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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   35888 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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This is where the discussion turns to "why do we expect programmers to be obsessive and do their profession also as a hobby when nobody expects that from accountants or civil engineers or surgeons or lawyers?" And some accusations that programming is toxic and elitist and exclusionary, biased towards basement dweller neckbeard incel nerd techbros who have nothing better in their lives than messing with a computer.

As this often comes up in discussions, I have tried to think it through and here's my current opinion. Those other jobs are perhaps less fun on the whole (fewer people enjoy them as a hobby). Those other jobs are also not available for practice for kids. At the same time I would expect that good professionals would tend to keep up with developments in their field even just out of interest. And the professional skills of engineers or mechanics of any sort probably correlate to how much they tinkered with things as kids. Whether this correlation is due to direct causation or the common-cause type is another question.

The complaints typically come from two places. One is DEI, the other is from older devs with families and outdated skills. Maybe a third one: accusing tech companies of implicitly requiring unpaid labor for skill development and exploiting the naive twenty something guys and depressing wages because "its supposed to be fun, here's some pizza and a ping pong table, now go make me some profits."

People who have excellent careers do have their career as a lifestyle. You don't become a star lawyer by doing your 9 to 5 and going home. You don't become a star surgeon by working regular hours. If you want to do accounting for a municipal office, you don't have to worry about accounting in your spare time. If you want to manage the finances of a hedge fund, your world is centred around your career.

If you want to have a fairly regular job as a coder you don't have to center your life around it. If you want to be skilled enough to be the tech lead of a graphics engine or writing the coolest new thing in fin tech you are going to have to work very hard to develop a high proficiency. Programming is very much a skill based profession and those who really want to master it will be better at it. You don't become a star musician, tennis player, chess player, coder or surgeon unless really make it your life's mission.

With that said many lawyers write wills for middle class people and many surgeons are removing tonsils while working regular hours.

Okay, but is there anything interesting or unusual in this aspect regarding programming? Why does this always come up when debating software dev?

My guess is that there is an abundance of otherwise low-status kids who, by virtue of spending too much time "in the basement" can punch above their weight. And that these avenues are not properly gatekept by usual prestige and status gatekeepers. Or is there some other reason?

A surgeon can't do surgery at home, but they are probably thinking about it, reading about it or spending more time at work.

First, a note on motivations: It's possible that autist techbros make the field the way it is. But people who usually advocate this position seem like they should also like your skill-development theory, because they are probably a fan of blaming Management for exploiting workers. The reason for the discourse is IMO because the autist nerds are low-status and so should be blamed and shunned even moreso than Management.

Second, an additional theory that likewise doesn't blame nerds: software is in its infancy, and the training and techniques are not well-studied enough. Once we learn more about it, it will become legible and really become a job that an everydayman can do, like plumbing.

Third, which came to mind after writing the second: all of software is automation. Any problems that become well-studied enough to be solved well, become automated away and hidden under layers of abstraction, which is how we got to the present day. With the newfound time, programmers are expected to solve the next ladder-rung of problems. Unlike car repair or plumbing which have physical movements that robots can't do easily, and so always need a person to put in some elbow grease.

I just had an idea. What if this is analogous to slut shaming? What if the point is that the "autists" give away something (programming labor) for too cheap because they enjoy it, thereby depressing the price on it? Young women slut shame their peers who are too eager to have sex with every guy for fun, because this no longer allows the more modest women to place demands on guys and sooner or later the default expectation becomes that every woman must quickly put out.

It's just an overload of the term "expect". It's not that we "expect", in the sense of having a social demand, that good programmers will be obsessive and do their profession as a hobby, it's that we "expect", in the sense of anticipated experience, that programmers won't be good unless it also happens to be the case that they're obsessive and do their profession as a hobby.

Of course, that instantly turns it into a signalling mechanism and Goodhart's it to death. But in spaces where there's less pressure on quality, the pattern is still observable.

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