
'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life' - a_w
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/08/programming-saved-me-from-bullying
======
noir_lord
I'm 33 so I was at primary school in the 80's.

Bullying was (at my school) an unfortunate reality.

My brother (year younger) was born with a congenital problem (ptosis) in both
eyes which required frequent surgery (poor sod had 9 operations with weeks of
recovery for each before he was 11).

This obviously made him a target for bullying and since the school was doing
nothing about it I ended up stepping in to sort things out.

When I was about 8 I found my brother and a group of boys in one of the
classrooms at lunch time, my brother was curled up on the floor sobbing with
one boy sat on him and the rest where jeering.

I picked up a chair and waded in and I really wasn't pulling any punches.

When my mother came to pick me up from the school I was sat outside the
headmasters office with the bullies.

We went into the office the headmaster started saying how my behaviour was
unacceptable and that I couldn't just assault other pupils in that way.

At which point my mum interrupted "Ben isn't in the slightest violent, he's
never had any issues with fighting at this school and yet he felt the need to
use a chair to protect his brother, who we both know is getting bullied as
you've seen fit to punish Ben I fully expect you to punish the bullies as well
and if you don't you can be assured will be going to the local newspapers
about the endemic bullying problem, I will also be writing to the Governors
and the Local Education Authority", this was in the 80's, parents didn't
complain then like that.

I was out of school for 3 days, my mum took me to the bookshop and said I
could pick any three books I wanted.

My brother didn't get bullied again til secondary school and he dealt with
that himself.

I learnt a very valuable lesson that day - stand up for those who can't stand
up for themselves and fuck the consequences (I also learnt that my mum was a
badass).

~~~
DanielTomlinson
Humbling to read - you did an awesome thing that day, but it's incredibly sad
that it was ever necessary.

------
byuu
Yep, exactly. You go to the adults, and they don't help you at all. So you
stand up for yourself, and now you're the one in trouble. I can't possibly
think of a more backwards model for encouraging bullying.

Even with the punishments, I've always been prouder and happier when I stood
up for myself. So do that anyway. It doesn't stop the bullying, but it does
reduce it somewhat and you gain more respect for yourself. You'll probably
lose in a fight, but no matter how weak you are, anyone can inflict at least
some level of pain on an aggressor.

It's truly sad the way so many kids have to deal with this, yet nothing is
ever really done about it.

Unlike you, I would have changed it all. I would have worked out constantly,
and made a name for myself as the crazy guy you didn't mess with, because he'd
flip out completely.

But as bad as it is, at least take solace that you could go home in peace.
Imagine also having a 300lb abusive bully at home that denied you any access
to technology, even with your own hard-earned money. My solace was counting
down each day to 18, and occasionally sneaking off to public libraries to use
their computers for a bit. A lot of my programming I learned from reading
books, and the mandatory graphing calculators for math class. At 16-17, I
saved up for a laptop, and would use it in the parking lots of retail stores
while pretending to be at work.

But as others are saying, it gets a lot better. I make $70k/yr now, total
household income is 120k/yr, have a nice house and cars, and all that. The
worst I have to deal with anymore are the occasional trolls online.

~~~
yetanotherphd
Unfortunately bullying by its nature is not a very popular political issue.

Conservatives (somewhat correctly) consider bullying to be part of how society
maintains is social structure.

Progressives only consider bullying through the lens of oppressed _groups_ ,
not individuals who are targeted for their perceived/actual difference or
weakness. They don't identify with individual rights and self-defense as these
are seen as libertarian issues.

Furthermore, to admit to being bullied as often interpreted as admitting to
weakness. That is why it is easier to champion people who have some extrinsic
reason for being bullied (e.g. being gay, or some other minority).

However, I suspect the severity of bullying is gradually lowering simply as a
result of society becoming more prosperous and adopting middle class
lifestyles and values.

~~~
trentmb
How does one enforce a social structure with no agents to enforce said
structure?

~~~
yetanotherphd
When I say "social structure" I mean the idea that people should feel
compelled to follow societal norms. Even though school bullies don't enforce
the same norms as society at large, they do enforce the norms of their peer
group.

Conservatives (not all, but many) consider the _principal_ that social
convention be backed by actual violence, to be sufficiently important that
establishing it at young age is worth some suffering or unfairness.

------
UK-AL
The problem with this, is that when he enters the workforce a lot of that
social awkwardness and bulling problems could come back again. So it's a short
lived victory.

In the UK outside of silicon roundabout and a few good companies, programmers
are low rung employees and often pushed around and managed by the same sort of
people who bullied him school. He won't have any authority to hit back, and if
he tried probably would be fired.

The majority of start ups, and tech companies in the UK are run non-technical
entrepreneurs, marketeers and so on and not techs. These are normally selected
from the type of people who bully at school, not the bullies.

A large part of being programmer in these organisations is learning to
identify and tip toe around these people to stop them ruining your career.

School had a lot of bullying for me, university was great, and then at work it
was like being thrown back into school.

~~~
motters
Having been a programmer in tech companies in the UK for a long time I agree
about the low status, but I've only rarely encountered bad behavior by
managers (mistakes and bad decisions, yes. Bullying not so much). My
experience is that in this sort of job the pay is at least liveable and the
working conditions are typically good. This is however entirely anecdotal and
it's quite possible that I just got lucky and am an outlier. I think there are
many other kinds of jobs where bullying is much more common and may even be a
core feature of the profession (I'm thinking of Work Programme providers).

~~~
bananas
Bullying is rife in the UK tech industry. If you put up a wall people will
respect it and keep away but if you don't, it's open season. There's also a
nasty class divide between permanent and contract staff. I'm the latter and
much resentment is felt even though the former could be the latter with a
little effort and reap the benefits.

~~~
PaulRobinson
As a 35-year old Brit who has spent his entire career in the UK tech industry,
I do not recognise what you describe.

However, there are many "tech industries" and so I can't tell you if the
culture in the Java, C++/C#, Windows or Banking etc. industries is like that,
because in the Internet, Startup, Ruby/Python type industries it absolutely
100% is not.

Animosity between permanent and contract staff is something I've never
witnessed either. Contractors who aren't worth their money? Sure they're going
to get a hard time, but if I'm working with a contractor who has 20 years
experience on me, sure, I'm expecting them to earn good money. I always saw
them as an inspiration, nothing else. I know my colleagues have too.

So, whatever sector you're in, and whatever employer you're with, get out and
look elsewhere: it's not like that in many, many, many other parts of the
industry.

~~~
bananas
I'm in finance sector (mainly insurance) for reference on the J2EE/C# side of
things.

I think a number of people have been burned by bad contractors in the city.
There are tonnes of them from experience who cruise around with absolutely no
reputation.

~~~
Nursie
I'm a contractor in the city but not in finance. If I had to guess I'd say you
get bad contractors there because the money on offer is huge, so it will
attract people who have no idea what they're doing but are great at blagging.

------
mgkimsal
I did not have it anywhere near as bad as the poster, but had some incidents
which, even to me at 6/7 years old, immediately made me start to question
authority and become cynical.

A few random anecdotes:

2nd grade - kids kept talking in class, so the teacher declared "no talking -
the next person to talk has to go stand in the corner" (which, even then, had
me wonder - does that mean that there's no punishment for everyone after the
first person?) Everyone was silently working for ... 10 minutes? The kid
behind me starts kicking my chair. Tapping. Then hard kicking, as in, my
desk/chair combo was moving (and making a sound, supposedly the thing the
teacher was after). After 10+ kicks I turned around and said "stop kicking my
chair". BOOM - instant punishment - go stand in the corner at the front of the
room, and everyone laughed (again... WTF? wasn't silence the goal? and the
other 20+ kids are not punished for making noise?).

"No tolerance" attitudes are just crap.

3rd grade - I typically went home for lunch, but ended up staying for lunch in
school, and my routine had been messed up. After lunch, one of the kids was
late back to room because he'd been to the bathroom, and the teacher declared
"no more using the bathroom for the rest of the day", and she meant for
_anyone_. I asked to go, and was told no. So.. again - someone else makes a
mistake - intentional or not - and the rest of us have to pay for it? I kept
worrying, and then after a bit I wasn't worried. I then realized I'd wet
myself in class. Bad. Ugh... Got to go home early that day I think. But...
WTF. I wouldn't go so far as to call these teachers 'bullies', but... stupid?
Trying to treat 7 year olds as rational adults? It doesn't work.

I was bullied later on when I moved schools - I was a year younger than
everyone else, and physically much smaller than all my classmates, and...
there were a number of times in middle school and a couple times in high
school I was physically intimidated/threatened. Rarely did anything actually
happen, but the fear was enough to really stay with me for years. Reporting to
teachers did nothing beyond an initial couple minutes of feeling safe, which
quickly evaporated when I left the room.

It just led me to distrust authority and be cynical from an early age.

~~~
mgkimsal
followup - I took a 'personality test' for a job at 18 years old. Someone came
out from the office and looked around, then finally at me, and was a bit
shocked to see me instead of someone else. "Did you take this yourself? Did
anyone help you earlier? Your scores indicate you have the cynicism of a 35
year old." heh ;)

------
appreneur
I am 37,I am fat and I am not programmer and I have been bullied for 20
years.I just became CEO of my own software firm finally and it doesnt do that
well but I am fine,I feel life is far more easier and simpler, no more
bullying.

I have few recommendations: 1.Never lower your selfesteem, no matter what the
idea of bullying is to kill selfesteem and watch you crumble. 2.No matter what
anybody says including your own mind never ever feel down,life is beautiful as
it is...you are this remarkable human(all humans) who functions with 1 billion
neurons .... 3.Its just a thought to give up and its just another thought to
see how remarkable life is....these bullies of today or failures of tommorrow.
5.I can show you countless examples how bullying created a false confidence in
them and then when life started to really hitback the bullies just didnt know
to deal with they became utter failures, we who are bullied are prepared for
life either ways,I think I am much more stronger and much better prepared on a
positive side.Also I tend to go and support anybody who needs help.

6.If ever you need help in counseling and getting back into confidence, I am
always open,I am part time motivational speaker:).

~~~
lafar6502
It's easy to say 'dont cruble', but your self esteem will go down if you cant
find any help. I had some similar trouble in a primary school, and fortunately
it ended after moving to another school, but it took a long time until i
realized the problem was not in me.

------
yetanotherphd
A powerful reminder that our society still doesn't offer adequate protection,
even of their basic right to safety, to all its members.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Haunting. Probably why I'm terrified of weakness: the abuse of the 'lower'
class is supported at a collective unconscious level. "At least it's not
me..."

------
jpgvm
This rings very true of my life.

I had a horrible experience in school. I was bullied at every school I went
to, I had to attend boarding school for 4 years because my life would have
been a dead end otherwise. Boarding school was akin to hell but I endured the
24/7 bullying so that I could slug out an education for myself. I was
eventually expelled from boarding school for hacking, which in retrospect was
one of the best things that happened to me.

The emotional scars of that experience left me vulnerable, I barely made it to
university - had to travel 1100km from my home to attend, tried to support
myself while doing university full time. I lost my job because I was falling
into depression because my girlfriend at the time was drifting away from me.
She eventually left me and I was all alone. Broke, homeless and too proud to
go home.

I managed to salvage some odd jobs on freelancer/elance started to climb out
of the emotional rut. Doing freelance work using university wifi while
homeless and using uni showers really is an experience. I got determined to
not to live like that so I put aside my pride, moved in with family and got
stuck into honing my skills as a programmer, doing freelance work and going
back to university.

Programming brought back my pride, it re-established my self esteem, I ended
up having the confidence to start my own company, which fast forward 3 years
or so is still running and is a multi-million dollar company. I have since
moved on, am now internationally traveled and I now make in excess of 150k/yr.

Looking back on my short life a few things ring very true. Often alot of the
worst things to happen to me have also been the best things. If I wasn't so
downtrodden I wouldn't be so strong now, if my girlfriend didn't leave me the
way she did I never would have been so determined to prove her wrong.

So no matter how bad things seem, remember that there is always time to make
things better.

------
TheBiv
Great read and even greater story, thank you for sharing!

When I read stories like this a small part of me wishes that I were there to
beat up the bullies, to be his friend and to end the pain.

The another part of me tries to put myself in his shoes and wonder what type
of support system I would have needed in order to replicate his success from
freeing himself of the bullying.

Then, an even separate part of me thinks about what I can do to prevent this
from happening to kids in the future.

I don't know which part of myself to side with, but I do know that I
appreciate him telling his story and I am glad that he was able to persevere
from. Good on you. Shame on your classmates.

------
PaulAJ
I went through similar stuff in the 70s and 80s, although nowhere near as
extreme. Bullying is physical and psychological child abuse. The fact that it
is perpetrated by other children instead of an adult makes no difference to
the victim.

I will say that schools _can_ do something about this, and some of them do. My
son has been the victim of bullies on occasion, and both his primary and
secondary school have been very supportive. Nipping this kind of thing in the
bud makes it clear that such behaviour is not accepted. It is when it becomes
part of the culture that you have a real problem.

One option is to go to the law. Child abuse is against the law, and schools
have a duty of care. Hitting someone is assault regardless of where it happens
or who does it, so if you are assaulted and the school does nothing then go to
the police. Document incidents for a few months, take the document to the
school authorities, and if they do nothing then talk to a lawyer.

------
human_waste
I was bullied at grade school all the time, I was a poor, fat kid and my
parents had just divorced, I was happy and optimistic, but very vulnerable. I
won't go too much into the details of this, because this post is already too
long. But as a result and the point of this post is that I became a bully
myself.

I didn't have friends there and as a result I hanged around with the kids on
my neighborhood. They were all younger than me and quite a lot of immigrants
and others with not that much of a "social standing" and I could get an easy
hold over them just by the power of seniority. Then, when I went to a middle
school and the scenery changed, I had become an alpha male in that sense that
I knew how to rule over people with fear and verbal abuse. I didn't do it
consciously, it just had became a part of how I act.

Bullying is about abusing other people's weakness'. I had became a master of
it. I never actually did anything myself, I just talked, other kids did stuff
for me. Physical abuse like "Hey I know, let's fill your backpack with all of
our books and hit that guy in the face with it!". Stealing shit from school
like computer equipment, cigarettes and candy from grocery stores. There were
even plans to rape certain girls. Perhaps the only time I thought I maybe had
gone too far was when a "friend" of mine bought a gun to school. The way the
school tried to control me was to talk to the people around me. My closest
acquaintance was this huge football guy and the principal frequently took him
into talks and tried to get him to stand up against me, he always came back to
me to tell it and my reaction was pretty much "Haha what would you do you
fucking fag?". In reality, if even one person had said anything or done
anything to me, I would've completely crumbled down, because inside I was
still that bullied little fat kid trying to fit in.

What I'm most ashamed is the bullying I inflicted on one kid that was born
with his legs different height and as a result, he didn't walk very good. Easy
target. Also, my own little sister. She was the first one in line always. We
fought so much that she eventually had to move away to live with my father.

Later on in life, I found out that the kid who began the cycle of hatred, my
original bully, had a very abusive big brother.

I've gone through clinical depression, severe anxiety and drug abuse at my
adult life to truly find out who I am and I feel that a lot of it was residual
from my childhood, as it usually is.

I'm not trying to justify anything, but if you are in that period in your life
where you don't really know how life works, there's nobody to show you and the
only experience that you have is dog eat dog, then that's what you become.

~~~
penguindev
Thank you for that post. I think of the saying 'hurt people hurt people'.

I really like your last thought of 'that period in your life where you don't
really know how life works, there's nobody to show you'. I think of looking
into the abyss.

My parents divorced too, at a shit time in my life - young teens. I have
turned that into a positive though, by accepting that parents can still be a
gift by showing us what _not_ to do, just as much as what to do.

I have to control my passive-agressive side. It's too easy to think 'f this, I
don't need you'.

Edit: I haven't seen anyone mention karate / martial arts yet, but as someone
who skipped a grade, I think taking that was a very good decision. Luckily,
I've never been in a [physical] fight.

Edit: One of my worst moments, though, was when another kid was being bullied
and I didn't do anything, or even report it :-(

------
gargarplex
Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't
reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is already
quite low.

* Speaking as someone who has experienced quite a fair share of bullying, such that it makes me trepidatious in most social situations, waiting and ever expecting the first arrow.

^ probably a self-fulfilling prophecy, which turns it into "my fault". if
anyone has successfully overcome this please reach out!

\- just donated £10 to the charity at
[http://www.beatbullying.org](http://www.beatbullying.org) .. which is
(broken-linked) at the bottom of the op

~~~
dasil003
> _Is it sad that I saw this post and immediately thought, "Well, that doesn't
> reflect well on programmers..", thinking that our status as a group is
> already quite low._

Hm, I never thought of programmer status as being that low, although as an
American living in London I definitely noticed that it is lower here than in
the States (especially Silicon Valley obviously). But generally programmers
can bring tangible value in a way that few professions outside of sales can
do, so I never felt a strong need for alpha behavior and posturing to acquire
status. What is needed is to work in a company that understands how to
leverage technology, and the rest should take care of itself. Programmers are
in such high demand now that companies which don't know how to use them and
fundamentally value them will get stuck with the bottom of the barrel, leading
to a negative feedback loop.

~~~
walshemj
And non techies seem surprised when some of us react so aggressively to the
trustifariajn bus protestors those are the kids that bullied is at school.

------
gregors
Aggression solves this problem. Pure and simple. You can't reason and talk
things over - fight or leave.

Humans are unique in that we place a weaker person into a group of more
aggressive people day after day with no escape. In the wild the weaker animal
usually retreats.

It's basically an aquarium of aggressive fish and you throw in a guppy. The
aggressive fish nip and bite off the guppy's fins. Instead of taking the guppy
out and placing it into a tank better suited we keep the guppy in the tank.
That's basically what happens in the US school system and then we're shocked
when bad things happen.

------
emersonrsantos
Yet one more great undervoted post I've seen in HN. No, I didn't identify
myself with the bullying story (thankfully), but with the freedom and self-
expression he found on programming.

------
PaulRobinson
I got into programming in my first year of secondary school (year 7 in modern
money), when I wasn't really fitting in well. I was getting bullied a little
but had a thick skin so didn't care. Can't deny I relate to the escapist
aspects of this though.

That said, this article is... odd. Programmers in the UK have a reputation of
being anti-social, awkward and unable to integrate - think The IT Crowd - and
this article is hardly going to turn that around, is it?

------
Twirrim
Yet somehow, when you get into the tech industry, you discover the bullying,
derision and such like are all there. In the community you'd like to call
home.

If you're not doing it in Ruby/Clojure/Java/Python/Javascript/Erlang on
AWS/OpenStack/Dedicated/iPhone/Android etc. you're an idiot and deserve
derision at best.

What that says about the human psyche is more than a little depressing. We
should be better than this.

------
james1071
There are some interesting comments here. My take on the story, as someone who
went to a UK comprehensive school in the late '70s early '80s, is that bright
people have always been a target at such schools for bullying and current
teachers are less able to control the disruptive elements than in the past.

Indeed, there is apparently a tendency to treat them as having medical issues
rather than punishing them.

------
mattgreenrocks
Been there, had it nowhere near as bad as Dan did.

Institutions don't look out for you. They only look out for themselves. My
future children will be taught to stand up for themselves, and enrolled in
martial arts if necessary. Additionally, I have no qualms about creatively
getting the attention of oblivious institutions that tacitly endorse this
abuse.

On second thought, maybe I should just homeschool until high school.

~~~
tinco
Don't do that, you can't just assume your kids are going to be bullied. I
wasn't bullied on primary school, and primary school was one of the safest and
happiest periods of my life, I still have some friends from primary school
even.

There's a good chance your kid is one of the 80% of children that isn't picked
on. Even better: your kid might be one of the bullies, then _you_ get the
chance to really set things right.

Also, high school might be much worse, fragile children trying to become
something resembling adulthood, preparing for life decisions. What's to
prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?

~~~
crankpot
I'm homeschooled and I'm not fragile. I know a lot of men and women who were
homeschooled and they aren't fragile either. Being frequently bullied may be
one way to learn about life, but it isn't the only way. In fact I don't think
it's even the best way.

> What's to prepare them for that when they're homeschooled?

Life. The homeschoolers I know do tons of things that help them explore life.
There are too many to list here, but here's a short list of excellent things
homeschoolers do that incidentally help them learn about life: dancing
(contra, waltz, swing, etc.); running your own lawn care company; babysitting
special needs children; babysitting in general; mission trips to foreign
countries; film-making (for fun, commercials, competitions, etc.); learning to
fly airplanes; regional equivalents of boy scouts (4H, boy scouts, something
else that I can't remember the name of); and much more.

Edit: added word "frequently"

~~~
tinco
I didn't say a homeschooled kid would be fragile. I just think that not being
homeschooled might prepare them a bit better for highschool life. But perhaps
I'm totally wrong. I'm just reacting to the idea that sending your kids to
school is sending them to be bullied.

I definitely do not think being bullied is a good way to learn about life.

~~~
crankpot
Ah, fair enough--and actually I agree that public school might prepare someone
better for public high school.

------
bananas
The difference between then (believe me I was there) and now is that the
teachers get stick for allowing this to happen instantly. I've personally got
into several shouting matches with teachers over how they treat my children
and deal with these situations. I'm usually in a queue of other parents doing
exactly the same.

People don't take any shit these days.

~~~
dasil003
Now and then? This kid is 17 now. Have things really changed that much? I
think it's more likely he went to a different school and his parents had a
different temperament than you and your fellow parents.

~~~
GuiA
I think the 17 in the article is a typo for 27. He picked up programming in
his teenage years, and the article mentions a "10 years later". Also, it'd be
extremely surprising (possible, but surprising) that a 17 year old would have
"won awards and travelled all around the country to meet people and attend or
speak at conferences."

~~~
DanielTomlinson
Hey! Writer here, I just thought it might be worth saying that I am indeed 17!
:) I started programming aged around 7 or 8, and have won a couple of awards
(Most recently a Google Code Award for ProjectHermes - a natural language
analysing bullying detector for twitter), and spoken at a few events as well.

I'm incredibly surprised myself by the things I've done over the years, it's a
pretty awesome world!

------
rys
If anyone from The Guardian web team is reading, the link to beatbullying.org
at the bottom doesn't work because of a malformed anchor.

