Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

simpleprogrammer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 124 posts

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#11

Post by eksith »

rco8786 wrote: post #8
programminggeek wrote: post #2

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 ar…

This. Some people are mean.

Doesn't mean I have to put up with it, though.

In the same vein as a post linked here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 ) I refuse to play audience to someone insisting on being mean. Maybe that's just the way that person is, I can't change that, but I can change who I choose to interact with.

If negative and mean people are happy being just so, they can be that way by themselves.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#12

Post by itsallbs »

xarien wrote: post #9

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…

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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#13

Post by 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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#14

Post by 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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#16

Post by 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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#17

Post by 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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#18

Post by xarien »

itsallbs wrote: post #12
xarien wrote: post #9

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…

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…

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.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#19

Post by jsonmez »

eksith wrote: post #11
rco8786 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Some people are mean.

Doesn't mean I have to put up with it, though. In the same vein as a post linked here ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6346933 ) I refuse to play audience to someone insisting on being mean. Maybe that's just the way that person is, I can't change that, but I can change who I choose to interact with. If negative and mean people are happy being just so, they can be that way by themselves.

Great point. I agree.

Re: The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

#20

Post by mathattack »

programminggeek wrote: post #2

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 ar…

Very few people consider themselves jerks, or go out of their way to be that way. You could argue that I'm wrong in Finance, but I think I'm right in Software. A lot of the solution is getting inside of other people's heads, especially those who may not have great social skills. Being a jerk isn't the same as less developed interpersonal skills.
Post reply on HN