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More Than a Hoodie: How We Talk About Developers (medium.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article: For generations, movies, video games, and tv shows have portrayed the developer as either an awkward hoodie-wearing nerd, or an insane and menacing basement dweller (or both). From Ace Ventura to Silicon Valley, everyone has had their chance to portray the developer. Few actors do this with the same grace they'd reserve for a role portraying a doctor. [...] I think it's time for all of us to try and elevate our understanding of what a developer is. If you are a tech company who markets to developers, or is hoping to hire developers this is doubly true. So, how should we talk about developers? First, we should talk about how important their work is. Programming is one of the fastest growing industries in the world as it serves a role in every part of society. Developers maintain and build critical parts of our infrastructure. Second, we need to talk about the craft of what they do... we need to show more code. Every developer may use a different set of tools, but across the board their craft is evolving at increasing rates. [...] I think we can drop developer stereotypes all together at this point. It's a job people know -- it's time to add some vitamins to that kool-aid. After all, we're just like lawyers, librarians, electricians and cab drivers... we're just people, totally unique and different people. But if there is one thing that unites us, it's a unifying desire to build new things, improve old things, learn when we can and avoid being stereotyped. It's as simple as that.
Try something simple: PAY THEM BETTER.
News at 11.
Also, tv shows. Big Bang Theory is even worse for stereotypes.
I've never known a single developer who could get away with wearing a hoodie in an office, and I've worked at quite a number of offices over the years during my contractor days.
What I find more amusing that the Basement dwelling Cheetovore programmer is the Hacker extrordinaire character in movies.
The guy who can log into any web site- and after only observing it for a few seconds can hack into it by pecking at 5 characters on his keyboard. From there it opens up the backend. So many movie have a similar hacker character who can't even type properly, he pecks- and can hack any computer system in seconds without only 5 keystrokes.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I prefer we keep the stereotype of software development as a socially unappealing career, not a job welcome in high society like doctors and lawyers (more like the better-paid-after-insurance vets and dentists). Two reasons.
The less appealing the field is presented as, the lower the supply of labor, and thus the more I'll be paid.
Also, the less appealing the field is presented as, the more it will be populated by people actually interested in problem solving, instead of people pressured by parents to pick this career as the best option, as is the norm in India (and the norm for doctors and lawyers here).
I'm quite content to be seen as socially awkward, but be well paid and work with the right crowd.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think it did a pretty good job of portraying a programmer as a hero. At worst, he's a little shy, but that makes him all the more human. Whether you agree with his means (and to be honest was there any other way given those who tried to do it through legal channels were quickly silenced) or not, you gotta admit it took brains and guts. For a real person he's also rather charismatic. Seems perfect movie hero material to me.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Every other department in the company celebrates their wins with real meals. As soon as developers need to celebrate a win it's order-in pizza again.
I think we should accord a certain level of reverence towards developers. Their superior intelligence and problem-solving abilities justify an above-and-beyond level of respect and admiration from ordinary people.
Since we are stating arbitrary opinions about what everyone should do, I also think we should spend a lot less time obsessing over sports competitions and athletes, and a lot more time obsessing over cutting edge scientific discoveries and innovations. More interest in such topics as, say, anti-aging research, could mean more funding and hence amazing progress within our lifetimes.
But....nobody gives a shit about my opinions. Nor about those of the article's author.
I ran across a blog many years ago that made a good point about programmers: while many of us are keeping up with the joneses on the who's who and what not, the vast majority of software developers are just ordinary people. They drive their ordinary Camry or Accord to work in an office with ordinary cubicles, go home to the suburbs and play with their kids and spouses, do soccer on saturdays, etc. They don't do meetups, conferences, seminars, or follow the latest blogs or programming fashions. They just do their work, go home, and live their lives. The blog called them the "dark matter" programmers because they are the vast majority of working software developers out there, but you'd never know it because they're too busy living life and not living code.
I am alarmed and distressed by a very inaccurate portrayal of developers in movies. First, fictional characters portrayed by actors have no neckbeards or notable lapses in personal hygene. Strike one against method acting. Second, actors portray these characters as able to maintain coherent conversation with female cast members. This is simply inaccurate. Third, there are no cats, piles of empty pizza boxes and mountain dew cans. All of these compound unfavorable stereotypes and mischaracterizations set expectations too high.
I don't mean to be rude but working in IT I have found that dress in the office is very important. I never wear jeans or casual cloths even when all my peers do, why? Because the bosses don't. The people who I need to take me seriously dress and behave professionally so I do the same. It makes a HUGE difference, especially when working with business people outside IT or development.
What does this have to do with developers?
a perennial pet peeve of mine is how professionals in software development are treated like children - name ANY other profession where professionals are given cutesy nicknames ("techie" "geek" etc), given a work environment with games, and so on - sure I have some self respect and refuse to go along with this, but unless the profession as a whole improves its image and refuses to take this sort of behavior no one will be taken seriously
Even more annoying is that everyone other character seems to have the ability to code a virus or hack into a system just because the need arises.
Instead of speculating about what software developers might look like, let's look at some actual photographs of actual software developers.
The Rust programming language contributors list is a good place to start.
Although not every developer has uploaded a photograph, many of them have.
Let's look at some examples.
This is what an actual software developer looks like.
This is what an actual software developer looks like.
This is what an actual software developer looks like.
This is what an actual software developer looks like.
Those are what actual software developers look like.
Every career has negative and positive stereotypes, who cares...
SJW bullshit this is
Who the fuck cares? Do you want superman to be more realistically portrayed as well? How about batman he'd be arrested for destroying huge swaths of the city for very minimal results.
Do you want movies to be littered with ugly stars and starlets pulled straight out of a WalMart bathroom as well?
It's Entertainment, not a depiction of reality.
The movie "Grandma's Boy" set the stereotype of video game developers back by 10 years. No, i don't live with my grandma. No, I don't get to spend all day just 'playing video games' and No, one person cannot make a AAA video game all by themselves.
Then again stoners have had the same stereotype played in hollywood for over two decades. Have you ever seen Tommy Chong in "Cheech and Chong" I don't know any stoners that are actually like that, Thats because the actor Tommy Chong wasn't portraying stoners in real life, he was portraying what Americans THINK stoners are like, hence the artistic genius. The debate is weather portraying outlandish stereotypes helps people realize how silly the stereotypes are, or if they just reinforce existing beliefs.
So...this is coming from the perspective of someone who can count almost 30 years writing code, and managing folks who do, professionally, in a number of environments, and I realize that people entering the workforce today face different problems, but...
Coders, and IT people in general, historically have dressed down as a statement of power. This isn't a made up stereotype, and it isn't a lack of style. It is a deliberate way of asserting that they have special value to the business and that the normal rules do not apply. "You can't do what I do, and you can't simply replace me with a snappy dresser."
I've been hiring developers for more than a few years now and things haveâ changed. 10 years ago a good/confident young developer would show up in jeans. Now the younger folks come to developer interviews dressed like salespeople. I struggle not to perceive the way they dress as a lack of confidence in their abilities, to accept that they grew up during a recession and in a world where IT people are screened by know-nothing HR departments before they can even see a technical manager. I wouldn't dress the way they dress if interviewing for the jobs they want, but I started in a different era.
All of which is to say that some of the stereotypes are not without basis, and are not disparaging to the people who originated those stereotypes. They reflect a deliberate tactic to assert unique power in the business environment.
From Ace Ventura to Silicon Valley, everyone has had their chance to portray the developer.
I haven't seen it, admittedly, but I thought Ace Ventura had a different job. Something about pets?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
This doesn't actually make much sense. It's the same as any other field already. Let's take the example above and change it to construction workers: So, how should we talk about construction workers? First, we should talk about how important their work is. Construction is one of the fastest growing industries in the world as it serves a role in every part of society. Construction workers maintain and build critical parts of our infrastructure. Second, we need to talk about the craft of what they do... we need to show more finished buildings. Every construction worker may use a different set of tools, but across the board their craft is evolving at increasing rates. [...] I think we can drop construction worker stereotypes all together at this point. It's a job people know -- it's time to add some vitamins to that kool-aid. After all, we're just like lawyers, librarians, electricians and cab drivers... we're just people, totally unique and different people. But if there is one thing that unites us, it's a unifying desire to build new things, improve old things, learn when we can and avoid being stereotyped. It's as simple as that.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
For pulling some serious work during overtime we order pizza. When product is done (or important milestone reached) we go out for sushi. Company gladly pays. Happy programmers means happy customers means sweet money for the CEO.
I looked at the Rust contributor list.
They all look like a bunch of fucking nerds to me.
I get what you're saying from an economics or job perspective, but the truth is that programmers don't have to be socially awkward. In fact, many of the greatest programmers are very outgoing and socially adept. Here's a good example of what I mean. He's confident. He's likely talking to an audience. He's sharing his thoughts. He expresses his individuality through his winter hat being worn indoors, through his choice of shirt, through his style of glasses, and through his arm tattoos. He's clean-shaven, and doesn't sport a huge belly. He's somebody you could hang around with, but he can also get the job done when it needs to be done. He's the kind of man you'd want your daughter to date and eventually marry. He's got the aura of a proud breadwinner, supporting his family and dependents. He's a real programmer.
Have gnu, will travel.
I had this job interview for an IT position at a bio tech firm in Redwood City (circa 2011). The recruiter at Robert Half sent me over in a suit and tie. No receptionist in the lobby. So I called the contact number on the desk phone, left a voicemail and took a seat. For the next 90 minutes I sat in the lobby, watching traffic go in and out. The recruiter kept calling to ask where the hell I was. A guy in a track suit who came through three times earlier asked who I was and introduced himself as the hiring manager. The CEO was dressed in blue jeans and a polo shirt. The scientists I walked by were very respectful. Everyone thought I was a venture capitalist.
Over all, your comment is pretty sucky, but I have overheard exactly that conversation many times. That and can Spiderman beat the Hulk.
If you think that developers get a bad rep in movies and tv, what about scientists? If they are not the villain (Dr. Doom, Doc Ock etc) then they are the bumbling fools that created the problem the muscle bound hero has to sort out. But then again, please prove me wrong?
These all look like weirdos that haven't opened their Cheetos yet.
Thank you for finding the four biggest losers to keep this stereotype going.
Back in the 1990s and 2000s, sure, a dot-com programmer wore cool T-shirts, flip-flops, and enjoyed unlimited sodas. It was at the two dot-coms I worked at, back in the day.
Then, once H1B took over, it is now usually a bunch of very polite, mostly quiet, dress shirt + slacks and a belt, types. At least, it seems to be this way now, at the Confidential National Service Provider that I have worked at, for the past 10yrs or so.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
I've never known a single developer who could get away with wearing a hoodie in an office, and I've worked at quite a number of offices over the years during my contractor days.
I'm in the office right now, wearing a hoodie, with the hood up because the AC is blowing on my ears. I'm a software engineer, and lead on my project at a company with 10,000 employees. I primarily design Linux device drivers and help validate new silicon designs before it goes into manufacture (tape-out).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Why are they all white?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
After all, we're just like lawyers, librarians, electricians and cab drivers.
Developers are nothing like lawyers (at least, not in my country). Lawyers and other professionals belong to chartered, professional, bodies that uphold standards of behaviour and work-product.
If you want to see IT professionals portrayed as professionals they would need to act in a professional manner. One that instills confidence in their ability, one that stops "amateurs" from being indistinguishable from career IT people - either in approach, quality of work or social standing.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
says the article. How about googling "programmer" or "software developer". Oh, mainly well dressed people in a professional environment doing software development. Guess the image isn't too bad after all.
But if there is one thing that unites us, it's a unifying desire to build new things, improve old things, learn when we can and avoid being stereotyped
So you're describing the new developer stereotype?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Stop acting like the stereotype.
I'm not convinced developers should change, or that there's actually a problem, but if you want to change your image (again, the value of which is very debatable), maybe stop wearing socks with sandals?
Seriously, developing is not very exciting to the casual audience. You are not going to make a movie about a totally unremarkable guy fixing misaligned text. And even if we take the most excited stuff, like a rocket engine control software, the development process is quite boring, probably even more so than the one involving misaligned text. It is tedious process with a lot of testing. And in case of emergency it becomes a tedious process with less testing and less sleep.
Characters are here to serve the plot and their job is just a mean to an end. When filmmakers portray a hoodie type developer, they don't actually want to portray a developer. They want a recluse character, genius type, manipulating the world from the shadows. In a fantasy setting, it would be a wizard, in modern days, it is a hoodie developer. It is the same for most jobs. Librarians are usually here because the plot calls for a guardian of knowledge characters. An electrician is convenient because he is a stranger invited in other people's homes, though plumbers are often preferred.
Lawyers make great detectives and animate trials, doctors naturally follow wounded heroes, etc... They pick the stereotype first and assign the job after.
That job stereotypes develop around this is an unfortunate consequence, but if it help make better fiction, I won't blame filmmakers for this.
This is a site for nerds, rude square.
We are not equivalent to doctors. Doctors spend a good deal of time in medical school, and have a licensing board overseeing them. For these reasons, at least, doctors are paid much more on average than developers. (The pay-off has to be good in part to compensate for the time in medical school.)
If you are a good enough coder, you don't even need a degree to be paid fairly well.
It's also difficult to outsource or visa-tize doctors because of the licensing process and their trade union. They have a degree of protection from globalization, unlike coders. A high school dropout in Timbuktu may be coding your fav software at $1.50/hr.
And recessions and trends can rock our profession pretty hard. CA after the dot-com crash was nasty job-wise. People still get sick during slumps; doctors are better protected from economic burps. (Don't get complacent; if our stupid UI 'standards' get fixed, many coders will be dumped, flooding the market, for example.)
As far as the comparison to lawyers, we DON'T want that. Lawyers are not very popular. I've heard a lot of cruel lawyer jokes but not so much about coders, outside of silly people-skills digs.
Table-ized A.I.
So I'm olde' - I have no clue what a "deploy" is (RTFA). I 'do' compilers/runtimes/performance tooling and other stuff close to the instruction level. Including some in-kernel device driver work. A very different level of correctness than web stuff. If a web app is crap, it pops up a 404 or some such. If a compiler/os is buggy, you end up with a reboot, or MUCH worse: data corruption. To webbies: this means your DB content gets silently corrupted, your site goes down on a daily basis, etc.
But enough generational whinging. To the exquisite point: Shorts, Sandals (no socks), beard stubble (at best - never been able to be a hipster/lumber-sexual), non-offensive T-shirt have been part of my garb in the past. I've drifted away from the shorts/t-short portion, but never due to mandate.
Next: I do software engineering. Solving difficult/messy challenges in a sustainable/maintainable fashion. Currently: hooking/intercepting SSL at the binary level to detect malware/data exfiltration. Claims by someone of being a Java "Developer" leaves a bitter taste.
WHO GIVES A FUCK.
Seriously. Good god damn. I hope the identity politics ushers in a new hitler if we have to keep hearing THAT bullshit over and over again......
But most of my coworkers aren't white. I was just curious if this was an accident or some kind of subliminal advertising for white power.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I guess me writing menacingly on my basement man cave computer isn't helping the cause. But that's life.
Let's not try and elevate our profession with vapid and sanctimonious poop. Programming as a profession may be expanding, but it's level of quality and prestige is rapidly declining. For every developer whose job it is to maintain the security of people's personal data, there are twenty developers whose sole purpose is to make sure a fake watermelon hat sits perfectly on a throwaway vacation picture. For every developer who is responsible for making sure a chemical mixture is within safe levels, there are twenty developers who are using A-B testing to figure out if a blue background is better than a teal background for selling toenail clippers online. At what point did it become acceptable that a 12 year old taking a vaguely worded three week programming course could be considered industry ready let alone hirable? Sure, there are some developers out there that are maintaining critical parts of our infrastructure, but that is being dwarfed by the levels of work used to maintain poorly our social networks, entertainment, and other novelty parts of society.
Developer tools seem to propagate at a higher, devolving clip. The tool builders primary focus seemingly is to prey on the laziness and sometimes ineptness of developers in exchange for ever increasing licensing fees. Software development paradigms seem to be devolving to a development cycle that optimizes to the timeframe of a single line of cocaine.
I've seen enough CuRL, OpenSSL, libSSH2, and ZLIB code to know that showing more code is not going to help our cause to non-developers. To be blunt, these code and build paradigms don't even help developers.
No entity has the ability to decry their stereotype null and void. Collectively we have to fight to be better than the stereotype. If you can't prove you can handle the whiskey, then you're better off with the Kool-Aid (you'll live longer). From an industry standpoint, we are on a precipice that leads mostly to failure. If you are working on automated cars, then you better not kill anyone. If you are working on financial systems, then you better not lose our grandparents' retirement accounts. If you are working in robotics, then you better not kill anyone you weren't authorized to kill. If you are selling toenail clippers online, use the blue background. If you manipulate non-critical images, then you should reassess your role in life and/or wear a hoodie.
The only thing we have in common with engineers is the following:
If we do one thing wrong, people die. If we do everything right then we get a certificate of appreciation.
In my experience IT folks in Europe never even came close to this strange American stereotype.
it is not limited to programmers, but basically any profession representation is build on stereotypes.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
We too are soulless corporate ghouls who have inveigled themselves into the midst of every action or decision taken in the public space, following the rules despite the wider consequences?
Everyone loves a stereotype :P
Requiem for the American Dream
I feel that dressing fancy isn't important. it's just another mask people put on - like a fake smile. What comes out of your mouth, and what you do, is what really counts. Showing kindness does not cost you anything.
I rely on my ability to figure things out with incomplete information. It can help to practice this in other situations.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Over-privileged white guys who write shitty code that ruins the rest of our lives. Feel the pride!
I like the OP comparison between IT professionals and Medical Professionals (aka Doctors) In my experience the vast majority of IT sickness is fixed with a simple reboot..... pitty doctors don't really have that option. Bring on the cybernetics!!!
my chief developer is a classical guitarist. he wouldn't be caught dead in a hoodie. i don't have any basement dwelling hoodie wearing devs. never understood the stereotype. always seemed like the dilettantes to me.
We all use green-screen CRT's
My answer was more towards dismissing the argument of this article that the stereotype of the classic software developer was misapplied to today's developer because of how great all programmers are today. I also laid bare many prejudices that I have towards my community. Though I'll answer my biases on this aspect of my response.
A top notch programmer should not be wasting time writing A-B tests. In fact, this would be a QA task, or a marketing research request. A programmer would at a minimum write the variant codes, submit both of them to QA. and when requested merge the desired result (if any) to the mainline source. Of course, many programmers don't have access to a competent or existent QA. I have never seen a competent or non-existent marketing department.
Most software development is not glamorous, it is tedious. I would say that the stuff that top-notch programmers do is even less glamorous, but with the benefit of less tedium. Tedium is writing a complete software interface over a period of three weeks for a 300 lb. cash dispenser using Korean specs translated into 2nd grade level English, with diagrams that use happy face/unhappy faces. I wouldn't want to force anyone to watch a movie about that, nor do I hope to ever mention it ever again outside of a job interview.
The stereotype that we software developers willingly focus on menial and tedious tasks that non-programmers will not appreciate will always stand. It wasn't my intent to state that menial tasks or A-B testing needs to go away, nor fracture the programmer community into top and bottom notches.
I really don't see how any alternative alignment of the software development profession would benefit the updating of the stereotype in the views of non programmers.
The core problem with licensing developers is who would be responsible for creating the requirements? Software developers are rarely hired by other software developers, so they really have no say in it (and we software developers are reluctant to demand a say in it). Marketing hires developers at a much higher rate, but their dilemma of not ever knowing what they need means that they also can't write the requirements. Management controls the money, but we as software developers are not comfortable with them monopolizing the requirements, and management under no circumstances wants software developers to control their destiny. As much as I do not like the status quo, I don't have a solution that all of the players involved would agree is better.
At some point software load will level off and drop. We software developers cannot continue to believe that marketing will continue to throw money at us because of their blindness that the effort we charge for things like A-B testing or customer relationship software is actually returning a valid return on investment. If the consumer loses faith in the truth in online reviews, then that money will be turned off. If questionable data collection justified by improvements in AI turns sour due to some horrendous breach of private information, this could cripple a large portion of our industry. I could go further, but it would all devolve to the plots of the Dune prequels and the tenet "that no machine can be made in the image of a man." Needless to say, our industry is treading on very shaky ground.
The level of intelligence of software development hasn't changed, it has just shifted to different aspects. The tools we use help facilitate the transfer, but not the sum amount. It also helps to define the concepts of constructive and destructive laziness. I'll try to explain all this with this example:
If I were to compare my intelligence to the software developers who had to program using punch cards, I would consider myself really stupid. Those people had to keep so much stuff in their head. They had to code at a level of precision and discipline I will never achieve, because their time with a computer was fleeting, precious, and tedious. I rarely can write code that passes a compiler first pass, and if I do I am highly dubious that what I wrote truly works. One of their tools I had the privilege to witness was a mechanical card sorting machine that would organize a large stack of punch cards. If one were to drop their stack of punch cards, and they had the discipline to number them properly, the device would quickly organize the cards into the correct order. Now this tool's purpose was for pure laziness, but this laziness was constructive because it saved precious time.
Though these programmers had level of precision that I will never see in my lifetime, it came at a cost that their programs are very simplistic to the things that I can achieve, with my horrible typing skills and wealth of computer access.
A developer will continue to require a certain level of combined intelligence, but can shift the burden to our tools. The simpler the tool, the easier to maintain, and the easier those tools will transfer. If the tool becomes too specialized, its beauty and constructive laziness will befall the fate of the magical card sorting machine. Complicated tools provide the illusion of acceptable stupidity. If one doesn't know how to properly use a hammer, a nail gun just makes one's stupidly more prolific to see. Complicated tools require somebody smart enough to create the tool and the infinite time and patience to maintain it for lesser intelligent people to use improperly. Very few people have the desire to do this, even fewer for free. A really good example of a complicated tool that has gone overboard is Curl. So much effort has gone into the command line inter