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What happened to all the non-programmers?
- kelukelugames 12y agoThe best thing about my current job is interacting with non-techies. I have been under-socialized after 6 year of engineering schools and 5 years at a pure tech company.
- Disruptive_Dave 12y ago(not on HN)
- cafard 12y ago"In fact, just the fact that I’m interested in doing sports for leisure is associated with class, since it’s not something that would be so easy for, say, manual laborers or shift workers." This statement says a lot about his bubble. Most of the adults I see playing soccer in the Washington, DC, area are most likely working in construction or service trades. Softball can be pretty blue collar, depending on where you are.
- jdminhbg 12y agoYeah, there's sort of a weird meme among (for lack of a better word) creative class types that anyone who doesn't use a Macbook for work is literally working 120 hrs in a salt mine to support 8 children as a single parent. It's sort of a noble savage stereotype, but in reality "working class" (even just that name is indicative of this idea) people are still people too -- they do things on their time off, some of them are hard-working, some of them are lazy, some of them do a good job at work, some of them suck, some of them are good parents, some of them aren't.
- MrDosu 12y agoBtw we are working class too, even with those fancy 6 figure salaries... At least I'm not living of off strutting around in my park telling my gardener what to do while stroking a white cat. I don't have employees in my factory solely working for me generating my income while I twiddle my thumbs. I'm actually sitting on a computer working for money every day, so: working class.
- jey 12y agoIn the US, we distinguish between the "working class" and the "professional class", with programmers falling into the latter group. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#The_professional.2Fmanagerial_middle_class https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class#The_prof...
- ripb 12y agoIn the UK it's basically if you work for wages and/or in low skilled or manual labour.
- mattnewport 12y agoWorking for wages is not enough to qualify: doctor, university professor, airline pilot, solicitor... All traditionally firmly middle class professions despite working for a living.
- ripb 12y agoWages vs salary
- mattmanser 12y agoHuh? I have worked in a vast multitude of jobs, some manual, some temp office, some salaried, some self-employed, some company director. Never in the UK have I ever heard of people making a distinction between a Wage and a Salary. They're the same thing. Middle class means something completely different than the definition you're defending. Skilled office workers are firmly in the UK middle class (despite my Thatcher hating friend's assertion that he's not). It might be argued that unskilled office workers, like call centres, are now working class jobs.
- zem 12y agothe distinction, in american english, is that a wage is a per-hour thing, whereas a salary is paid for a period of employment (usually a fortnight or a month), independent of the time you actually spent working within that period.
- nerfhammer 12y agoTo make themselves feel better about working 120 hrs a week in front of a screen?
- krschultz 12y agoThe working poor holding down two jobs are definitely doing that. Most blue-collar & white-collar middle class are working less than the average startup. Recall way way back before startups were what everyone and their brother wanted to do after graduating, the premise was 'if instead of holding this easy job, I worked my ass off to my full potential, I could cash out at 35 and retire'. Admitting that startups were a huge amount of work, but something you did for a few years only, was part of the narrative. Economically, you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays especially well in technology, where you earn a premium for working fast. - Paul Graham http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- hiou 12y agoThe use of the description "manual laborers or shift workers" leads me to believe this is a lot more about the upper middle class to wealthy under 35 group ending up in tech related occupations than anything else. Time to go grab a data set and R-Studio.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- churroguro 12y agoI think this happens in many professions. My wife became a lawyer and now we have a million lawyer friends. This is not so fun at parties.
- rayiner 12y agoThe internet makes it easier than ever to only hang out with people exactly like you. E.g. making friends at meetups for interest-specific sites like HN. Class and location are also an issue. It may be that 10% of folks with college degrees in San Francisco are programmers, but I bet among among single 20-35 year olds who have enough disposable income to frequent certain sorts of places, it's much higher.
- Alex3917 12y ago> I bet among among single 20-35 year olds who have enough disposable income to frequent certain sorts of places, it's much higher. I think people tend to just gravitate toward doing the best things they can, as limited by time, cost, taste, and social access. It's the same reason sleep away camps on the east coast were/are disproportionately jewish -- you're drawing from the subset of parents with enough money to send their kids, but who aren't allowed to play golf or whatever, and share the same set of post-holocaust gemeinschaft ideals.
- frausto 12y agoI feel this problem is especially significant in San Francisco. Having lived in several other cities, I can say that, at least for me, this was never a major issue before living in SF. Meeting other programmers and people in tech out in the real world used to be a pleasant surprise. Now it's just a given. Coffee shops, climbing gyms, museum nights, hiking meet ups, hanging out in the park, etc etc... I, like apparently every other person in tech, enjoy these things. I do miss the diversity of thoughts and lifestyles to be found in other cities. Not that SF doesn't have such diversity, it's just that I never before had to make an effort to find it outside my normal activities.
- ripb 12y agoWell SF is clearly saturated with people working in the tech industry. As we're seeing more and more on HN, there's a huge amount of people in the tech industry who are in it for reasons that do not include a passion for technology, writing code or developing things. So you've a huge amount of people fairly dissatisfied with what they're doing 40+ hours a week, in an area full of similar people, and who have the disposable income and time to look for more in life outside of those 40+ hours. So it's not surprising more cultural/outdoor/etc. things are flooded with people from the tech industry in SF, I suppose, where elsewhere they would be both less people in the industry and those that are would be slightly better geographically dispersed.
- raldi 12y ago> Well SF is clearly saturated with people working in the tech industry. It sounds like you didn't read the article. (Ctrl-F "It turns out")
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- mathattack 12y agoIt's social groups. Want to meet people different from yourself? Study jiu jitsu or ballroom dancing. For better or worse, I noticed at a recent friends catch-up that almost everyone was in advertising technology.
- jonny_eh 12y agoI dunno, I like hanging out with tech people.
- WalterSear 12y agoMe too, and I'm conflicted about it. I'm well aware that I'm bringing my own preconceptions to the situation, but I continually find it harder to engage people outside of technology. People outside of tech may be more diverse in appearance, but in perspectives, interests and awareness, people working in technology (in my social sphere) tend to be less conformist and more open minded. This may simply be a regression to the mean - but if it is, it's still supporting my conception.
- jonny_eh 12y agoExactly. I find tech people to be, on average, more rational and share more of my interests. It makes conversations much more enjoyable. As someone who isn't a great conversator, trying to come up with small chat with a lawyer or an accountant is rather stressful. Talking about programming languages, video games, or comic books is much easier.
- WalterSear 12y ago>Talking about programming languages, video games, or comic books is much easier. IMHO, it's more than just a lack of topics for small talk: it's the size of the talk in general. The people I meet outside of tech tend to be less well read and less open to new experiences.
- smrtinsert 12y agoI purposefully do not gather techies as friends. While I share some similar interests, I don't want my life to become a mirror of the people I work with. I feel enriched by my diverse friendship base.
- billrobertson42 12y agoA person who looks around at the people he's socializing with, then apparently immediately grabs a computer, downloads a statistical data set and begins to analyze it in R wonders why he's surrounded by other programmers?
- minimaxir 12y agoYou can analyze data and use R and not be a programmer. Less than half of the students in my advanced stats classes at college which used R were CS majors. Granted, for me, knowing how to program made things a lot less frustrating. Spreadsheet programs are built for analysis without deep programming knowledge too.
- dsp1234 12y agoI am not, nor have I ever been, a CS major. Yet I am a programmer.
- scottmwinters 12y agoI think you're kind of missing the point. There are not nearly as many MBA, liberal art, lawyer, etc people on here as techies and programmers.
- scoggs 12y agoSame here, but my experience is that I only know other programmers through work. I'm sure that's as much of my own fault as anything but I still wish I had more people in my circle who I could talk to about work and my technical interests.
- Crito 12y agoI'd say that by virtue of using R, regardless of your major, you are a programmer.
- bgilroy26 12y agoThe author of the article seems to mainly be concerned with being in a really homogenous social group according to job title. You're right that everyone who programs is a programmer, but 'programmer' in the article means someone for whom programmer is their job title.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y agoCould some non-programmers be masquerading as programmers? A little more observation and less R could reveal this. It is also quite possible to play flag football without risking your brain. If I were in SF and weighed 150 I would definitely look into sailing.
- untog 12y agoThis is why I love New York. There are so many industries here (media, fashion, finance, etc) that tech is just part of a larger pool of people (who often cross over between different industries).
- bane 12y agoI've found that people in big cities can get pretty provincial in their thinking at times. At least with NYC, this kind of isolated thinking doesn't cut you off from too much of the rest of the world. I live near D.C. and it's hard to fathom that people have lives that aren't in some way connected to the Federal Government or Government Contracting.
- ripb 12y agoIt's quite likely that many of his choices regarding non-programming hobbies have been highly influenced by programmers/tech people around him in the workplace or outside it. He also likely has developed biases, not on socioeconomic grounds but through his own experiences and influences, regarding certain things in society. Football, for example, he probably consciously or subconsciously regards as being something for "jocks" or the people he didn't get along with in school (presumption here). Ultimate frisbee, however, is probably something he regards as being in-line with that with which those that influence him partake in, or that which he imagines his peers (mainly techies) would approve of. It's an ok article from the point of it being a look at someone's personal experience, but it's certainly more reflective of his experience and the bubble he lives in than a commentary on society.
- unknownian 12y agoI've never lived in SF but this is a reason why people sometimes mention how they prefer to live elsewhere. I've lived in Los Angeles and New York and I feel a nice sense of diversity in interests and backgrounds [of all forms] and I like it. And the tech communities aren't too small either.
- JOnAgain 12y agoCome to LA. Everyone is in entertainment, and I never meet other technical folks.
- shampine 12y agoI'm in DTLA, everyone is in fashion, film, photography, or works in the service industry attempting to get into the former. I can count on one hand how many devs I know in my neighborhood. I am surrounded by way more lawyers. But that is okay, and I actually prefer it. Else my life would be completely monotone.
- noobermin 12y agoMy social group mainly involves other physics graduate students. I however don't fit with them usually, so I started going to instagram meetups. It seems like people with a passing interest in photography are much more diverse than the types that go to graduate school in physics.
- mooreds 12y agoThis is one reason I joined a philanthropic group (like the Elks, Rotary, etc). Membership tends to be very diverse, both in age and in occupation.
- cgag 12y agoWhen I play softball is what feels like the only time I meet someone who isn't a programmer here. I briefly took swing dancing lessons with my SO and it was 90% programmers, maybe more.
- kelukelugames 12y agoI'm pretty sure that's the go-to activity to meet women for a male programmer.
- cgag 12y agoYeah I think so as well. Most of the women were programmers as well.
- adregan 12y agoNone of my friends are programmers and hardly anyone I meet at parties understands what I do or what my job is. I live in NYC. I chalk it up to being late to the game and hardly going to any meetups.
- edem 12y agoThis reminds me of "How to become a hacker" from Eric S. Raymond. There is a part in that essay where he talks about common hobbies for hackers and after a few examples he concludes: > "Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important; hackers need to be able to both reason logically and step outside the apparent logic of a problem at a moment's notice." Link: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
- dublinben 12y ago>Find someone that’s not using a Mac/iOS device and strike up a conversation. This is good advice if you're looking to meet people with different perspectives.
- mkr-hn 12y agoIt would be the opposite for me. Everyone around me uses Windows and Android. The people with a different perspective are the ones with an Apple logo.
- dublinben 12y agoWhat environment/industry do you find yourself in where that is the case? Apple has over 30% of the smartphone market share in the US, and even more in many fields/groups.
- scottmwinters 12y agoIt seems obvious to me to bring up "correlation does not imply causation". Just because a lot of programmers like X, doesn't mean that they like X because of programming. With that said, I dont really understand confusion with social groups forming of similar people. I understand a desire...even a need...for diversity, but people who like X are naturally going to want to be with other people who like X. Seems pretty natural.
- Raphmedia 12y ago... You are simply a nerd/geek/techie surrounded by likeminded people. Nothing wrong with that. I am a programmer that has met most of his friends in bars, raves and other music related places. Guess what? All of my friends are musicians or DJs. What happened to all the non-musicians?! ... Well, I am simply not going to meet them in the backstage of a show. I was under the impression that this is general knowledge, no need to make a blog post about it. Go meet people outside your work circle if you are tired of talking with techies.
- Raphmedia 12y agoThat being said, most of my co-workers are avid hockey players. We have a team that is mainly programmers, a few designers and some managers. No need to base all your hobbies around chess, you will still be a good programmer if you have hobbies that make you sweat!
- scalessec 12y agoMove to New York.
- scalessec 12y agoMove to New York.
- guelo 12y agoAnd techies wonder why San Franciscans are pissed off about gentrification and their disappearing culture.
- serve_yay 12y agoSure. I would imagine most of those San Franciscans would prefer for the tech crowd to keep amongst themselves though...
- amyjess 12y agoThis subject is one that interests me a lot. As I've mentioned before (in fact, I created this account to post about it a few weeks ago), I'm MtF transgender, and it's been my observation and the observation of the trans communities I participate in that a disproportionately high percentage of MtF trans people work in the tech industry and/or are tech hobbyists. The "MtF computer geek" is in fact one of the most prevalent -- and in my experience, one of the most true -- stereotypes of trans people I've seen. I'm reminded of the old Russian meme, where one person wanders into an anime IRC channel and asks "Hello, is this an anime channel?", followed by "How do I patch KDE2 under FreeBSD?". It became a popular meme because it's true: anime fans tend to be computer geeks. I've also seen this same exact joke posted in trans communities, by the way... (Oh, and lest I forget, a huge chunk of the trans community is into anime, too.) There is something about certain characteristics that heavily draws people to the tech industry. If you're trans? If you like anime? If you play sports like Ultimate and rock climbing? You're probably a techie. Honestly, I've noticed that for many of these (e.g. anime, Ultimate), the inverse is true as well, and if being trans wasn't hard-wired and such a tiny, tiny minority of the population (most estimates I've heard are around 0.3%), I'd bet a huge amount of techies would be trans. I think of all the theories OP proposed, the most likely one is that "programmer culture" is a distinct subculture much like e.g., "academic culture". Of course, there are a few reasons for that. If you look at ESR's "A Portrait of J. Random Hacker" (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/appendixb.html), he absolutely nails a personality type that goes into some of this. The section on sports, for example, goes into how hackers are drawn to sports that focus on self-discipline and technical ability. Another is that tech stuff is looked down upon by society. Mainstream society sees us as weirdos to be shunned. You know who else societies see that way? Anime fans. Trans people. By and large, all three communities are very accepting of cultural differences. For example, techies will happily accept trans people into their communities because they know what it's like to be marginalized. And I think LGBT people are more likely to hang out with communities focused on marginalized hobbies than other minorities, because of how we're perceived. Racial and ethnic minorities are set apart because of how they look and sound. LGBT people, on the other hand, are set apart because of what we do, and "set apart for what we do" is also a good description of how techies and anime fans are separated from mainstream culture.
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- serve_yay 12y agoSounds awful. I don't intentionally push away colleagues, but most of them are too "nerdy" for me, or just have interests I find dull, etc. I don't really like being in a big group of developers, for so many reasons.
- Strilanc 12y agoA much longer post with a similar gist is "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup"[1] by Scott Alexander (I recommend the whole blog actually): > According to Gallup polls, about 46% of Americans are creationists. Not just in the sense of believing God helped guide evolution. I mean they think evolution is a vile atheist lie and God created humans exactly as they exist right now. That’s half the country. > And I don’t have a single one of those people in my social circle. It’s not because I’m deliberately avoiding them; I’m pretty live-and-let-live politically, I wouldn’t ostracize someone just for some weird beliefs. And yet, even though I probably know about a hundred fifty people, I am pretty confident that not one of them is creationist. 1: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
- kelukelugames 12y agoThank you for sharing. This was a great read. Remind me of the time at lunch when one of my co-workers proudly claimed "Straight men always kill transgendered people."
- saalweachter 12y agoI'm calling nerd. A lot of us have monomaniacal interests. A programmer who works all day programming and spends his free time programming other things and writing blogs about programming and posting on forums about programming is going to meet a lot of programmers. Cows in a cow pasture are going to spend a lot of time with other cows. If you ratchet down your monomania just a little it's very easy to meet non-programmers. Join a Latin reading group and you meet a lot of classicists. Join a beekeeping meet-up and you meet a lot of beekeepers. Join a weekly board game group and you meet lots of gamers. I'm willing to believe programmers are prone to monomania.
- belorn 12y agoI wonder how the statistics will look if you filter based on individuals background. Programmers I know do not live in the city they were born or studied in, which could be the cause of a distinctly different social circles than for those who stated with the community they were born in.
- alsdifu3 12y agoThe answer is that they're all hanging out with people who do the same thing they do too. This situation isn't unique to programmers.
- geeknik 12y agoI'm a sys admin and security researcher and I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the word. Nor do I have a CS related college degree. I'm an anomaly in the tech world. ;)
- drewrv 12y agoDon't try things that "sound fun". Things that sound fun are either things that you've done before, things your friends do, or things you think you'll be good at. Instead do things that kind of scare you even though they shouldn't. If you're afraid to fly, take a Cessna flying lesson. If you're afraid to speak in public, join toastmasters. The author mentions football as out of the question. I think football is exactly what the author needs. Start with touch or flag football if you're really terrified of brain damage. In reality, friendly games of tackle football are unlikely to cause a concussion, and even if they did, the real damage from concussions is when you get one and keep playing. When you think about it, it becomes obvious: you meet people different than yourself by doing things which you wouldn't normally do. Oh, and you get to conquer irrational fear, improve yourself, have awesome adventures, etc, while you're at it.
- kazinator 12y agoPerhaps I can help: > I have plenty of social circles that are (at least nominally) totally different from my work: contra dancers, people interested in effective altruism, folk musicians, friends from college, and so on. And yet I keep finding myself in the middle of a programmer monoculture. Why? 1. These are contact circles in some online social network, perhaps, and not actual social circles? 2. Programmers are the only people who don't have anything better to do than to go to gatherings with other programmers. Non-programmers aren't there because they are otherwise engaged. Or, perhaps, let me put it from this angle: any time some get together is announced, most of the people who have that spot free in the calendar are geeks. "What, Saturday night at 9? You bet I will be there! I'm super social! ... Hey, why is everyone here a programmer?"
- sgonyea 12y agoMake a baby. You'll go to all the parent Meetups just WISHING for a fellow programmer to talk to. Everyone I meet is a blah blah biotech blah snore.