Programmers’ emotions

What you describe is orthogonal to whether a developer has empathy, though.

1. UX design is a trained skill that most developers don't have. It's not a lack of empathy if you have no idea how to create a better user experience.

2. Many developers are in it only for the paycheck. They do exactly what they have to in order to keep being paid, and not a minute more of effort goes into their work product. They may be an excellent people-person, and in fact may be able to talk themselves into raises and promotions at work due to their excellent empathy skills. But if they really don't care about the end user or the work product, that's not a lack of empathy as much as a lack of pride in work.

3. RTFM may be misplaced if there really is no good manual, but a significant fraction of the time I've seen it employed (or more polite variants) was because there was a manual that had the exact answer the developer asking the question was looking for, and the questioner just didn't bother to look. I spent an entire year and a half on a project answering questions to the same developer with links to the documentation where he could find the answers he was seeking. I swear he would ask me something at least weekly, and I always could just point him to exactly where I'd already answered that question. It's not a lack of empathy to just start saying RTFM. It's a failure of PATIENCE with someone for asking the same question you've already answered a hundred times because they're too lazy to look up the answer themself.

And telling an end user to RTFM goes back to point #1 above: If the user feels the need to ask how to use a product, then that's a failure of UX. See Don Norman's many books on the topic: He's fond of saying that an ideal user interface shouldn't require instructions. An as in point #1, if you needed instructions to begin with, that implies bad UX, which isn't the fault of a programmer, but rather of a UX designer. Most programmers also shouldn't be front-line on helping end users anyway because of the patience issue I mentioned.

There are developers out there who just lack any form of empathy. Granted. Anyone with the skill to code can likely find work, regardless of their shortcomings; demand is such that they will be hired even if they're generally jerks. But I don't accept that programmers are in general less empathic than an average person. It's just that empathy isn't a job requirement.

I get the gist of what you're saying, and broadly agree that seasoned programmers tend to develop a strong sense of professional humility. I have to say that I think the analogy goes a bit too far, though. Even very poor programmers can get things to compile and tests to pass. The things that make a programmer very successful are still very nebulous and difficult to measure, just like in creative professions.

The key is talking to people. Too many people on here complain about meetings, 1x1's, and that they hate interacting with people who don't understand what they're asking for, like management. The real reason is cause many people (especially new grads) think all their job centers around is code. It absolutely does not. Having fun actually interacting with people around the abhorrent minutia of everyday life is not only part of life, but shows you also are not a said "robot."

Too many interns I've worked with at my comment are just monotone unimaginative, unemotional, unfeeling drains. Any time they'd talk during a zoom call it was like "God I'm only asking you how your day was so you don't feel left out. When they had nothing to share I was so excited cause we got to skip over them because they were just so damn uninteresting to listen to.

But I feel like I'm one of the few that knows this, hence why I enjoy doing these things. One of my Comp Sci instructors was this way as well and he was very enthusiastic about everything. It's why everybody liked him. Unfortunately since Comp Sci is a legitimate hard science, especially being centered around math, it drives out a lot of the perky speakers who don't like to think. I do think it's good because it keeps out the people who think this is all just an easy paycheck, but in reality, I think Comp Sci majors should almost be required to be far more social with others.

Plot hole. Why did he spend 1 year on each research problem? After a year, what? A paper incorrectly proving the goal was impossible because that's what PhD's in industry say (I've seen this) so they're boss gets off their case?

I don’t fully understand, but I have the same issue.

I’ll have a full day of coding work and I’ll have the full range of emotions - joy when t worked, fury when the underlying UI framework is lower quality than my expectations for my work output and I spend days or hours making awful workarounds. Cough cough UWP. Cough cough Xamarin.Forms.

And then I try to go out for drinks after and it’s like I’m an actual robot. Text generation seems to work OK, but emotional processing just isn’t there. I can’t access the part of my brain that does all of the socially-expected facial expressions, speech tone, and cadence.

When I was much younger, I was criticized for a constant monotone delivery and I’ve since worked on fixing that with great success. But if I spend more than an hour or two coding - or if I get anywhere near a state of productivity- I end up with a less convincing reproduction of human emotion than Alexa.

It makes dating after work, or getting coffee with someone mid-day, a serious challenge. I’m not opposed to hearing solutions in the reply.