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Are Software Developers Naturally Weird?
jammag writes "Well, c'mon, yes — let's admit it. As a veteran coder discusses as he looks at his career, software development is brimming with the offbeat, the quirky and the downright odd. As he remembers, there was the 'Software Lyrics' guy and the 'Inappropriate Phone Call' programmer, among others. Are unique types drawn to the profession, or are we 'transformed over time by our darkened working environments and exposure to computer screen radiation?'"
I'm thinking that different professions have different levels of social pressure to conform to a certain way of behaving and appearing, and the coder profession has less of this pressure, perhaps because good programmers have to constantly question assumptions and think outside the box to come up with good designs. But hell if I know or care.
I agree with that -- most people are "weird", have their quirks, etc. But geeks are often regarded as weird by everyone else, perhaps because we understand "the incomprehensible", so we are less oppressed in some ways than the people in HR, marketing, etc. They expect us to be weird, so we don't have to hide it as much in order to get by.
Caveat Utilitor
And some organizations do not put up with behavior at all that was mentioned in the article. A more professional manager would have a much different team an wouldn't have had the problem he had.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
If you think software developers are weird, you're not getting out enough.
Commission salespeople and futures traders are much weirder. Some CEOs are weird. Low-end rock musicians are weird. (Above the "club band" level, some sanity tends to emerge, or at least the self-destructive ones are filtered out.) Strippers are weird. Successful high-end call girls, though, tend to be chillingly sane when not in their work personas.
This article reminds me of a couple of incidents earlier in my career:
I usually find the HR department to be pain in the ass, but there are times when they are indispensable. When I first started working, I was managing a team of fresh college graduates. They all went out together after work one Friday for "movie night." The next week, one of the women who worked for me came to my office very upset. Turns out that after movie night, she'd gone to a bar with her fellow team members, then taken him back to her place and had sex. She was worried about pregnancy and disease because the sex had been unprotected. She was also upset that he was "being cold to [her]" the first day back in the office. At that point, I just said, "this is a topic for our HR department" and walked her and her "movie night buddy" to the office of the HR rep for our area. The resolution was to have one of them volunteer to be transferred to another area, but there was subsequent drama anyway. Social ineptitude coupled with inexperience and raging hormones is an unusually bad combination.
I also worked with a programmer who cursed worse than a sailor and "adjusted himself" more frequently than an entire team of baseball players. We used to take bets on how many times he would grab his crotch during a conversation, and if the meeting was all guys, we'd all adjust ourselves for laughs and to see if he'd pick up on it--he was completely oblivious. For whatever reason it went on for years without anyone ever doing anything about it. On the cursing part, he did eventually get called in to HR and scolded for his language, to which I am told his exact response was "Holy shit, I'm so fucking sorry." He still kept his job, though.
In that respect, neither handedness nor syndromes seems to have any relevance.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think most people who are detailed oriented are considered eccentric. Good businesspeople, programmers, chefs, military strategists, and anyone who has to have things a certain way are considered weird.
Programmers just happen to be more detail oriented than most everyone else. One character in a program with hundreds of thousands is the difference between having something that compiles and something that doesn't. It takes a certain type of personality to accept this as part of the job description.
There are certain people who have it worse - civil engineers and doctors, for example. Once they have computed a load or prescribed a treatment, there is no way to edit and rebuild.
Yes. Computing is warping our minds.
Computers are just so damn logical, working with them is completely removed from normal everyday life. It's well known that people anthropomorphize computers in order to deal with them in our own frame of reference, but conversely we also mentally shift our thinking into a logical form which we aren't evolved to deal with, so that we can work effectively with computers. The more closely you work with computers, the more this will affect you.
I don't think this is a new thing though. Mathematicians and people working in hard sciences have certainly faced the same sort of thing. For example, many early scientists (eg. Galileo) have faced persecution because they have found a mode of thinking that "normal" people have found objectionable.
It'll only get worse as technology progresses.
Here's a tip: everybody loves to think they're unique and "weird." The most conventional, boring, person you know is going to describe how wacky their party was if you ask.
If you read the article, you'll see that this isn't what this is all about. The "song lyrics developer" placed song lyrics in the comments of his code. That was apparently "distracting" to QA, so managed had a talk with him. They asked him why he did it, he said that when he was writing boring code, that made it more exciting, so they came to an "agreement" where he'd stop commenting the code with lyrics and in exchange, he'd be allowed "to pursue more interesting side projects."
In other words, management thought that they exchanged the extra 15 seconds it takes every time he writes one of those lyrics comments to get him to do more work for them in the form of "interesting side-projects." Poor dude agreed because he likely felt his job was threatened, and what they actually did was make him less productive because he's no longer as happy in his work.
Now, it wasn't even a problem of offensive curse words in comments, which is quite common. He was just peppering the code with random lyrics. Any company with management that makes things THAT strict is making the work environment a serious pain, and it's not someplace I'd work at. I suspect that guy also started submitting resumes to other places and just agreed to compromise until he could find a better job.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Exactly. What do you define as "weird"?
The question if something is $absolutePointXOnAbsoluteAxisY can only come from someone, who does not realize, that everything in this universe is relative. Especially things like "weirdness". And twice so. Because 1. your own view of what is weird, is defined relative to your own position ("That's weirder than me, so I'll call it 'weird'."), and 2. your own position is also only definable through other relative positions. ("How weird are you?" will always be answered with something like "Well, less than that crazy guy. But more than that no-fun loser there.")
Additionally, I don't think weirdness is ever reducible to one axis, and so it's also a multi-factor value (aka. multi-dimensional vector), where things like weighting them based on their orthogonality to get to the magnitude, come into play. (In other words: What factors make someone weird for you, and how important are those factors?)
The thing is, that the importance of that question is dependent on your own self-confidence. :)
Basically, if you know you're cool and fun and all, then even if someone calls you "weird" you will say "Nah, you're just no fun.", not even trying to defend yourself. (For what? He is wrong, not you.
And if you are insecure and think you are a loser and a weirdo, you will believe them. You will most likely even act according to your expectations of yourself. Expect yourself to fail in harmonizing with others. (Harmony [the "rhythm"] is an essential factor in social groups. I love playing it like an instrument, when I'm able to.)
For all positions between those extremes, of course the result is something in the middle.
Sadly, most software developers grew up, thinking that it's somehow "uncool" to be able to create all those wonderful programs with their elegance. That social incompetence is to be expected when one "hangs in front of his computer all the time".
Seriously? Who says that? Have you ever checked? Has anyone ever checked? Are those who checked even competent to check it? Or is it all just a false social conditioning, based on prejudice and exclusion of the unknown, like with children in school? Something that still dominates your life right now, by making you insecure *for no freakin' reason at all*.
[optional part]
I was like that. EXACTLY like that. Worst of the kind. I had a huge fear to even *talk* to girls until I was 20+. Seriously! :D
But as you might know, you will feel like wanting to die when you live like that. Luckily I realized, that all those social rules where just made up. My definitions of what I am were just made up. I could change them, and become whatever I wanted.
And, oh fuck did I change!
I just decided, that from now on, I know what is how, have my own set of values, and define myself and what I am. Then I worked to get to that point.
And now I literally can't program, when I did not go out, and had fun, socializing and stuff. And when I'm out, I am not in the corner, in fear that someone could laugh at "that weird dork there". No, I'm in the freakin' center! :)
I have no idea why, as I'm not thinking that I'm someone especially great or something, but people somehow love me now. I get drinks for free, people applauding me, and girls looking at me with glowing eyes. But I have no idea why?? Hell, there are so many better looking, cooler and richer guys in the same room! But hey... Not that I don't like it.
And the best thing: Now that I have it, I don't feel any urge to try to get it anymore. It has become almost an afterthought.
[/optional part]
Conclusion: No. Software development does NOT make you weird. Not in any known universe! Insecurity, and a environment full of prejudice, since early childhood, make you weird.
I'm a software developer / game designer and I am also according to others one of the "coolest guys they know". (Again, I myself am never trying to place myself above someone.)
I see no reason why this should not also be true for anyone else on this site!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Software types are more analytical, (either as a result or as an cause of them being in their field). As such they see things that Joe Random doesn't even notice.
When the waitress says "If you need anything else, my name is Betty" Joe Random grunts and takes a bite of his meal. Programmer dude wonders what her name is if he doesn't need any thing else.
When the reporter says "For CNN, I'm Wolf Blitzer", programmer dude shouts at the TV demanding to know who the reporter is when he dons his lederhosen and cowboy hat and goes dancing.
Ouch, that hurts to think about, I'll stop now.
Computer types are so used to thinking about eventualities, undesirable consequences, dangling IF conditions, and protecting against them that they fall into doing so in personal life as well. A simple, carelessly worded question in normal conversation can render them speechless while the gears grind.
Actions or behavior without negative consequences may lead to new discovery, and therefore need not be avoided. Being a little weird may be a calculated strategy to see if those around them are hopelessly hidebound.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I don't have much respect for developers.
I am a simple laborer who couldn't afford higher education, but I have my geeky things, specially related to videogame design.
One day, I reunited enough will to combine my work with making a game of my own. It's still in early alpha but it's doing alright.
Thing is...knowing I have no full education background, I dealed with C and OpenGL and their quirky things (pathetic string support, stupid color handling requiring to learn GLSL to do something worthy, respectively), all by myself. This is not specially impressive, but I didn't do by choice. I had to learn the same way with art/pixel art/animation and sound/music as well as general technique to achieve effects. It wasn't difficult to learn to do the media, but the code is not as straightforward. So I tried looking for help around in order to do some specific things that were hard.
Every single programming question I deployed on the net was received with an elitist disregard, sending me to read tons of papers and stuff I don't really have an use for, specially because even if I try I can't understand it. They assume you have high education in MIT and you had to start from mainframes like they did or something. This is specially true on the IRC channel #opengl, where everyone seems to be too elite to deal with n00bs and giving incredibly obfuscated replies generally being more of a "don't bother me you fucking ignorant n00b".
Unfortunately I don't know anyone else who codes around me (this country is not specially literate on IT), since most of my people are laborers like me who'd rather watch TV and get drunk instead of venturing into a coding project. And I can't blame them because unless you reinvent the wheel infinitely you are doomed to be inferior to the top dogs there. They limit knowledge sharing with their arrogant and "I am better than you" attitude, and it's sickening.
There would be far more indie games and open stuff if they weren't so stubbornly elitist and shared that knowledge because it's going to die when they do otherwise.
Well said. I think geeks place more value in how they feel about themselves, rather than how others feel about them. Ask a random hundred what's more important to them, "how you feel about yourself" or "how others view you", see what answers you get. You could probably pick out most of the geeks real quick with just that.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
There is a "normal". Its is not however, a statistical result. Rather it is closer to a Platonic ideal, an archetypical state of being that all aspire to, yet few if any achieve. Intelligent, sophisticated, gregarious, athletic, witty, educated, admired, adventurous, wise, inspirational, a pillar of society; in short everything the Modern Major General should be.
When people say "normal", what they really mean is "ideal". "Why can't I/you be more normal?!", really means "Why can't I/you be closer to perfection!!". The concepts of individuality and uniqueness is for most people, platitudes. In reality, they strive for unreasonable goals and live in perpetual disappointment with their own and others "shortcomings".
Our industrial society, saturated as it is with millions of identical items, widgets and products, cannot really accept habits or traits that fall outside the norm. Witness the rise of "disorders" like Aspergers or ADHD; habits and attitudes which cannot be accepted as a normal part of the human condition, and which must be medicated to bring them closer to the ideal or "normal". If you do not conform to the tolerances specified by what is seen on television, cinema or in the New Yorker magazine, you are a defective widget and must be either corrected or replaced.
Some programmers have traits or habits not usually seen in the general populace. Invariably you will find that the problem is rarely these traits in and of themselves, but rather the discomfort of others who when faced with such deviations from the norm actually become offended and will seek redress. For a long time, our society catered to this outrage and imposed conformity towards the contemporary ideal. Happily we've stopped doing this, and we're all better off because of it. However, there remain many who can become visibly distressed whenever the world does not agree with their own conceptions. Often they will fight to change the world rather than change their minds.
The truth is we are all individuals. And the real truth is that this is more than just a platitude.
May the Maths Be with you!
if the meeting was all guys, we'd all adjust ourselves for laughs and to see if he'd pick up on it--he was completely oblivious. For whatever reason it went on for years without anyone ever doing anything about it. On the cursing part, he did eventually get called in to HR and scolded for his language, to which I am told his exact response was "Holy shit, I'm so fucking sorry." He still kept his job, though.
Here's the lesson I learned from your post: some people are willing to change, they just need someone to tell them how they should change. They might even be grateful that you've helped them change for the better.
Now, ask yourself: whenever you find people you'd like to change, do you want to risk them never changing by not asking? How does that weigh against the risk of them being offended by you asking?
First, I am sick to death from seeing people try to claim some watered down form of a mental condition that excuses excessive behaviors they mostly wish they had and makes them seem special without having to put much efforts towards it or even understanding much about it. Understand this about autism/Aspergers and pretty much any state considered disordered as compared to the general population: meeting a diagnostic criteria includes having some persistent behavioral anomalies. Having some of the same persistent behavioral anomalies does not qualify one for the diagnosis. Very few of any who actually earn the diagnosis are capable of anything productive. And if one were to go with the behavioral criteria, the vast majority would earn themselves a far less appealing diagnosis or three, and which point they'd rebel against the process and disclaim any association with any disorder.
Now, we have in fact looked at 'weird' in psychology, but mostly as to what people think it is, rather than an objective state. I've looked at what kinds of people get that label and how. Programmers, or geeks/nerds in the technical literature, earn that label -- literally. They tend to start out more similar than most, and develop a specific quirk or three in order to exert individuality. They themselves keep each other within boundries of weirdness by approving or disapproving of others quirks, as often as not in how they're expressed rather than pure content. The effect is one of most people taking on the task of marking themselves an individual by developing an unusual, hopefully unique set of markings for their clothing. They appear to ignore the fact that the piece of clothing is a jacket collar. They appear to be unable to recognize that the collar is always on a Nehru jacket.
The defining word is "affectation". The evidence is in the desperation with which the concept is held and in how vehemently it is denied. A close analogy can be drawn with those who have strong anti-authoritarian rebelliousness early in life. It is not that they are anti-authoritarian, but rather than they are overly sensitive to it and dislike the fact that early in their life they are near the bottom of the ladder. They frequently end up at the other extreme. Likewise, the chronically similar act to differentiate themselves as soon as their situation allows, but only within a limited way, the rest remaining a recognizable part of the fairly closed group for which similarity of some sort remains more a badge than the differences. These too tend to evolve to the opposite end of the spectrum, common end states being either comparing swag t-shirts from conferences, or comparing their ties, the only major item of difference they would ever consider sporting having bought into management.
You may now feel free to mod me down as troll or flamebait just because I've answered the question with my own considered opinion which will no doubt prove unpopular. Refer back to "vehemence".
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B