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'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

theguardian.com

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Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#11

Post by 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.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#12

Post by yetanotherphd »

TheBiv wrote: post #10
yetanotherphd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

I am not quite sure of your definition of 'somewhat' however giving a mild amount of justification for treating others wrongly simply bc they don't confirm to your standards of 'correctness' is not justifiable.

I meant they are somewhat correct in their belief that bullying is a part of our social fabric. But I don't endorse bullying, rather I think that there is something wrong with our society.

It is not an uncommon (again, I don't endorse this viewpoint) for people to say that bullying is a normal part of growing up, and that it helps strengthen people's character, etc. I don't think people who say this are being 100% honest. I think if they were honest they would say that bullying is a way to identify the weakest or least socially capable 10% of people, and that if you don't fall into this category, then it's a great part of the growing process to find out you belong to the 90%.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#13

Post by trentmb »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #9
byuu wrote: post #7

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.…

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 se…

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

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#14

Post by nirnira »

trentmb wrote: post #13
yetanotherphd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

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

I think the idea here is that the system is self-reinforcing. An initially undifferentiated mix of children self-segregates as the children begin to perceive difference, and privileged/norm-conformant children persecute unprivileged/norm-nonconformant children. The persecution has the function of excluding the unlucky children from the social opportunities that come from access to privileged society (both because they are actively blocked by the other children, and because they block themselves by not realising they can seek opportunities or not considering themselves capable or worthwhile). This exclusion compounds as the cohort ages, rapidly becoming total. The result is that only a small selection of the cohort has access to privileged channels of society, maintaining a relatively low degree of competition at that level.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#15

Post by yetanotherphd »

trentmb wrote: post #13
yetanotherphd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 se…

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

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.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#16

Post by spiritplumber »

byuu wrote: post #7

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.…

My family was awesome in that sense.

Here is a slightly fictionalized version of what happened to me:

http://spiritplumber.deviantart.com/art/Zero-Tolerance-42710...

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#17

Post by dave1010uk »

UK-AL wrote: post #11

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 probabl…

I'm Dan's manager and tech lead at the company. We're going to look after Dan as best we can.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#18

Post by DanBC »

UK-AL wrote: post #11

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 probabl…

English companies have a legal duty to protect staff from harm. This includes bullying in the workplace.

Any company that fires a victim of bullying leaves themselves open to compensation claims.

Any company that does nothing likewise leaves themselves open to legal action.

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#19

Post by motters »

UK-AL wrote: post #11

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 probabl…

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).

Re: 'I was bullied and beaten every day. Programming saved my life'

#20

Post by mayanksinghal »

yetanotherphd wrote: post #9
byuu wrote: post #7

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.…

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 se…

> how society maintains is social structure

I grew up in India. My schools had no bullying at all. And we still had a (much weaker) social structure, the popular ones, the slightly-dangerous ones (those I would avoid hanging out with) and the not-so-popular ones (like those who would spend time on a computer instead of meeting up for sports). Bullying is not universal. Neither is it necessary.

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