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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?"
...not to shit where they eat.
Hooking up with cow-orkers often ends badly -- the line of work has nothing to do with it.
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.
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.
As a manager I wish office relationships were banned. No matter what the intentions are when starting a relationship, the truth is that many relationships die, and sometimes die a horrible, prolonged death. And when it involves two people that have to work together, the whole team suffers.
It's true, female programmers tend to be ugly and insecure. We had one in our class and she was shy as hell.
That's funny, one of our dev teams is over half female and none of them are ugly or insecure. And what does shy have to do with it? One of our star developers is shy and reserved outside of his team, but he still does great work. It may take longer to get to know a shy person, but it's generally worth the extra work. (I was painfully shy in high school and early college, but now I'm much more outgoing and have no problem giving presentations even to large (100+) groups)
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.
Because that way you understand each other. Because that way your eccentricities don't bother her so much, and vice versa. Because that way you can generally simultaneously do things that you enjoy doing and also spend time with the person you enjoy spending time with, rather than picking one or the other exclusively.
I've never met anyone exactly like myself, though if I were single and did meet such a person, I would be immediately interested, but I wouldn't even consider a relationship with someone I didn't share a majority of interests and a similar worldview with. I've seen where that leads (it leads to a relationship like my parents' :p).
Exactly! My husband and I are both EE's and we've been happily together for...wow, has it really been 12 years already? Our main interests naturally have a lot of crossover, but it's not like we're clones of each other. We have plenty of other interests to discuss when we don't want to talk shop, and ones that allow us to interact with our (mostly non-engineer) friends. But when it's just the two of us, as you said, we can easily find things that interest us both. Museum of modern art? meh. Museum of scifi/fantasy? Two tickets, please!
I do think we understand one another in ways that couples who subscribe to the 'opposites attract' theory of life never could. For example: he once got me a NAS unit with four 1TB hard drives for my birthday...and it was incredibly sweet, because it was exactly what I had wanted, right down to the brand of the hard drives. I think he must have snooped my browser history or something, because I hadn't even been hinting about it. Of course, if I do get a hankering for non-tech presents, I do have to hint very baldly indeed...but I know and accept that I won't get perfume for Christmas unless I email him the specific brand and where to buy it, whereas if I want the latest RPG for one of our gaming consoles, well, I just have to say 'hmmm, that one looks interesting' once ;o)
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant