ago
I went through similar stuff in the 70s and 80s, although nowhere near as extreme. Bullying is physical and psychological child abuse. The fact that it is perpetrated by other children instead of an adult makes no difference to the victim. I will say that schools can do something about this, and some of them do. My son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes part of the culture that you have a real problem. One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.
noir_lord 13y ago
I'm 33 so I was at primary school in the 80's. Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality. My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11). This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out. When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering. I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches. When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies. We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way. At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that. I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted. My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself. I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).
- DanielTomlinson 13y ago
  Humbling to read - you did an awesome thing that day, but it's incredibly sad that it was ever necessary.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
PaulRobinson 13y ago
I got into programming in my first year of secondary school (year 7 in modern money), when I wasn't really fitting in well. I was getting bullied a little but had a thick skin so didn't care. Can't deny I relate to the escapist aspects of this though. That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?
Twirrim 13y ago
Yet somehow, when you get into the tech industry, you discover the bullying, derision and such like are all there. In the community you'd like to call home. If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve derision at best. What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We should be better than this.
james1071 13y ago
There are some interesting comments here. My take on the story, as someone who went to a UK comprehensive school in the late '70s early '80s, is that bright people have always been a target at such schools for bullying and current teachers are less able to control the disruptive elements than in the past. Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues rather than punishing them.
mgkimsal 13y ago
I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the poster, but had some incidents which, even to me at 6/7 years old, immediately made me start to question authority and become cynical. A few random anecdotes: 2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking - the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?). "No tolerance" attitudes are just crap. 3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared "no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for anyone. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But... WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid? Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work. I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and... there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which quickly evaporated when I left the room. It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  followup - I took a 'personality test' for a job at 18 years old. Someone came out from the office and looked around, then finally at me, and was a bit shocked to see me instead of someone else. "Did you take this yourself? Did anyone help you earlier? Your scores indicate you have the cynicism of a 35 year old." heh ;)
rys 13y ago
If anyone from The Guardian web team is reading, the link to beatbullying.org at the bottom doesn't work because of a malformed anchor.
gregors 13y ago
Aggression solves this problem. Pure and simple. You can't reason and talk things over - fight or leave. Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal usually retreats. It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank. That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked when bad things happen.

133 points by a_w 13y ago

Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low. * Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow. ^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out! - just donated £10 to the charity at http://www.beatbullying.org http://www.beatbullying.org .. which is (broken-linked) at the bottom of the op

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
One word: therapy. It's your baggage. Either you own up to it and continually work on it, or you let it fester and run your life. I meet so many people who are terrified of being the type of person that goes to therapy despite significant issues. And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life.
- Dewie 13y ago
  Why is therapy necessarily the only, or the best solution? Maybe therapy has an undeserved reputation. Maybe people who should og to it but don't are just prideful. But maybe conventional therapy just isn't the best way for people to deal with their problems? Maybe therapy, as a field, just hasn't lived up to its aspirations? I'd agree that the GP has to do something about it. But I'm not sure about what, specifically. > And it's sad, that's pride and potentially narcissism running your life. And that looks like a lack of empathy and/or projection. You can't reduce people's motivations to a small, neat set of emotions and/or intentions.
  - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
    What are other modes of treatment? Genuinely curious.
    - Dewie 13y ago
      I don't know about treatment specifically. But outside of therapy and psychology, there are a lot of schools of thought, methods, authors, etc. that have to do with this kind of thing. You might dismiss this as no good because there is no science behind, perhaps nothing scholarly, or no professional accountability. But even so - is there necessarily anything better? Therapy has failed to convince the public of its utility. Self-help also has a bad reputation, but that might only cost you the price of some books, as opposed to expensive sessions with a licensed professional. Self help might be a farce. There might be no viable alternative to therapy. But most don't have any grounds to judge these kinds of things. We think that people know too little about physical health, but holy shit we laymen don't know anything about mental health. The only (false) dichotomy we often see is "talk about it" vs "don't and let it fester". I don't know much myself. But I've preferred - so far - to keep it a private matter, between me and my diary or various other techniques I use for processing things and self-reflection.
dasil003 13y ago
> Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already quite low. Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading to a negative feedback loop.
- walshemj 13y ago
  And non techies seem surprised when some of us react so aggressively to the trustifariajn bus protestors those are the kids that bullied is at school.
how_gauche 13y ago
> if anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out! I was bullied a lot when I was younger. I was small to begin with, but I skipped a grade and consequently hit puberty about 18 months behind all of the other kids. Growing up in a rural area, I endured a lot of abuse and violence on a daily basis, and like the typical story goes, teachers saw most of it and did nothing. The physical abuse stopped at the end of eighth grade. We had a year-end party and all of the jocks were bullying me as usual. This other kid, who was the only one about my size, decided that he would join in the hazing this day. I guess he had his own reasons for wanting to fit in. TL;DR I snapped and beat the piss out of him. Surprisingly, I wasn't disciplined or punished for this at all, which would probably never be the case in "zero-tolerance" Canada today. The teacher was very nice to me (I was crying and shaking for what felt like an hour afterwards) and drove me home herself. I think maybe she felt bad that she hadn't intervened earlier. I moved away after the next year, but the few friends that I had back then (the other outcasts and nerds) told me much later that things got better for them in the following years. I guess most kids get over bullying once they get a little older. These episodes left scars on me that will probably never completely heal, but I feel now that as a 34-year-old man I've long since moved past it. I'm relatively well-adjusted and socially-aware now (this took years of work in my late teens and twenties, you don't get a chance to develop critical interpersonal skills when you're a group hazing target), and I haven't let myself be permanently handicapped by the bullying that happened to me. So: things can get better. As for how I did it, honestly the biggest thing is "fake it till you make it". Pretend to be the confident person that you would like to be, even if it feels forced or fake, or like a role that you're playing instead of your loathsome putrid self. People do respond to charm and confidence -- if you play the role well then things become less difficult over time, and you realize that the only thing that was holding you back was fear before. Over time you can really change the way that you feel about yourself, and you won't need to pretend anymore. It's possible! Amy Cuddy gave a well-regarded TED talk on this topic (http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are.html http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes...), it's worth viewing. The other thing I did that I feel really helped me was to increase my level of physical exercise. When you're bullied all you want to do is withdraw into yourself behind a protective shell. Lots of bullied people end up living in the mind for this reason, I know I did (and boy am I glad for it in retrospect --- those Commodore 64 programmers' manuals didn't read themselves!). Not a great strategy going into adulthood however. You inhabit a physical body moving through space and getting better at doing that has knock-on effects that improve lots of other parts of your life, besides just looking better: stamina, mood, posture, body language, etc. Sorry for the mega-post.

TheBiv 13y ago

Great read and even greater story, thank you for sharing! When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain. The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from freeing himself of the bullying. Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this from happening to kids in the future. I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.

emersonrsantos 13y ago

Yet one more great undervoted post I've seen in HN. No, I didn't identify myself with the bullying story (thankfully), but with the freedom and self-expression he found on programming.

appreneur 13y ago

I am 37,I am fat and I am not programmer and I have been bullied for 20 years.I just became CEO of my own software firm finally and it doesnt do that well but I am fine,I feel life is far more easier and simpler, no more bullying. I have few recommendations: 1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble. 2.No matter what anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion neurons .... 3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow. 5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help. 6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).

lafar6502 13y ago
It's easy to say 'dont cruble', but your self esteem will go down if you cant find any help. I had some similar trouble in a primary school, and fortunately it ended after moving to another school, but it took a long time until i realized the problem was not in me.

yetanotherphd 13y ago

A powerful reminder that our society still doesn't offer adequate protection, even of their basic right to safety, to all its members.

mattgreenrocks 13y ago
Haunting. Probably why I'm terrified of weakness: the abuse of the 'lower' class is supported at a collective unconscious level. "At least it's not me..."

byuu 13y ago

Yep, exactly. You go to the adults, and they don't help you at all. So you stand up for yourself, and now you're the one in trouble. I can't possibly think of a more backwards model for encouraging bullying. Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least some level of pain on an aggressor. It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is ever really done about it. Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly, and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd flip out completely. But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace. Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores while pretending to be at work. But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.

yetanotherphd 13y ago
Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue. Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society maintains is social structure. Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed groups, not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these are seen as libertarian issues. Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority). However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class lifestyles and values.
- 13y ago

UK-AL 13y ago

The problem with this, is that when he enters the workforce a lot of that social awkwardness and bulling problems could come back again. So it's a short lived victory. In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if he tried probably would be fired. The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies. A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career. School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it was like being thrown back into school.

dave1010uk 13y ago
I'm Dan's manager and tech lead at the company. We're going to look after Dan as best we can.
DanBC 13y ago
English companies have a legal duty to protect staff from harm. This includes bullying in the workplace. Any company that fires a victim of bullying leaves themselves open to compensation claims. Any company that does nothing likewise leaves themselves open to legal action.
- UK-AL 13y ago
  The hard part is proving it(Bullying is subtle). The next hard part is stumping up the courage to take legal action.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    The person being bullied keeps a log of what happens. They then go to HR (or whatever the proceedure is -and companies need to have a proceedure) to talk about it. They present a copy of their ongoing log and ask for help. If the person has seen a doctor they can ask that doctor to write a supporting letter. Being a member of a union is helpful here because they will help. Taking legal action is an absolute last resort!

jpgvm 13y ago

This rings very true of my life. I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the 24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was one of the best things that happened to me. The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me. She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to go home. I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going back to university. Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr. Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong. So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make things better.

bananas 13y ago

The difference between then (believe me I was there) and now is that the teachers get stick for allowing this to happen instantly. I've personally got into several shouting matches with teachers over how they treat my children and deal with these situations. I'm usually in a queue of other parents doing exactly the same. People don't take any shit these days.

dasil003 13y ago
Now and then? This kid is 17 now. Have things really changed that much? I think it's more likely he went to a different school and his parents had a different temperament than you and your fellow parents.
- bananas 13y ago
  Definitely have changed. There is less respect for teachers, the school system and people communicate more. This has happened because there were a hell of a lot of victims. Also communication between parents is now at an all time high. I've seen this change in just the last two years.
- GuiA 13y ago
  I think the 17 in the article is a typo for 27. He picked up programming in his teenage years, and the article mentions a "10 years later". Also, it'd be extremely surprising (possible, but surprising) that a 17 year old would have "won awards and travelled all around the country to meet people and attend or speak at conferences."
  - DanielTomlinson 13y ago
    Hey! Writer here, I just thought it might be worth saying that I am indeed 17! :) I started programming aged around 7 or 8, and have won a couple of awards (Most recently a Google Code Award for ProjectHermes - a natural language analysing bullying detector for twitter), and spoken at a few events as well. I'm incredibly surprised myself by the things I've done over the years, it's a pretty awesome world!
- 13y ago

mattgreenrocks 13y ago

Been there, had it nowhere near as bad as Dan did. Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this abuse. On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.

tinco 13y ago
Don't do that, you can't just assume your kids are going to be bullied. I wasn't bullied on primary school, and primary school was one of the safest and happiest periods of my life, I still have some friends from primary school even. There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then you get the chance to really set things right. Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?
- crankpot 13y ago
  I'm homeschooled and I'm not fragile. I know a lot of men and women who were homeschooled and they aren't fragile either. Being frequently bullied may be one way to learn about life, but it isn't the only way. In fact I don't think it's even the best way. > What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled? Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life. There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing (contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something else that I can't remember the name of); and much more. Edit: added word "frequently"
  - tinco 13y ago
    I didn't say a homeschooled kid would be fragile. I just think that not being homeschooled might prepare them a bit better for highschool life. But perhaps I'm totally wrong. I'm just reacting to the idea that sending your kids to school is sending them to be bullied. I definitely do not think being bullied is a good way to learn about life.

human_waste 13y ago

I was bullied at grade school all the time, I was a poor, fat kid and my parents had just divorced, I was happy and optimistic, but very vulnerable. I won't go too much into the details of this, because this post is already too long. But as a result and the point of this post is that I became a bully myself. I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it consciously, it just had became a part of how I act. Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school. The way the school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in. What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy target. Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father. Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my original bully, had a very abusive big brother. I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual from my childhood, as it usually is. I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.

penguindev 13y ago

PaulAJ 13y ago

I went through similar stuff in the 70s and 80s, although nowhere near as extreme. Bullying is physical and psychological child abuse. The fact that it is perpetrated by other children instead of an adult makes no difference to the victim. I will say that schools can do something about this, and some of them do. My son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes part of the culture that you have a real problem. One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.

noir_lord 13y ago

I'm 33 so I was at primary school in the 80's. Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality. My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of recovery for each before he was 11). This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out. When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering. I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches. When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the headmasters office with the bullies. We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way. At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't complain then like that. I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I could pick any three books I wanted. My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with that himself. I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a badass).

DanielTomlinson 13y ago
Humbling to read - you did an awesome thing that day, but it's incredibly sad that it was ever necessary.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

PaulRobinson 13y ago

I got into programming in my first year of secondary school (year 7 in modern money), when I wasn't really fitting in well. I was getting bullied a little but had a thick skin so didn't care. Can't deny I relate to the escapist aspects of this though. That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?

Twirrim 13y ago

Yet somehow, when you get into the tech industry, you discover the bullying, derision and such like are all there. In the community you'd like to call home. If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve derision at best. What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We should be better than this.

james1071 13y ago

There are some interesting comments here. My take on the story, as someone who went to a UK comprehensive school in the late '70s early '80s, is that bright people have always been a target at such schools for bullying and current teachers are less able to control the disruptive elements than in the past. Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues rather than punishing them.

mgkimsal 13y ago

I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the poster, but had some incidents which, even to me at 6/7 years old, immediately made me start to question authority and become cynical. A few random anecdotes: 2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking - the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?). "No tolerance" attitudes are just crap. 3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared "no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for anyone. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But... WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid? Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work. I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and... there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which quickly evaporated when I left the room. It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.

mgkimsal 13y ago
followup - I took a 'personality test' for a job at 18 years old. Someone came out from the office and looked around, then finally at me, and was a bit shocked to see me instead of someone else. "Did you take this yourself? Did anyone help you earlier? Your scores indicate you have the cynicism of a 35 year old." heh ;)

rys 13y ago

If anyone from The Guardian web team is reading, the link to beatbullying.org at the bottom doesn't work because of a malformed anchor.

gregors 13y ago

Aggression solves this problem. Pure and simple. You can't reason and talk things over - fight or leave. Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal usually retreats. It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank. That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked when bad things happen.