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From my experience, engineering is intelectually challenging in a very narrow sense - you tend to use a few core skills over and over. Even when you learn a new

by scribu 11y ago

From my experience, engineering is intelectually challenging in a very narrow sense - you tend to use a few core skills over and over. Even when you learn a new paradigm, like functional programming, it's still within your comfort zone. It takes serious psychological effort to peek out of your hole and be willing to learn about a truly foreign subject, such as sales. Besides that, I'd bet that a lot of programmers suffer from social anxiety (I used to be one of them), which severely limits your ability to express any personality that you might have.

MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
Yeah, but! You could say most of these things about sysadmins, and some of them were the funniest guys I've ever met. I think the fact that these stereotypes even exist means that there could be a biological reason behind it. Levels of dopamine and serotonine in the brain, the amount of muscles, a lean or a broad frame, social anxiety,... These things interest me a lot, mainly because they affect me as well of course, so if there is a place to discuss them I'd love to hear about it. Actually I'm surprised this isn't a regular HN topic .
- scribu 11y ago
  To be an effective sysadmin, you have to be able to work well under pressure. If you have anxiety, you will definitely not work well under pressure, so programmers and sysadmins have different personality traits, methinks. Regarding biological reasons, you might be interested in the Human Behavioral Biology course [1]. I'm half way through it and it's jam packed with knowledge. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    Well this will consume some of my evenings, thx!
  - devonkim 11y ago
    Programmers have to program under stress on occasion for fixing or shipping stuff rather quickly before, say, a meeting with VCs. But this is where the sysadmin / execution-focused folks will perform better on what would seem to be menial tasks because most programmers are so used to controlling their work environment while sysadmins and network admins are oftentimes running under tight "get it done right now" situations. I've hired a couple guys for my ops team that are primarily developers because I want a more forward-thinking and feature development pace for the work we do, and just plain better forethought would cut these stressful scenarios down to maybe half an hour of troubleshooting instead of hours and days.

by scribu 11y ago

MrBuddyCasino 11y ago

Yeah, but! You could say most of these things about sysadmins, and some of them were the funniest guys I've ever met. I think the fact that these stereotypes even exist means that there could be a biological reason behind it. Levels of dopamine and serotonine in the brain, the amount of muscles, a lean or a broad frame, social anxiety,... These things interest me a lot, mainly because they affect me as well of course, so if there is a place to discuss them I'd love to hear about it. Actually I'm surprised this isn't a regular HN topic .

scribu 11y ago
To be an effective sysadmin, you have to be able to work well under pressure. If you have anxiety, you will definitely not work well under pressure, so programmers and sysadmins have different personality traits, methinks. Regarding biological reasons, you might be interested in the Human Behavioral Biology course [1]. I'm half way through it and it's jam packed with knowledge. [1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL848F2368C90DDC3D
- MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
  Well this will consume some of my evenings, thx!
- devonkim 11y ago
  Programmers have to program under stress on occasion for fixing or shipping stuff rather quickly before, say, a meeting with VCs. But this is where the sysadmin / execution-focused folks will perform better on what would seem to be menial tasks because most programmers are so used to controlling their work environment while sysadmins and network admins are oftentimes running under tight "get it done right now" situations. I've hired a couple guys for my ops team that are primarily developers because I want a more forward-thinking and feature development pace for the work we do, and just plain better forethought would cut these stressful scenarios down to maybe half an hour of troubleshooting instead of hours and days.