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The Dark Side Of Software Development That No One Talks About

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

#51

Post by foobarbazqux »

dnautics wrote: post #46
eksith wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bottle of Aspirin says, I should take 2 pills after meals. My cough syrup says, I should take one tablespoon before bed. But something that will, potentially, save me from myself cannot be delivered with tact, compassion and restraint with no delicacy whatsoever with regard to my sensibilities? If the advice someone gives me is not in the form I can ingest, then what they have done is pleasure themselves publicly…

when I hear too many platitudes or niceties that are designed to pad out critical analysis, my ears shut off and the person delivering the analysis loses credibility in my mind. What some people find easy to ingest, others find insulting and will reject it. It is my perception (and this may or may not be correct) think that people who are often too concerned with seeming nice - are going to be exactly the people who…

There's a large middle ground between saccharine niceness and vicious back-stabbing.

I find that someone who doesn't work well with emotions is typically bad at reasoning too, because the arguments they make end up expressing their feelings in obtuse ways.

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

#52

Post by pekk »

ripter wrote: post #14

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 e…

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.

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

#53

Post by nawitus »

georgemcbay wrote: post #32

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…

The third kind of jerk is the ageist who.. :)

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

#54

Post by liveoneggs »

pekk wrote: post #52
ripter wrote: post #14

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 e…

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.

what are you replying to?

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

#55

Post by yaddayadda »

wahsd wrote: post #10

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 o…

Off of the main topic: I explicitly worked with my dogs when they were puppies to avoid this 'mentality'.

The first big thing is that they are expected to be well behaved while I slowly put their food bowl down. If there is a hint of growl or lunging, the food bowl comes back up again and only when they have restrained themselves does the bowl start to go down again - and slower than before. My dogs are seniors now, but they 'understand' that he who giveth the food can - and will - taketh the food if they give me any grief.

The second big thing is that they are expected to give up whatever is in their mouth on command. This requires ongoing training, and also started when they were wee-little pups. They understand that if I put my hand out palm-up, or grip what is in their mouth, and tell them to "release" they are going to loose whatever is in their mouth. If they give it up without a scene, then they get it back in a few moments. If they make a scene, or I have to pry it from their jaws, then they may not get it back. This has helped in situations when they managed to get something they shouldn't have (e.g., a dropped grape).

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

#56

Post by 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.

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

#57

Post by georgemcbay »

tsunamifury wrote: post #43
georgemcbay wrote: post #32

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…

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' s…

> 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".

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

#58

Post by hga »

unoti wrote: post #30
hga wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 compu…

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.

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

#59

Post by MartinCron »

ripter wrote: post #14

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 e…

Here's the thing with thick skin. Some people are, from a demonstrative physiological perspective [1], more sensitive than others. Telling people to "just develop a thick skin" is like telling a color-blind person to "just start differentiating colors better". Easy advice to give, totally useless.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person

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

#60

Post by ripter »

pekk wrote: post #52
ripter wrote: post #14

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 e…

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.

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.
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