
The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About - jsonmez
http://simpleprogrammer.com/2013/09/09/dark-side-software-development-one-talks/
======
programminggeek
Replace Software Development with any job and you are really on to something.

People are mean and jerks are everywhere. Perhaps somehow society has
convinced us otherwise, but there are a lot of terrible people out there.

A lot of people do evil things, a lot of people hurt other people. This is not
new and it's not a secret, people for whatever reason are more oblivious to it
than they should be or perhaps people are so accepting of inappropriate
behavior in our entertainment mediums that we are desensitized to it until it
happens to us. I really don't know for sure.

What I do know is not everybody deserves a say in everything. Sometimes people
are wrong, or are trolling, or just have no place in the conversation. The
right thing to do is to remove those people from the conversation if they
aren't being constructive.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I think that the post over states it but I don't think it's entirely wrong
that software developers are atypical in their behaviour, even if it's not
exclusive to them.

There is something specific about the way that people in software development
can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of self
awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of empathy.

And this in an area where in many ways there are many similarities which you'd
hope fostered friendship and bonding - we're talking about smart people who
often share interests.

Maybe it is just that software developers are typical but even if that is the
case given levels of intelligence, education and so on I still find it
disappointing that we can't be better than that.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>There is something specific about the way that people in software
development can be jerks - passive aggressive behaviour, sometimes a lack of
self awareness, a certain type of arrogance or at the very least a lack of
empathy.

Yes.

Generally speaking, I refer to this as "lack of social skills."

I don't mean that as derogatory, although I know it will come across that way.
Most developers have grown up around computers, and in a lot of situations
have chosen fiddling with computers to socializing with people. As a result,
they don't gain important social skills until later in life, if at all. For
example, the software architect for my company's software suite is an
absolutely brilliant guy. But he's just incredibly awkward around people. When
it comes to working in projects, or even simple things like answering
questions from less technical people, he's terribly arrogant and
condescending. I experience such attitudes from non-developers much, much less
often.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I suspect that in part it's more common because demand for skills massively
outstripping supply means that organisations have to put up with _ahem_
personality quirks they wouldn't otherwise tolerate (or would at least avoid).

That said when I first started in IT I was surprised by how few people
conformed to the cliched socially awkward stereotype. Yes it was more
noticeable than in a typical a cross section of the general public, but I
think that the damage someone being a complete jerk can have in a team context
means that even given the difficulty in hiring it's selected out to some
degree - you've either got to be really good, or at least be able to hide your
true nature at interview.

------
dnautics
One thing I wish this article talked about: Sometimes, people are brutally
honest with little tact. If you're overly sensitive, you might think that such
a person is being mean or being a jerk - but _they have your best interests in
mind_ , because they are telling you either a factual truth or an unvarnished
personal opinion.

The reason why they are brusque is not because 'they have been abused' but
because, the tolerance for bullshit is low - because of two things 1) they
have seen bullshit bring down otherwise promising projects or ideas, and they
don't want that to happen; 2) they percieve that varnishing your emotions or
opinions with too much tact increases the cognitive load required by the
recipient to 'get to the truth'.

Whether or not being brusque or diplomatic actually is effective is debatable.
Nonetheless, I think missing this very important concept is generally bad.

In some fields, like science, having to deal with people who will trash your
idea with honest commentary - that makes you think twice about what you are
doing - is far, far, far better than having to deal with the silent judgement
of a failed experiment that lets you down dispassionately, and wondering, "why
didn't anyone _care_ enough to tell me I was stupid to try this".

~~~
logjam
Wrong. Tact, compassion, and honesty are not in any way incompatible.

And no, people who think they are being "brutally honest" while forgetting
compassion or even basic fucking manners are not doing so with others' best
interests at heart.

They are just being assholes. There are bonafide reasons for that behavior,
and they deserve a measure of compassion themselves while receiving that
message, but don't try gilding the orifice's behavior.

~~~
rybosome
Correct. I'm sick of the "I am just being honest" defense. There is a large
margin between being honest and being an asshole.

Question: "Do you think I should rewrite this code?"

Honest answer: "Yes, definitely. You've made some mistakes that will make this
impossible to maintain, such as...".

Asshole answer: "Yeah, this code looks like shit".

As the author noted, this tendency is symptomatic of people with high
intelligence, but questionably intact egos. I left Mensa because I was tired
of all the petty bickering resulting from people "being honest" about their
opinions; if I had a nickel for every time someone was called a "moron" for
stating their political leaning...ugh.

Nobody is above civility and tact.

~~~
dnautics
I think if you are using Mensa as your reference set, you've got some pretty
extreme sample bias in terms of 'egos'.

~~~
rybosome
lol...nice catch. When I received my acceptance letter, I had to call them to
see if I was actually a member; they had sent me someone else's test results.
Nobody is above looking like a dumbass from time to time, either. =)

------
unoti
If you work in software development for a decade or more in a corporate
environment, you will encounter a surprising number of stakeholders who would
like for the software project you're doing to fail, and will do everything
they can get away with to make it fail. I did ERP implementations of Oracle
ERP and SAP for many years, and saw this often. This can happen when the
system you are replacing has the developer who wrote it (or a set of close
allies) working on the transition project, which happens often when there is a
system originally written by an in house IT team being replaced by third party
software. It can happen when certain in house people did not want to replace
the system, or for whatever reason predicted the new system would not be
good-- people want their prophecies to come true, and they want to be
consistent, so it can be difficult or impossible to convince them the system
is good.

There can be bad people, and not just programmers, involved in any business
enterprise. I try to look out for them and see what's coming when they want to
sink a project I am on. I have also found that there are plenty of people who
will not acknowledge the simple truth that I am talking about. They will say,
"that is insane; how could any actual stakeholder want to see the project
fail?" The answer involves looking at the various definitions of evil, which
is a fascinating exercise. Sometimes people want to see harm come to others
for various reasons, and that is the real world, sometimes.

~~~
hga
I've seen a similar thing in projects that are in trouble: the relevant
manager demotes the person responsible for the failure but leaves them on the
project. Only your failure can validate their failure. In your examples, if
their ERP software is being replaced, I suspect it's hard not to see it being
declared a failure.

Another thing I've heard about what some called the "Procrustean bed" of SAP
is that it can get terrifically resisted by stakeholders because it insists on
rational business processes, and plenty of companies aren't run very
rationally.

My family saw that while computerizing one doctor's office in 1980: after the
data entry was done, the printer would just not stop in the first accounts
receivable cycle. Turned out the office workers sent out a fixed number of
bills per month (something like 200?), no matter how many actually needed to
be sent. They didn't totally understand what was happening, but they knew "the
computer would tell all".

~~~
unoti
Sounds like a dozen things I've seen! The people using a system can make that
system fail if they want, and it happens so often. I wrote software for
printing press operators that lined up what jobs they should do based in
minimizing how many times they need to change ink colors in their presses, and
other optimizing factors. They made the system fail hard, because they'd been
printing for generations without a computer telling them what to do. So they'd
tell the computer they had completed jobs when they hadn't, and when the job
queue was empty, they'd proceed to print whatever they wanted. The chaos this
caused with the data they then pointed to as an indication that the system
does not work.

That and a dozen other things like it taught me the importance of making sure
the users at the lowest level are really on board. If they want it to fail,
you're better off solving that problem, because delivering a working system
won't be enough: the people are part of the system.

I recognize that it's up to the managers to straighten these issues out, but
they are people too, and often have their own agenda not perfectly aligned
with the success of the project.

~~~
hga
Indeed. My family's doctor's offices computerization effort succeeded because
they got buy-in from all the other ones, this was going to make life easier
(without I believe any layoffs, there was still plenty of work to be done
including envelope stuffing and the system enabled better scheduling and less
inadvertent doctor downtime).

In the one recalcitrant office the workers never got a chance to really
sabotage the effort, since temps did the big block of one time data entry and
specialists set up everything. Because the conversion revealed they were in
the process of making the office fail due to laziness they were sacked and not
in a position to sabotage the system afterwords.

------
georgemcbay
As has been mentioned already in this thread, jerks are in every profession.
But after being a software developer for many years and being exposed to other
industries both directly and from hearing about it from third parties, the
jerkiness in software development is much more palatable to me (though I'm a
software developer, so go figure).

In a lot of fields people will be very polite to your face while stabbing you
in the back and turning the knife. In software the jerks are generally very
upfront, showing far less "people skills" but at least showing you their
cards. And while I like to think I've never been a jerk (you'd have to ask
people who worked with me to be sure), I've noticed there tend to be two
classes of jerks in software development and it may be important for you to
try to recognize the distinction.

The first kind of jerk is the grumpy old coder who shoots down your idea to
use the latest wiz-bang tech to rewrite your entire project for the next
release. This guy has very little people skills and may not do a great job of
explaining his position, so he seems to just be shooting you down for no
reason. THIS GUY IS PROBABLY RIGHT, though. And his jerkiness comes from years
of battle scars.

The second kind of jerk is the cocky (usually younger) developer who is sure
he is right about every decision despite having limited real world experience.
At first blush he looks like the other kind of jerk (except that he's probably
younger). THIS GUY IS PROBABLY WRONG. And his jerkiness comes from a lack of
real-world experience combined with an over-inflated sense of confidence
coming out of the school years where he was the smartest guy in his school,
but mixed with unacknowledged self doubt. Sometimes this kind of jerk grows up
to be the first kind of jerk, but sometimes they remain the second kind of
jerk.

~~~
tsunamifury
Oh please stereotype much? Grumpy old coders want a way to do their job as
easily as possible -- which is good. However it becomes bad when they refused
to learn new (community accepted) ways of doing things that are either
REQUIRED or lead to efficiency down the road.

I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of
the time. The other 10% I prod them to explore some of those 'wiz-bang'
solutions to discover something that they hadn't thought of before.

~~~
georgemcbay
> Oh please stereotype much?

I gave two stereotypes, yes, and anyone reading what I wrote should be aware
that those are stereotypes and not always or exactly applicable, but I didn't
write the original article and if anything I'm breaking up the more general
stereotype they gave of "software developers are jerks", though into only two
other stereotypes. I also meant to imply there is also a third class, which is
developers who just aren't jerks at all. You can be a software developer and
have social skills, I've worked with many of these people. Only about 35% of
the people I've worked with were actually jerks.

To be clear, I don't think anyone should be a jerk, not even the people who
are right when they are being jerks. But given the choice between someone who
is going to be a jerk to me upfront in a meeting where I can rebut their
arguments if I choose to do so, and someone who will nod and smile to my face
and then talk shit behind my back to other coworkers and rally political
forces against me, I'll take the first type of jerk any day, and those kinds
of jerks are far more common than the other kind when it comes to actual
software developers, in my experience.

> However it becomes bad when they refused to learn new (community accepted)
> ways of doing things that are either REQUIRED or lead to efficiency down the
> road.

I totally agree, which is why I'm 40 and I know JavaScript very well and I'm
familiar with a lot of new frameworks using the language and write a fair
amount of JavaScript despite the fact that I think it is a terrible language.
And on the flip side of that, my absolute favorite language to code in today
is Go, which is very "new" by programming language standards.

> I'm a young manager that has older coders and I defer to their wisdom 90% of
> the time.

Aren't we mostly agreeing then? I said that guy is "probably right", not
"right". 90% is much higher than what I would normally consider "probably".

------
ripter
Welcome to life.

I've been wondering how the "everyone is special" and "everyone wins!" trends
that people have been teaching their children would manifest. This looks like
a good example.

If you do anything that other people will see, some of them will criticize
you. That's just life and not necessarily a bad thing. There isn't enough room
for everyone to be special and winners. In order for someone to win someone
else has to lose. So develop a thick skin. You are not your work. If someone
is criticizing you instead of your work, then you learn to ignore them. They
just want to be mean. If people are criticizing your work then you learn to
pick out the real critiques so you can improve the next one.

~~~
pekk
And we introspect on why there are not many women in this industry.

I guess women should all just get a thick skin and stop thinking they are
special. Because any abuse they might perceive is illusory, and their bullies
are actually superior in knowledge and are justified in acting like jerks
whenever they feel like it. After all, this is a meritocracy, how could it be
otherwise? Whatever you get, you deserved.

~~~
ripter
What do women have to do with my comment? My comment wasn't even about our
industry, it's about creating works that other people will see. This applies
to men and women equally.

------
consultant23522
This is precisely why I went into programming in the first place. A computer
doesn't have feelings. It doesn't lie to me, I don't have to lie to it. It
will do exactly what I ask it to do without fail, though I regularly ask it to
do the wrong thing. They are completely and totally predictable.

People, on the other hand are emotional and mostly stupid (even the smart
ones). They are going to lie to you, even if unintentionally, and you're
required to lie to them in return. The person you're meeting might have had
their family pet die last night and will react to you in completely irrational
ways.

It's no wonder why when your job is to deal primarily with emotionless
computers all day that it's tricky to then context switch back to lying and
walking on eggshells.

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

------
xarien
There's actually a method that works quite well in dealing with these "jerks."
Ironically, it's the same tactic that men need to effectively communicate well
with women.

Here's the secret: acknowledge them. Acknowledgement doesn't mean you smile
and nod nor does it involve using the sentence structure ..., but... Try to
understand their perspective and communicate through that perspective. Instead
of asking others to see your perspective, it's much easier to do the reverse.
Most arguments and personal qualification of someone being a jerk has to do
with communicating from 2 different perspectives with neither side willing to
take some time to understand the other perspective.

Most devs are fairly logical creatures. Understanding their perspective
shouldn't be hard. However, it does take a bit of practice. If you can't
understand where they are coming from, just ask more questions.

~~~
itsallbs
And some devs have the idea that they are Better Than You, no matter what your
skill level or expertise. I'm a web dev and worked on a project recently with
a lead who had just enough experience with web dev of the 90's to be
dangerous. For example, he fought with me repeatedly about md5 being good
enough for password hashing, while I wanted to use bcrypt (or at the very
least, SHA1, even though it's almost as bad as md5). It took weeks before he
relented, and only after I sent him several articles about how broken md5 is.
In the end we wound up removing encryption entirely because it made his
deployment process harder.

I've got a new job.

~~~
xarien
It sounds like you cared more about being right than from seeing it from his
perspective. Even if you ARE right (keep in mind that right is often
incredibly subjective), it's far more important to understand why someone is
taking the "wrong" stance. Now, I'm sure you felt quite a bit of frustration
over this and possibly other arguments. I'm not trying to dismiss your
feelings, but once you understand someone's perspective, you can often turn an
"asshole" into a colleague you can work well with. Believe it or not, being
"right" all the time doesn't actually garner respect as much as being able to
work well with others.

~~~
philbarr
Whilst I agree you should always _try_ and see things from the other person's
perspective, and that this method often works well, I do think some people -
some _select individuals_ are beyond reaching.

Like an old manager of mine who told one of my team members in her review,
"I'm not giving you a pay rise, but it's not because you're black." I mean,
what can you say to that? She was in tears. The guy was so self-centered he
didn't even realise that the things he said might cause offence.

------
forgottenpaswrd
As someone who manage people in the software world, who created his business
from zero coding himself alone for years, I disagree.

I had to fight a lot indifference when I started, now it is the opposite
problem, when I say something to people in my team, some of them smarter than
me they believe it too much, like I was God or something. The same happens
with your product, people trust your reputation.

"Jerk" is such a victim mentality word, in my opinion, when you want to create
something that is new, people can't see it like you do. It is as simple as
that. Now when you make it and success everybody says that from the first day
they believed in you(not true) and after you make some repeated successes they
continue not seeing it but they trust you.

The fact is that talking is cheap, and some new developer has no reputation at
all, so you will have to prove with code that you can walk your talk.

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

~~~
boomlinde
I see what you mean but I doubt a dog would be able to realize any of that.

~~~
andrewflnr
That's why they tend to have to learn the hard way, with consistent negative
enforcement. Positive reinforcement is nice, but it's not always an option.

------
orionblastar
IT and suicide. A topic that should be discussed.

I had my best friend kill himself on May 31, 1999 when he couldn't find a job
and unemployment was running out. He was the best C++ programmer that I knew
at the time. He worked at a Startup called Polygon that was mismanaged and
abused their employees and then fired them all.

I did all I could to help him find a job, but nobody wanted to take a chance
and hire him.

I had many friends I made working IT jobs end up killing themselves because
they couldn't find work. Mostly Generation-Xers.

I got suicidal myself sometimes over how management had abused me and treated
me. They didn't seem to think I was a human being, just some subhuman third
class person they could treat like dirt. Had I worked at a company that
treated me a different way I would not have gotten sick and ended up on
disability from the stress.

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

The thing is, all of these, with the exception of that last one, are talked
about quite a bit.

------
orionblastar
This was worse in the 1990's during when the Dotcom bubble burst. People we
worked with were mean to use because 'programmers are a dime a dozen, we get
500+ resumes a week for your job and can easily find someone to replace you
who can work for a lower salary.' Mentality that management had towards us
programmers.

It is odd that management claims there is a lack of qualified programmers out
there when so many programmers are out of work and qualified. Me, I am told I
am overqualified by companies begging the US government to raise the H1B Visa
cap because there are not enough qualified programmers to hire. It is a form
of bullying and a slap in the face of anyone qualified who wants to earn a
decent wage and benefits but is called overqualified because of past salaries
they had earned.

Working in an IT department other employees can abuse you, call you names,
even physically attack you, and you cannot do anything about it. If you
complain to your manager they write you up for 'communication problems'. The
average non-IT employee cannot tell the difference between a Microsoft Windows
bug or a bug in the custom software that is written and thinks you can fix a
bug with Windows or Office, etc. When you tell them you don't have the source
code to Windows or Office, they get mad at you. Management tells IT workers to
lie to the other employees and tell them you are working on fixing Windows and
Office bugs, which is basically lying.

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

~~~
georgebonnr
Seems like you don't see as many blog posts or thought pieces about it as
opposed to other cultural issues in the industry, like gender imbalances or
"startup culture" minutiae.

~~~
karmajunkie
I'd have to say that's likely because we've been talking about it for as long
as there have been software developers working for private companies.

------
ExpiredLink
"Hell is other people."

Jean-Paul Sartre

~~~
bqe
Perhaps a more apt quote would be from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations:

"The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant,
dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good
from evil."

------
Vargas
"We work in a sort of strange field where intelligence and ability are highly
prized, but some of these same qualities made some of us victims of aggression
and abuse earlier in life."

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

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

I did have a bad boss once at my first programming job - back in 1987...

------
michaelwww
What's this guy selling?

 _> I’m actually working on a much bigger project to distill some of these
specific software developer career tips into a bigger package._

Anyway, he's making general and simplistic arguments for whatever reason.
Programmers have strong opinions and will argue them vigorously. I agree with
Socrates “When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser” and
we should all not tolerate that, but while the argument is going on, if you
can't join in and make yours don't blame the community for being intolerant.

------
nickthemagicman
Just commenting to say, that in our profession WITHOUT licensure there is not
other way to really prove that we're competent except for our reputation. This
leads to big egos and constantly trying to make your self look better no
matter what.

If we were a licensed profession like medicine where you have a third party
proof of your competence and you weren't constantly trying to guard your
reputation, I bet you that it would lighten people up a lot.

~~~
karmajunkie
Not in my experience. That just lends itself to a lot of protectionism and
equally inflated egos (and the piece of paper to prove you earned it.) In
fact, only academia tops medicine for inflated egos and self-aggrandizing
behavior in my book.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Ego is not so much the problem, it's that the computer industry is way more
cutthroat.

Doctor's and Academic's ego's come from having to maintain the same reputation
that a computer person has to maintain.

However, it's worse for the computer monkeys because we have the same level of
intellectual capital to master yet we have no license to protect our years of
knowledge which makes the industry way more cutthroat and step on your buddy
to get ahead in my opinion.

Just my observations.

~~~
karmajunkie
Man, I just totally disagree with all of that. I wrote medical software for
most of my career, except for a brief stint as a pre-med student, and the
level of narcissism I found in medical doctors far exceeded anything I came
across in technical circles (not counting some percentage of founders). My
girlfriend is in academia, and a similar trend prevails there. Contrast this
with wanton disdain for credentials in much of the tech community coupled with
a great deal of willingness to help each other out. Maybe I'm just blessed to
live in a town like Austin, but this industry is anything but cutthroat on
technical merits.

------
felipeerias
Some people are better at systematizing, some are better at empathising, and
some are reasonably good at both.

Male technologists, which make up the majority of the SW development
community, tend to be particularly good at the first and bad at the second:

[http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf](http://www.syntagm.co.uk/design/articles/note1271-hudson.pdf)

This research looked at the relationship between empathy and technical work
among IT workers. For both women and men, less technical work (i.e. public
oriented) tended to have those people with more capacity for empathy. For
women, there was a small decline in empathy as the researchers moved towards
purely technical work. However, this drop in empathy was far, far sharper for
men.

Take your own conclusions about this, including its relation to the presence
(or lack thereof) of women in IT.

------
nish1500
This post should be titled, 'The Dark Side of Work That No Ones Talks About'.
Having worked in the accounting / tax field for years, before switching over
to programming, I fail to see how these generalized statements don't apply to
other fields. It applies to work in general.

------
adamconroy
I agree with this post in general. I am currently working on a project by
myself, and have been for the last 4 years. I am getting a bit bored, I don't
want to stagnate and I can sort of see the need to get back to working with a
team. I have been contemplating this for ~18 months, however I dread the
thought of it because I know it is almost certain I will end up working with
at least one passive aggressive, insecure, egotistical fuckwit that will drive
me to look for another project anyway.

I have worked on 13 project teams in the last 20 years. Every single team that
has had more than 3 people has contained at least one whacko that has made
life miserable for everyone else.

------
vitd
I thought the article was interesting and the eventual conclusion good, but
really didn't like the sentiment to "have thicker skin" and to basically just
"suck it up" if someone is being mean to you. (He doesn't use those words, but
that what he's saying.)

That part seems like victim blaming to me. If people are mean to you without
reason, you shouldn't put up with it. You should tell someone. Maybe they're
approachable and you can confront them directly, or maybe not. But you
absolutely should not get used to it or just accept it. You should do
something about it.

------
j_baker
I don't have a reference handy, but it's been shown that people are
fundamentally ambivalent about creativity. Everybody agrees that creativity is
a good thing, but when it comes down to judging a creative idea, most people
will be negative. The reason being that creativity necessarily involves
uncertainty, which is discomforting.

I say this because the things the author mention aren't exclusive to software
development. I _do_ buy that software developers have less people skill on
average in dismissing creativity than some professions (say PR) though.

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

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

~~~
6d0debc071
You can, nicely, ask if someone's considered doing it in another (better) way
rather than pointing out that it's crappy.

~~~
badman_ting
One may, but that wouldn't be "nice", which is what I was talking about. Being
able to critique something without being rude is certainly important for
professionals, though.

------
shire
It's part of life, you can't expect everyone to like you. It also depends on
what kind of people you work with. You will have your ups and downs in life
this is true for any field of work not just software development.

I think the main reason this happens in Software development is that people
have big egos and consider themselves more intelligent than others.

------
shaggyfrog
> Software developers are jerks.

> Chances are if you are doing something unique or you propose a new idea,
> you’ll have more critics than supporters.

In my experience, it's not fellow developers who have issues with new (better)
ways of doing things -- it's the non-technical management types who see
disruption solely in terms of the effect on office politics.

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

------
moron4hire
I think it has more to do with the prison-syndrome of being forced into a
social situation with people you don't like--much like we do to children in
schools--than it does to this concept of paying-forward nastiness applied to
them. Programmers are a diverse group of people, they aren't all nerds who got
picked on in school.

------
commanda
The underlying theme in this post, from what I gather, is "Male programmers
are often treated poorly by their peers, so female programmers should have
nothing to complain about when they are treated poorly."

This is denial of the very real sexism in our industry.

~~~
Paul_S
That is nowhere in the article, not even between the lines, outside the lines,
generally implied by the curvature of the lines or audible if played backwards
and slowed down by a factor of 10.

Don't agree with the blog's author though, arseholes being arseholes is a
general fact of life and there's no special link between them and programming.

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

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

What doesn't kill you...

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

------
Maven911
I have gotten pretty detrimental health effects to my body becaise of some
companies sw dev culture

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

------
lampe3
a lot of people not only software developer are jerks. But i have a tip for
you: If you can ignore them! If you can just don't listen,speak or do anything
with them. if you must listen to them get a job somewhere else!

Life is to short to spend it with jerks!

------
mrchuckmills2
"This just in: people are jerks. Film at 11"

------
kamakazizuru
appropriate title "The Dark Side of _any job_ That No One Talks About"

