
What happened to all the non-programmers? - irskep
http://www.benkuhn.net/nonprog
======
cafard
"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
Yeah, 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
Btw 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.

~~~
jnbiche
> even with those fancy 6 figure salaries...

And I hate to break to it you Google and Facebook employees, but your salary
ain't that great when you factor in cost-of-living. There are many, many
thousands of devs across America making much more than you once you account
for cost-of-living (and you should).

But between the proven wage suppression, ageism, and now this passing meme
that somehow making $100,000 in the most expensive place to live in the U.S.
makes you part of the global elite, I have little hope that you all will wake
up and demand fair compensation.

~~~
chrismarlow9
A few things you're missing: The perks. If my company feeds me and provides
transportation stipend my only bills are rent, utils, and fun. Utils are the
same as just about anywhere else in my experience. The rent is the only
killer.

You're also looking at it the wrong way. Many of us don't plan on staying
here. Yes our savings are very small in comparison to cost of living while
we're here. It's when we leave that our money becomes very valuable. Knowing
the ratio of your savings per month(in the bay area) vs cost of living where
you want to be (somewhere cheap) can be very motivating to keep you here (my
ratio is 4:1 , so every month I'm here I save enough money to live 4 months at
the place I plan to live). It's sacrificing a few years of insane living cost
to have a cushion that allows you a comfortable life after the craziness as
well as a resume that looks outstanding. There's also the possibility your
startup sells, but I can't claim that as a valley only perk because that can
obviously happen anywhere, but I think you're a bit more likely to have it
happen in the bay area.

You also meet a great deal of people and make a great deal of friends that
love the same things you love all the way down to a specific framework (there
are no Flask meetups in milwaukee). You also meet lots of people who introduce
you to things you never knew you would love, which is often MORE fun.

All that being said, I agree that there are more efficient places to live
where you could save more, and there are companies outside of the bay area
doing all of the above things, but the luck factor there grows as you get away
from the valley because there are fewer positions.

~~~
ryandvm
> A few things you're missing: The perks. If my company feeds me and provides
> transportation stipend my only bills are rent, utils, and fun.

It's not a perk if the ultimate effect, if not the intended effect, is that it
keeps you at work 60 hours a week. There's something deeply insidious about
plying your employees with free food and services and encouraging them to
build their social circles entirely out of their co-workers. Who needs work-
life balance if work _is_ your life?

~~~
chrismarlow9
I will agree with that in certain cases such as Apple or Google, but the
startup world isn't really that way.

If you're working for a startup and just think of yourself as an employee
you're doing it wrong. You should think of yourself as an investor, not an
employee, because you very likely are in every sense of the word.

This is where the friend thing comes in. You're not building friends at
company X, you're meeting other people who happen to be investing in the same
thing you do. I've kept great friends from previous companies I've worked at
who understand that you're an investor and you must look at the company as an
investment and be able to walk away if you don't like where it's going.

It does keep you working 60 hours a week, sure, but that's your investment for
the shares your received in your offer letter. You stand to make a large
amount of money without any capital put in. Regular 40 hour a week employees
never get those shares, so obviously they shouldn't put in 60 hours a week to
make the CEO a few extra bucks (however there's a caveat here when it comes to
bonuses, and i'd argue THATs the return on investment for google employees).

A clearer example of a difference here is that I've seen developers walk away
after 5 months at a job. In a regular employee universe that would be career
suicide. Because this is the startup world, you only have to say "I didn't
like the direction the company was going..." to other potential employers and
so long as you're competent they totally get what you mean, because obviously
many startups fail and if you see true disaster coming you would be crazy not
to bail.

Often times it's actually these "employee" types that kill the startup. They
just ride the funding into however many rounds they can until the ship
crashes, then find a new place and continue the dragging.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I came here from a place where the "employee"
mentality is king (40 years x 40 hours a week x 401k = retire), because it's
the most common thing in America and it took me a very long time to get this
(I'm an investor, not an employee). There's also the other factors like most
people here REALLY enjoy their jobs and have been doing this on their own time
for 60 hours a week already, so doing it for a paycheck is just a really cool
side effect.

------
Strilanc
A 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...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

~~~
kelukelugames
Thank 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."

------
churroguro
I 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.

~~~
joncooper
What's the collective noun for a party of lawyers?

~~~
samman
I believe that's called a 'firm'.

------
Raphmedia
... 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
That 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!

------
untog
This 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
I'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.

------
rayiner
The 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
> 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
I 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
Well 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
_> 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")

------
mathattack
It'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.

------
JOnAgain
Come to LA. Everyone is in entertainment, and I never meet other technical
folks.

~~~
shampine
I'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.

------
jonny_eh
I dunno, I like hanging out with tech people.

~~~
WalterSear
Me 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
Exactly. 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
>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.

------
drewrv
Don'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.

------
ripb
It'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.

------
kazinator
Perhaps 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?"

------
unknownian
I'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.

------
billrobertson42
A 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
You 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
I am not, nor have I ever been, a CS major. Yet I am a programmer.

~~~
scottmwinters
I 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.

------
mooreds
This 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.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Could 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.

------
scottmwinters
It 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.

------
noobermin
My 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.

------
saalweachter
I'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.

------
edem
This 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)

------
cgag
When 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
I'm pretty sure that's the go-to activity to meet women for a male programmer.

~~~
cgag
Yeah I think so as well. Most of the women were programmers as well.

------
adregan
None 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.

------
kelukelugames
The 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.

------
amyjess
This 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.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Its interesting how the mix of tech and being trans works-being trans is being
part of an extremely marginalized group, but someone making six figures and is
trans also has a ton of class privilege. Clearly trans people working in tech
in the Bay Area (which I have experience being around) aren't the average
trans people.

~~~
amyjess
For the record, I'm not talking about "rich" people in the Bay Area.

I live in Texas, and the trans communities I associate with are online with
membership scattered all over the place. I've probably ran into more fellow
Texans than people in the Bay Area, actually (I even once tried to create an
online community specifically for trans Texans because there were so many of
us, but it never took off).

Actually, a common thread I've seen among trans people is that many of them
are tech hobbyists who wish they could be professionals but are unemployed and
living with their parents (usually a product of the depression that so often
goes hand in hand with gender dysphoria). And the younger members of the
communities tend to be college students.

(As for me, I'm employed but not making anywhere near six figures. Hell, until
two months ago, I made under $50k, and I'm 30 years old)

------
dublinben
>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
It 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
What 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.

~~~
mkr-hn
The northeastern edge of metro Atlanta.

~~~
dublinben
I could deduce that much from your homepage. I was more interested in the sort
of environment (university, enterprise, Starbucks, etc.) you're basing this
off.

------
belorn
I 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.

------
serve_yay
Sounds 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.

------
smrtinsert
I 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.

------
geeknik
I'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. ;)

------
alsdifu3
The 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.

------
scalessec
Move to New York.

------
Disruptive_Dave
(not on HN)

------
guelo
And techies wonder why San Franciscans are pissed off about gentrification and
their disappearing culture.

~~~
serve_yay
Sure. I would imagine most of those San Franciscans would prefer for the tech
crowd to keep amongst themselves though...

