This whole article resonated with me, but especially the conclusion: The number of times I have nearly quit and left the tech industry because of this is depressing for someone with only 4-5 years...
This whole article resonated with me, but especially the conclusion:
When I started programming, I heard a lot about how programmers are down to earth, not like those elitist folks who have uniforms involving suits and ties. You can even wear t-shirts to work! But if you think programmers aren't elitist, try wearing a suit and tie to an interview sometime. You'll have to go above and beyond to prove that you're not a bad cultural fit. We like to think that we're different from all those industries that judge people based on appearance, but we do the same thing, only instead of saying that people are a bad fit because they don't wear ties, we say they're a bad fit because they do, and instead of saying people aren't smart enough because they don't have the right pedigree… wait, that's exactly the same.
The number of times I have nearly quit and left the tech industry because of this is depressing for someone with only 4-5 years under their belt. Its been so prevalent in every company I've worked for (not every engineer, but its always around half or more) and on every community I've tried being a part of. It's sad because I like technology and the people who aren't super elitist are great and I love to work with them, but man do I dread/avoid going to conferences, meetups, or posting on forums. Tech folks (again, in my personal experience) love to believe that coding requires near-genius level intelligence and only the best and brightest like them are capable of writing good code, when in reality I'd argue given training, anyone could do 90% of coding jobs.
I am not sure what to think. I see kids get into programmers pretty easily and there are also people who really struggle. I don't think being a programmer makes you genius. Someone with a good...
I am not sure what to think. I see kids get into programmers pretty easily and there are also people who really struggle.
I don't think being a programmer makes you genius. Someone with a good attitude who is determined probably has a good chance, depending on what help they get.
But I don't think everyone can do it either? Someone with exposure to a wide variety of people would have a clearer idea of this, but I do have friends that I wouldn't really recommend taking it up.
I would argue we are saying the same thing though we are thinking about different problems/ideas. I am arguing against the idea that I have seen (and had people tell my friends/family) that they...
I would argue we are saying the same thing though we are thinking about different problems/ideas. I am arguing against the idea that I have seen (and had people tell my friends/family) that they simply aren't smart enough to be a software engineer and that no matter how much time or energy they spend trying to learn it they will never understand it/be good at it because they simply aren't smart enough to understand the complicated art that is coding. I mostly see it come from STEM people who think anyone who got a humanities degree did it because they weren't smart enough to do STEM. Kind of like "race realists" who think brown people are born with lower average IQ and thus are born to be dumber than white people, but less racist (well, sometimes. The two aren't mutually exclusive).
Someone with exposure to a wide variety of people would have a clearer idea of this, but I do have friends that I wouldn't really recommend taking it up.
I agree! I know plenty of people that I wouldn't recommend taking IT/coding. I don't think software engineering plays to their strengths, and/or I don't think they would enjoy it. What I am saying is that they COULD do it if push came to shove. I am saying that, barring extenuating circumstances, if someone wants to learn to code and are given the opportunity, there is no reason they can't learn how. There is no one who is "too stupid to learn to code". It may require a different teaching method, they might take longer to grasp some concepts, but they can eventually get there.
I had a professor in my first semester that was like this. It (along with other things) made me quit compsci, and start again a year later. It can get super demotivating if you want to get into...
I had a professor in my first semester that was like this. It (along with other things) made me quit compsci, and start again a year later. It can get super demotivating if you want to get into something and you get this attitude like 'no one needs bad programmers, half of you will be out by the end of the semester' all this kind of shit, when in reality positive reinforcement could keep probably >3/4 people in the race
I did exactly this, and got the job. My company in particular is an excellent environment and places a lot of emphasis on work/life balance however. I would absolutely believe I'm not in the norm.
But if you think programmers aren't elitist, try wearing a suit and tie to an interview sometime
I did exactly this, and got the job. My company in particular is an excellent environment and places a lot of emphasis on work/life balance however. I would absolutely believe I'm not in the norm.
Yeah I don't wear full suit/tie when I was interviewing, but I was always wearing dress shoes, suit pants, button down shirt + tie (+ sweater sometimes). I always dress nice for an interview (not...
Yeah I don't wear full suit/tie when I was interviewing, but I was always wearing dress shoes, suit pants, button down shirt + tie (+ sweater sometimes). I always dress nice for an interview (not that I agree with judging people for not dressing up for an interview).
I agree with your final sentence. Are you in top companies that comprise a lot of the other 10% though? I’ve barely encountered any elitism working at Zendesk, Canva, and Atlassian. What are...
I agree with your final sentence. Are you in top companies that comprise a lot of the other 10% though? I’ve barely encountered any elitism working at Zendesk, Canva, and Atlassian.
I work at a very unique mid-sized tech company. I don't think we have the biggest name-draw but we definitely have a lot of really smart engineers. Example: We send a few engineers to KubeCon...
I work at a very unique mid-sized tech company. I don't think we have the biggest name-draw but we definitely have a lot of really smart engineers. Example: We send a few engineers to KubeCon every year to see what people are doing in Kubernetes and we consistently find that we are 3-5 years ahead of what anyone else is doing. There are other examples, but I'll use Kubernetes because containers/orchestration/microservices are one of the big "hot technologies" right now.
I'm possibly (probably) using elitism as a bit too much of a blanket term, but it usually comes down to "being shitty towards people who don't immediately understand something". Examples:
Writing really complicated code and documenting none of it and being frustrated when people don't understand it on the first read through. Must be because the person isn't smart enough to understand anything.
Being condescending towards people who don't have degrees.
Being condescending towards the people who work in the building that make the office run (janitors, cafeteria workers, shuttle drivers) and assuming that because they are in software they are (a) smarter and better and (b) more important than them.
The classic IT "Person who doesn't work with computers doesn't understand how to do something, going to mock and laugh at them"
Thinking that the solution to "customers can't figure out how to use this tool" is "well our customers are stupid" and not "maybe the tool is hard to use / isn't right for this problem".
Taking bug reports as personal attacks on their intelligence and lashing out any time someone points out a problem.
I count these as elitism even though it is also insecurity/ego because the vibe I get is usually "other people are the problem because I am so much smarter than them there's no way the mistake is on ME, it must be THEM." and its just frustrating. That's just work related. There is also the regular political arguments of trying to explain to them that poor people deserve to live and not be miserable, that racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia are bad, etc. where, again, the underlying thought seems to be "I am better than <group of people>".
Things have definitely gotten better since I moved to my new company that really focuses on diversity and inclusion, but man is classism really ingrained into people and (again, in my experience) software people are not afraid to let you know that they don't give a fuck about poor people. Not that I think that is unique to software fields, but it is very present in software fields and as someone who grew up lower middle class and engaged to someone who grew up well below the poverty line it is exhausting and depressing to hear how my peers would have viewed me 8 years ago.
I thankfully have not experienced the things you list. I have it much better than you. For context, I work at a software company which is by Australian standards very prestigious. Yikes man. USA?...
I thankfully have not experienced the things you list. I have it much better than you. For context, I work at a software company which is by Australian standards very prestigious.
software people are not afraid to let you know that they don't give a fuck about poor people
Yikes man. USA? It's a fact of western society that nearly everyone not poor doesn't really care about poor people, but there's a norm to not be open and proud about it.
IMO this is a big issue that honestly I never thought about until it became a big problem for me. I moved from software engineering to infrastructure at a company that runs all its own servers. We...
IMO this is a big issue that honestly I never thought about until it became a big problem for me. I moved from software engineering to infrastructure at a company that runs all its own servers. We could cut 1/3 our server usage if engineers gave any consideration to hardware we run on. But they don't.
By going after people with the most sought after qualifications, TrendCo has narrowed their options down to either paying out the nose for employees, or offering non-competitive compensation packages.
[...]
On the candidate side of hiring, I've experienced both being in demand and being almost unhireable.
This whole article resonated with me, but especially the conclusion:
The number of times I have nearly quit and left the tech industry because of this is depressing for someone with only 4-5 years under their belt. Its been so prevalent in every company I've worked for (not every engineer, but its always around half or more) and on every community I've tried being a part of. It's sad because I like technology and the people who aren't super elitist are great and I love to work with them, but man do I dread/avoid going to conferences, meetups, or posting on forums. Tech folks (again, in my personal experience) love to believe that coding requires near-genius level intelligence and only the best and brightest like them are capable of writing good code, when in reality I'd argue given training, anyone could do 90% of coding jobs.
I am not sure what to think. I see kids get into programmers pretty easily and there are also people who really struggle.
I don't think being a programmer makes you genius. Someone with a good attitude who is determined probably has a good chance, depending on what help they get.
But I don't think everyone can do it either? Someone with exposure to a wide variety of people would have a clearer idea of this, but I do have friends that I wouldn't really recommend taking it up.
I would argue we are saying the same thing though we are thinking about different problems/ideas. I am arguing against the idea that I have seen (and had people tell my friends/family) that they simply aren't smart enough to be a software engineer and that no matter how much time or energy they spend trying to learn it they will never understand it/be good at it because they simply aren't smart enough to understand the complicated art that is coding. I mostly see it come from STEM people who think anyone who got a humanities degree did it because they weren't smart enough to do STEM. Kind of like "race realists" who think brown people are born with lower average IQ and thus are born to be dumber than white people, but less racist (well, sometimes. The two aren't mutually exclusive).
I agree! I know plenty of people that I wouldn't recommend taking IT/coding. I don't think software engineering plays to their strengths, and/or I don't think they would enjoy it. What I am saying is that they COULD do it if push came to shove. I am saying that, barring extenuating circumstances, if someone wants to learn to code and are given the opportunity, there is no reason they can't learn how. There is no one who is "too stupid to learn to code". It may require a different teaching method, they might take longer to grasp some concepts, but they can eventually get there.
I had a professor in my first semester that was like this. It (along with other things) made me quit compsci, and start again a year later. It can get super demotivating if you want to get into something and you get this attitude like 'no one needs bad programmers, half of you will be out by the end of the semester' all this kind of shit, when in reality positive reinforcement could keep probably >3/4 people in the race
I did exactly this, and got the job. My company in particular is an excellent environment and places a lot of emphasis on work/life balance however. I would absolutely believe I'm not in the norm.
Yeah I don't wear full suit/tie when I was interviewing, but I was always wearing dress shoes, suit pants, button down shirt + tie (+ sweater sometimes). I always dress nice for an interview (not that I agree with judging people for not dressing up for an interview).
I agree with your final sentence. Are you in top companies that comprise a lot of the other 10% though? I’ve barely encountered any elitism working at Zendesk, Canva, and Atlassian.
What are examples of elitism that you’ve seen?
I work at a very unique mid-sized tech company. I don't think we have the biggest name-draw but we definitely have a lot of really smart engineers. Example: We send a few engineers to KubeCon every year to see what people are doing in Kubernetes and we consistently find that we are 3-5 years ahead of what anyone else is doing. There are other examples, but I'll use Kubernetes because containers/orchestration/microservices are one of the big "hot technologies" right now.
I'm possibly (probably) using elitism as a bit too much of a blanket term, but it usually comes down to "being shitty towards people who don't immediately understand something". Examples:
Writing really complicated code and documenting none of it and being frustrated when people don't understand it on the first read through. Must be because the person isn't smart enough to understand anything.
Being condescending towards people who don't have degrees.
Being condescending towards the people who work in the building that make the office run (janitors, cafeteria workers, shuttle drivers) and assuming that because they are in software they are (a) smarter and better and (b) more important than them.
The classic IT "Person who doesn't work with computers doesn't understand how to do something, going to mock and laugh at them"
Thinking that the solution to "customers can't figure out how to use this tool" is "well our customers are stupid" and not "maybe the tool is hard to use / isn't right for this problem".
Taking bug reports as personal attacks on their intelligence and lashing out any time someone points out a problem.
I count these as elitism even though it is also insecurity/ego because the vibe I get is usually "other people are the problem because I am so much smarter than them there's no way the mistake is on ME, it must be THEM." and its just frustrating. That's just work related. There is also the regular political arguments of trying to explain to them that poor people deserve to live and not be miserable, that racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia are bad, etc. where, again, the underlying thought seems to be "I am better than <group of people>".
Things have definitely gotten better since I moved to my new company that really focuses on diversity and inclusion, but man is classism really ingrained into people and (again, in my experience) software people are not afraid to let you know that they don't give a fuck about poor people. Not that I think that is unique to software fields, but it is very present in software fields and as someone who grew up lower middle class and engaged to someone who grew up well below the poverty line it is exhausting and depressing to hear how my peers would have viewed me 8 years ago.
I thankfully have not experienced the things you list. I have it much better than you. For context, I work at a software company which is by Australian standards very prestigious.
Yikes man. USA? It's a fact of western society that nearly everyone not poor doesn't really care about poor people, but there's a norm to not be open and proud about it.
IMO this is a big issue that honestly I never thought about until it became a big problem for me. I moved from software engineering to infrastructure at a company that runs all its own servers. We could cut 1/3 our server usage if engineers gave any consideration to hardware we run on. But they don't.
From the article:
[...]