
Ask HN: How to stop competitiveness within the Dev world? - bsvalley
I&#x27;ve been trying to understand why developers are so rude and arrogant these days. After looking at a lot of possible causes, it seems that competitiveness is one of the major keys. It feels like comparing sizes at school, you will never get a clap from a colleague when you say something right and relevant, only your weaknesses are highlighted and the list goes on.<p>How could we prevent competitiveness within the Dev world? Our lives could be so much better if we were all team players.
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chuck32
Perhaps because the reality of being a developer is that its a pretty boring
job most of the time. Once you have worked at a few different companies on a
few varying projects with a few different technologies you realise that 90% of
the time you are building CRUD applications. Also working on other people's
code which is significantly worse than your own can be frustrating.

So for me having a competitive element to what i consider a fairly boring job
definitely makes it much less boring. As for rudeness and arrogance I try not
to be those things but if somebody else is i just ignore it. Simple as.

Developers who are not team players do not make it far in my experience.

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muzani
It's not really due to competitiveness. Some people want the other party to be
better.

It's sort of like religion. My IDE is better than yours, my tech stack is
better, and you're just ignorant for not being enlightened.

I don't think there is a solution to the arrogance. One of the root causes is
that everyone thinks they're hackers who found a better solution. The other
cause is that they've invested a lot into what they learned, so they don't
like it when better tools obsolete that.

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le-mark
I get what you saying, this is really a problem for this field. When I started
college in 1990, I had spent a lot of time programming and playing around with
a commodore 64. Computer science was the 'easy' option for me, so that's what
I did. After a semester of observing the types of arrogant people I had
classes with, I decided, I don't want to work with people like this for the
rest of my life. So I changed my major to another science and graduated. The
problem was, there were very few jobs in that field, so I took a job doing
something else. I spent years coding on the side, and finally got a
programming job, and then a BS in CS.

I've often reflected on where this arrogance comes from. My personal theory is
that a lot of people, when they show an ability to work with computers, get a
lot of positive attention from those around them because most people don't
have the patience or inclination to understand machines so well. I think for
some this leads them down the path of really building their identity around
what they can do. And when you deeply identify with something like that, it
becomes very personal.

This isn't true of everyone, you can have passion without being arrogant, but
it is quite common I believe.

Another factor is probably the perceived competition for jobs and promotions.
Many think that to reach the next level, or get the six figure salary, they
have to out compete others. And this is true, to a point, as the technical
coding interview shows.

Edit; something related is the 'tribalism' around languages and frameworks,
frontend vs backend, os's etc. When you're just starting out, it's easy to
become invested in whatever technology you learned first. You'll write a lot
of code and become really accustomed to the tools, libraries, building and
deploying. It's only when people branch out and spend a lot of time with other
languages and frameworks do they start to see the commonality between them.
There's been a lot of convergent evolution over recent years imo. I find that
people who understand the basics (http request/response for example) are much
more adept at debugging, trouble shooting, and jumping between languages and
frameworks.

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mtea
That seems very likely-- lots of devs do tie CS in as a big part of their
identities.

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whatsmypwagain
I've been a dev at 5 companies in 15 years. I've never heard any praise for
any developers' contributions after they've left the company. But you'll
ALWAYS hear denigrations like "he wasn't very good which is why X is so
shitty." And it's ALWAYS the person who is most plentiful with praise at group
meetings.

"I think we should focus on the positives." \- says guy who talks the most
shit.

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csnewb
Developers are some of the biggest fucking assholes I've met. At least
everyone I know has called someone else a fucking idiot at least once. I've
been called that as well. No matter how intelligent, hard working, and
productive a developer may be, there will always be at least a few people to
talk shit about him/her.

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PaulHoule
One thing I see is a kind of bigotry.

For instance, there are some people who only use Microsoft tools since they
have an MSDN subscription.

There are other people who run Linux and use only open source tools.

Frequently people in those community think the other one "sucks", even though
they both get their jobs done.

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quickthrower2
If I can I use Microsoft tools because that's what I'm experienced and more
productive in. I know that say Java, Ruby, Python etc don't suck but I won't
code as fast in them.

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quickthrower2
I find most developers quite nice. This is in UK and Australia, but from many
ethnic backgrounds. Assholes are occasional but definitely the exception in my
experience. They tend to be people that have many years service and have built
up a moat to protect them and so they can get away with it. Although maybe not
if the "victim" use anti-bullying laws to their advantage but it takes some
balls.

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throwmeplease
Diversity, culture differences. It has benefits but it also comes with a few
challenges. I work in the Bay Area and here people are coming from all over
the world. We ultimately see different cultures and styles interacting with
each other. Some people come from places where you have to be extremely
competitive in order to get the basic things such as education and a job.
Especially when you have a billion people in your own country and everyone is
trying to work in CS. Or, if your parents are trying to make you the number
one. Telling you that being number two is not an option for you.

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slededit
I think this is a false dichotomy. You can be competitive without being
arrogant or rude. Competitiveness isn't the problem, it can even be fun when
used right.

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meric
I think it can happen when a person identifies themselves with their ability
to program. Emotionally then they won't be able to approve their colleagues
(even if their mouths move that way), because it'd undermine their own
confidence in their own existence. Many of us who program here think "I'm a
programmer." And I think that's where the trouble starts.

