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The Perils of Developers Hooking Up
jammag writes "Who better for a developer to love than another developer? Yet as a veteran coder describes, it's not always a good idea for a programmer to fall for another programmer. He describes his experience observing — and getting partially pulled into — a romance within a development team. Part of the problem, perhaps, is that some developers spend so much time buried in code that, well, they quickly find themselves out of their league. Then again, why not love among the code?"
This is nothing more than the old wisdom of not dating anyone who is exactly like you. You need someone that shares little same interestst, but who can fullfil things you dont like or do. Yes, you can have one night stands between developers, but then again, majority of female programmers are ugly and insecure as hell, so you might want to get a normal person anyway.
Why don't you ever comment anymore?
When someone says, "Any fool can see
I have to assume gestation takes about 17 months. And the resulting baby in no way resembles what everyone was expecting.
seriously, this can't be real.
said perl, that's why I brainfuck around.
Nullius in verba
...not to shit where they eat.
Hooking up with cow-orkers often ends badly -- the line of work has nothing to do with it.
What's this rubbish doing on Slashdot? It's a badly written co-worker romance short story.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Don't fuck where you eat.
It's generally not a good idea to have an office romance with someone that you spend most of your workday working closely with, regardless of the profession, but especially in working groups that are very stable and unchanging.
You see this person about eight hours a day, and might even work in the same group-cubicle. If your relationship gets serious then you're likely to see them many hours a day beyond the workday too. For probably most of us, best case and the relationship goes well, one gets a little tired of the significant other after awhile, but literally can't escape because of the enforced time at work together. Worst case, the relationship ends, badly, and you're stuck with them in the same confined space but now can't stand each other.
Eight or so years ago I dated a gal for a few months that works at one of the sites I support and it's still a little awkward running into her when I go there. I can't imagine the awkwardness if we worked at the same site, let alone the same department. It would probably also complicate my subsequent marriage, as I doubt my wife would be very happy with me working closely with an old flame.
If working groups are varied and dynamic and if the organization is large enough that one doesn't constantly see the other, then it might work okay to date a coworker, but even then it has its perils, not even getting into career choices.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Job focus, education, political leanings - while they may help form who you are, they are not criterion upon which lasting relationships are founded.
IMO, It boils down to A) the personalities involved, and B) how well one person deals with the other person's annoying little quirks.
As for B, well... patience goes a long way. Doesn't hurt if you really love the other person, too - makes those little annoyances far easier to deal with.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Because you'll get the keyboards all sticky!
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Inter-office romance shouldn't be banned, but you better be damn sure before jumping into a relationship with a co-worker. I don't see how the job description changes that fact. Life isn't fair, and if the relationship ends badly (and it surfaces at work), the woman is more likely to be the subject of gossip and office drama among colleagues.
Speaking from experience, it can be fine if you're not working together on the same project. Otherwise, it takes a lot of effort to compartmentalize. You cannot allow personal stuff to leak into work stuff. Imagine the following conversation:
Person A: "That structure doesn't look right. You should do something like this." (demonstrates)
Person B: "There's nothing wrong with it."
Person A: "It's inefficient."
Person B: (Irritated) "Oh yeah? Well, I don't like the way you slurp your coffee!"
At this point things begin to spiral out of control...
Proverbs 21:19
Clearly the guy only knows programmers... the story he tells has nothing to do with the job. And the girl is a bitch.
The absolute majority of developers are male, which stacks the "market" against us. There is usually little to no selection, while the sole lady in the group gets all the attention of the 120+ male programmers. I suspect that this is the root cause of the "mom's basement" paradigm. I lost count how many times I wished to be an Accountant or something.
So, to those single devs on this thread: get off your little couches and your home gaming rigs, and find someone outside the office. I recommend friends of friends, or some sort of community. Can even go back to school and get a non-technical degree (like Accounting!).
Don't get your Honey, where you get your Money!
Never shit where you eat. It's served the animal kingdom well enough for eons and by god, it should be the same in any I.T. shop.
Studies have shown that the risk of kids having Autistic spectrum disorders is drastically increased when both parents are borderline Aspergers or whatever (this shouldn't really come as a surprise). So it may be a very good idea for programmers to aim as high as they can when finding a spouse and try to get someone who at least has a normal amount of extroversion. If that's not possible and you do end up with someone of a similar personality, candidly assess your own mental state and think seriously about the risk/reward of having your own kids.
There should always be some sort of adapter class between them.
Please refer to the Ménage pattern for more info.
No matter what the profession, drama in the workplace, at the level described in TFA, is best reserved for Prime Time TV. It's really annoying to those of us who are actually working.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Jesus. The problem isn't falling for another developer. The problem is falling for and going out with a developer on your own team which just isn't a good idea.
Don't dip your pen in the company ink.
Office romances (especially within the same team) are always bad news. Though the story comes off as a poorly written romance novel - a sort of Shades of Grey fantasy novel for geeks.
That said, I've dated girls in my field and girls outside of my field, and I've found that I get along better with those outside my field. We don't need work to be our 'common ground', and we don't find ourselves telling each other how to do each other's job. When she tells me about her workday, I don't feel so compelled to tell her how to solve her problem since I have no expertise in her field. And vice-versa. On the flip side, if I'm looking for advice about some specific problem I'm facing, I can't go to her, but that's what friends are for.
I thought I typed /. but it looks like I am on playboy letters to the editor section, and it's not very good.
I could tell you stories about office situations like that but that's the thing, I don't think people who have stories to tell actually want to tell them to anybody, the world is too small.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Yes. Next stupid question?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
while (me=horny)
{
service me;
}
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
n/t
Title made me curious why someone would be claiming developers shouldn't hook up (possibly a new study about the prevalence of high-level autism in the Silicon Valley?) Being a developer who is dating another developer and who might eventually want kids, that would have been potentially relevant.
But no, this was just another random story of a hot programmer flirting with teammates, which, as a jillion people have aready said, is generally a bad idea whether you're a programmer, or have any other career that involves working in a group. I don't think it'd be any different or less awkward for someone on my team as a developer to hook up with a tester or a graphic designer or a documentation writer on the same team as for them to hook up with another developer.
Inversely, a while ago I learned one of the testers on our team had requested to move to a different team; a few months later I learned it was because she'd started dating a developer on that team. They've been happily married a couple years now, and both still work here. Probably smart of them to be in different teams, though (though both still on the development floor, which I see nothing wrong with at all.)
It all starts-out with that flirtatious morning JAVA, and soon, it's on to PERL necklaces, and RUBY on rings.
My mother was a web-app, my father was mobile. I am the result of a one-time backend synchronization.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Never date anybody you work with unless you have a routine, easily replaceable job like working in a bar, restaurant, or retail outlet.
It's a horrible idea to have any type of romance at a serious, white collar job. You're just asking for a sexual harassment dismissal or worse. People are very uptight and paranoid at these jobs. Don't jeopardize your job or anybody else's.
Find your partner outside your job. That means you'll have to work less hours and make less money. It's a fair trade off for a better sex life.
that doesn't really matter.
if foo
then blah
else foo 2
#crashes like you do after work -John
while blah
#double-check it was actually done, you should try it sometime -Jane
sudo make me a sandwich
That article reads like some kind of Dear Penthouse letter for geeks or something. Even if it's real, the coding had *nothing* to do with that situation...
Bannana!!
is not very believable, more like someones dream.
I also know of two pairs of now-married employees in my corporation are both very similar.
One such couple are both very narrowly focused in aligned skills and interests, geospatial app development.
Another such couple are both high-level engineers that do program management.
I think it just depends on the people. If you put your career first, and then the relationship happens later, then I think it works great! This particular story is one of people getting involved with someone they just met on a particular team, and this particular individual sounds like a leech (and I know of a few in our corporation too, we tell people to stay away from them).
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
Although, I have to say, my wife does not like to be grepped. She feels that I'd just be looking for the desired parts...
Well, duh!
And use a semi-colon for Dog's sake!
Just because a duplicitous girl caused trouble in your office doesn't at all mean developers hooking up is perilous.
If I wanted that sort of unfounded extrapolation I would follow politics instead of "news for nerds".
Ok:
Does touching each others dongs and playing butt-butt count as hooking up?
If the author is trying to generalize a lesson from that story, he's more naive about women than he claims Jerry is. The moral is not "don't get involved with a colleague," it's "don't get involved with a psycho bitch from hell." A lesson I, personally, had to learn the hard way. :-)
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
... 50 Shades of Grey for Developers? It clearly isn't informing us of anything worthwhile and on top of that it is wrong, as others have already pointed out. I can add two more success stories about developers hooking up, getting married and having kids (and still loving each other) just from my own close friends. I myself (a developer) married a mathematician who manages software projects, so I won't count that (although we have been together for 13 years now). A load of crock, this article.
When I was in the USAF in the '80s I was maintaining a system written by some folks from Sandia Labs in Albequerque. Apparently, two of them were having a bit of an affair (when they visited our site, at least) and they'd taken to leaving notes for each other in the code comments. While those comments didn't help me resolve issues with the code (and there were quite a few) they did occasionally provide some welcome humorous relief while searching for bugs. Especially when a few were found and we tried to match them up without any context or sequence info...
Good thing their spouses weren't cleared to see the code...
"it's not always a good idea for a programmer to fall for another programmer"
Um, falling in love is not an "idea" that just springs into your head one day. You don't wake up one morning and decide "hey, you know, I think I'm going to fall in love today."
^----
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
This isn't about programmers dating programmers, this is about anyone dating someone who has borderline personality disorder. They are like chameleons and will change into whatever you want them to be (becoming your perfect person, loving everything you love etc..) and put you on a pedestal... that is, until the honeymoon period is over. This chick sounds exactly like anyone I've know with it.
So, you're not a statistician. That's forgivable.
How is this an issue?
Have you seen your fellow coders? If you divide up the room between "ugly and insecure" and "Not" will the room have an empty side?
If a girl is 30 lbs overweight, and hard to get to know, but she can kick my ass at TF2, game on.
The original article isn't so much about developers hooking up with other developers as it is about the relearning the time tested advice to avoid getting into a romance where you work.
This is just a single anecdote. Not all women are manipulative, just as not all men are naïve and malleable. Developers included.
To be more serious than this story deserves, most large companies will have a policy against inter-office 'romance' which would lead to dismissal or relocation.
Most likely. If women can practice tribadism, I'm not sure why men can't try. equal rights and all- if you're into the sort of thing that is.
Sorry -- I couldn't get past the opening line: "She is hot!"
Ok, now I know the crew. Thanks, Datamation article, we'll call you!
This has nothing to do with being a developer. Most workplaces discourage or outright ban workplace romances because they rarely work out and the fallout is detrimental to the organization.
i would help my naive little coworker out. first, there'd be none of this "but..but.. you're his girlfriend..." she'd get exactly what she asked for (and a lot more) and i'd get pictures (video if she lets me, and she probably will). then i'd show poor jerry and say "your girlfriend's a slut, so i did you a favor. now you can get the upper hand and dump her." and if he's a friend worth keeping, he'll get over it.
friends don't let friends get strung along for weeks or months by sluts. the author never learned this, but the manager, chuck, did.
oh, and pics or it didn't happen. it's sad when a code geek turns to harlequin fantasies to prop up his need to feel wanted.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Bad ones, of course.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
... tribadism.../quote?
Rule 34, gentlemen.
This story doesn't really support your claim. This story only proves that manipulative women who hook up with every guy in their workplace are poor relationship material, the fact that she happened to be a programmer is incidental to the story. You can tell because if you replaced "programming" with say... "painting" or "accounting" and change the other terms to match, the story still works exactly the same. I for one am a web developer, as is my girlfriend. We've been together six years and are very happy.
I saw that episode. Henry hooks up with a hot young thing that seems too good to be true, and then she runs around the camp hitting on all the other officers too, stirring up no end of trouble.
Assuming this story is even true, the only morals to be gleaned are: "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is" and "don't stick it in the crazy". There is nothing to be learned here about relationships and technology.
When an autistic person marries another autistic person, they can have profoundly autistic children. Wired Magazine dubbed it The Geek Syndrome.
So if you're autistic, like many engineers and programmers, try to avoid marrying someone like yourself if you're thinking of having kids.
If I used a sig over again, would anyone notice?
Bunnies are better.
This reads like a crappy romance novel trying to make a point about how women shouldn't be in IT because they'll destroy team morale. I don't believe it for a second.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
As someone who ventured down that path I can tell you that almost without fail it ends disastrously. It doesn't matter how much you have in common with that other person or how solid you think the relationship is. Something most likely will go wrong, at least in part due to the abnormal amount of time you're spending together. And when it goes wrong it will likely go very, very, wrong.
Just. Don't. Do. It.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
"Office romances (especially within the same team) are always bad news. Though the story comes off as a poorly written romance novel - a sort of Shades of Grey fantasy novel for geeks."
If it's Shades of Grey for geeks, show me the pr0n. It's more like Days of Our Lives, soap opera reruns for bored code monkeys. There's more sex in Twilight than in this drivel. Of course that may be the point. The guy didn't get shagged because he was too busy getting fragged by the girl.
...not to shit where they eat.
Hooking up with cow-orkers often ends badly -- the line of work has nothing to do with it.
http://www.uthscsa.edu/mission/article.asp?id=545
and look up all the husband and wife teams who've done amazing things in science.
Perhaps the problem is that you're treating your need for a relationship the way you treat your need to defecate.
This little tale of immature daring do is utterly irrelevant. At best, it aspires to be Penthouse letters for nerds.
The snickering inexperience of the men (boys) on the team (author included) is reprehensible and pathetic. Most of the best computer folks I've known in my 20+ years in the computer industry have dated in college, are comfortable and mature around members of the opposite gender, and are or have been married.
Petty jealousies, misunderstandings about the seriousness of a relationship, love triangles and narcissistic authors are common in all walks of life. The scenario { A and B are friends, A dates C, C gets bored with A and expresses interest with B } exists within every setting, in and out of the computer industry, amoung co-workers, high school friends and brothers.
I expect this story is just that, a single data point of no statistical significance, an edge condition. The people in it, for practical purposes, don't even exist.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
If things don't go well and you break up, your program's comments are going to go downhill fast. They'll be like "declare the array for later use in the inventory function and also, by the way, fuck you"
BSD developers Kirk McCusick and Eric Allman seem to have a successful long term relationship.
Only a programmer could come up with a *fictional* romance story where the utter pinnacle of the protagonist's romantic achievement is embarrassment at a single stolen kiss.
It's a bullshit made-up story, it's misogynistic, and it draws a general conclusion from the flimsiest of data. Kill it. With fire. From orbit.
When a guy feels attraction, but has the social skills of an elementary school kid, this is the sort of thing he may do. He can't resist the thrill of interacting with a real-life pretty woman, but he is unable to properly admit his feelings and/or is unable to properly express them. He regrets it later. He may fantasize about her for months afterward or worse.
I've seen most of it. I saw a woman go from man to man, though she did seem to be an OK or good worker. I also saw a man have nearly the same success, despite a dire sex ratio working against him.
It's long-term, but not successful. At this point, I don't think we're ever going to see a pregnancy.
There are several problems there, but I don't think I'd say any of them are because they're both programmers. 1) Romance within a team is fraught with peril 2) Er, she tried to two-time her boyfriend? She lied a lot? I'm female programmer (oh, shut up) and my ex-husband is a male programmer turned "entrepreneur" or small business owner. Our marriage didn't end because we had too much in common, it ended because of our differences, none of which had to do with work, but with differences in our fundamental goals for the future. I'm dating a man who has a degree in art, and we are together because of how well we relate together, not because "opposites attract" - I may be more left-brained than he is, but we are in no way opposites.