Do call yourself a programmer, and other career advice

With negotiation, my understanding is that the real negotiation starts weeks beforehand, because the game is about getting an information advantage, enough to make the other side's shady tactics irrelevant. All the nonverbal skills are just used to hide the math layer of the exchange. Assuming you can't dump the shady opponent for one who thinks win-win, but even then having more information can't hurt.

Ironically, there is some unintentional truth is his blogpost - one really shouldn't call oneself programmer, because what he described is a dumb coder. Programmer could realize what is blogging, not vise versa.)

A programmer (one who understands how things works and why) will easily avoid such scenarios like ending up in a coding sweatshop or toxic things like PHP, Java or JavaScript. It is obvious that one should avoid certain things, like one avoids scams, frauds or just wrong things.

Real programmers, such as rtm, pg (god forbid!) sysoev would always find a niche for oneself and a project to do. The difference is that they themselves would choose what to program and why, not someone else.

Another point is about whose opinion one should value and why. Programmers usually does not care what "talking-heads" are broadcasting, intuitively and correctly anticipate that there would be zero useful or even interesting information for them. It is like to read, say, Oracle's press-releases and PR pamphlets about mysql instead of actual Changelog files.

So, right, do not call yourself programmer if you're mere a coder or blogger. There is some truth in it.)

[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1290271...]

not everyone agrees on the above model, but I think its safe to say that the part of the brain that deals with leadership existed before we invented civilization .. wolves have leadership, apes have leadership. So much of social nonverbal communication probably comes from the primitive, instinctive part of our brain, not the logical, planning part.

I think if in the past you had to deal with some really irrational people, and you were intelligent enough to be able to use logic to figure out their bullshit, at some point in your life it was probably really helpful to just reject all irrational bullshit. At one point in my life it was really helpful to me to suppress all instinct and rely solely on logic. But since then, seeing how some completely illogical people can in many situations be more efficient than me in navigating life's obstacles, I have had to learn from my mistakes and revise my behavior. I do think social nonverbal communication is ethically neutral. It's not the smartest behavior, but it is faster than the smartest behavior, and there are many situations where that ends up being more important. Not all. Unfortunately at this time I do not know of any better way to figure out which is which other than experience.