One of my peeves are the age old. "What does your significant other do?" "Oh they just work with computers."
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One of my peeves are the age old. "What does your significant other do?" "Oh they just work with computers."
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Ravin Rau -
Muzaffar Hossain -
Hanzla Baig -
Chris Jarvis -
Top comments (25)
A pet peeve of mine is more along the lines of a culture issue I'm struggling with, so feel free to call me out of it doesn't fit.
It's the notion that if you're working in technology today, you are a young, single person with no other major responsibilities to anyone other than yourself. As a newer developer and father of two, I hate running up against that notion. Which is why it makes me happy when people like Dave Rupert talk about how damn hard it is to learn all of the new things when you have two kids, or when Leah Silber MC'd EmberConf holding her toddler.
Is there a video/post about Leah? That sounds amazing!
I tried finding some video of it, but this was told to me by someone who attended Emberconf. If I find it, I'll let you know!
Thanks!
Some inside IT peeves of mine...
One that really bugs me is with other IT people thinking that just because I'm nearing 60 that I haven't kept my skills updated or even that I'm not capable to doing so.
Another peeve is IT recruiters creating listings for "Rockstar Ninja Programmers". Should you wear a leather jacket and strap on a guitar or sport a shinobi shozoku and a ninjatō when you go to the interview? Other "we're such a cool place to work" cliches ("we have foosball tables and play beer pong!") are also annoying but that one annoys me the most.
Totally agree I think some people forget and dont appreciate that modern languages, frameworks and practices are better because of the people who suffered before them.
Most IT stereotypes are useless junk.
Our industry's culture should revolve around a desire to do good work and follow our fascinations in the craft and the image should reflect this. But this is not the case. The IT stereotype expects you to act a certain way, believe certain things and be a certain gender.
IT itself can be pretty bad about self-adornment of stereotypical images, but the broader world's view of the craft seems like it's 30 years behind sometimes.
Beyond the more cultural things, here's a pet peeve of mine that I've encountered in the past: When I'm talking about computers I'm expected to be a wizard, know everything and never make mistakes. When I'm talking about anything else I'm "the computer guy" and should stay in my lane. I'm a marketing major with a diverse background and did lots of different work before settling on mostly coding. It's obnoxious how much you can get pigeonholed.
I'm a certified and experienced teacher with a Master's in Education who does IT for my school district, so I hear you about being pigeonholed as the computer wizard.
But my pet peeve is when people ask me to "do my magic." It's not magic, and calling it magic really blows off the hard work I've put in to learning these skills in addition to the rest of my background.
Ach, you computer guys should avoid talking politics and culture, go back to your terminal!
:P
This is one is debatable but I personally don't like the Front-End Developer versus Back-End Developer versus Full-Stack Developer tropes in hiring. One person can have great skills across all of those, and even many skills within each of those, and not have to be forced to "label" themselves as one kind of a developer or another. Front-End versus Back-End has some unique frameworks but the skillsets themselves are not specifically unique or specialized.
Another one I find annoying is hiring for languages or specific frameworks. So many organizations want something like a Python developer but wouldn't entertain someone who knew Ruby/Rails really well, or some other dynamic language.
Another stereotype is the general "Eye-Tee" stereotype. I never say I am in "IT" because the connotation that many people think of when they hear it (or at least when I do) is some back-office network support or sysadmin or call center person from India. And it generally has this low-brow reputation associated with it, often associated with some dissatisfactory experience ("Reboot your computer" didn't fix the problem... for the 3rd time!).
When you say IT in India too, there is this problem if being considered along with 'back office support' jobs. But do keep in mind, when we talk about IT jobs in India, back office support isn't the only one that comes under it. We have very good developers here too and very good work going on in Bangalore, Hyderabad and many other cities, both corporates and startups. :)
This tag of a cheap Indian IT labourer being put on by people who think Machine Learning and call centre support, both to be things done by 'IT people' using computers, to be the same, does bother me a lot.
I just go by the title "Programmer" for these reasons. It's a good title describing what I do without limiting the scope or field.
That programmers are asocial, anti-social, arrogant or otherwise. Good programmers are sociable and agreeable. Good programmers don't work in a realm of silence, or on their own. Good programmers understand more than code and willing to work with others.
"Oh they just work with computers."
This one doesn't bother me as much.In fact, quite the opposite: I think we as developers put too much emphasis on how important our career is and how it is tied to our personality.
For example, my step-dad is a truck driver. No one, except other truck-drivers care about what model of rig he drives.
All that said, I make it a point that I will not be my friends and family's on-call IT guy :P
Yes thats second on my list. Being roped into salvage a 5 year old desktop for a family friend . First thing I say is buy a new one they insist their not going too. I just install ccleaner run it and say all set !
I "Like it" when my "friends" come and ask me «You work with computers, could you fix my computer?, Windows won't boot!»...
I have a programmer-friend who answers this requests with «when your oven is broken, do you ask a Chef to fix it?»
when your oven is broken, do you ask a Chef to fix it?
Good answer ;) I should remember that.
I need to chip in
The notion from business people that since Google and Facebook deliver software at scale, and fast, is that you are just as capable. Hey, if Facebook can, you, being a developer after all, are just as awesome and thats when an endless stream of misunderstanding, confusion and pain come from.
"Oh, just add a simple Facebook login" does not translate to a simpler implementation of Oauth2 token passing
"Its a simple matching algorithm" does not ease off any of the underlying tech that translates to bounds checking, sorting and optimization techniques
"You need to make it simple for the users so they dont think" is probably the one that got me over the edge to the point I am just today returning to some code after three weeks of regaining sanity after binging weeks trying to deliver a 80 thousand dollar app with myself and my trustee single EC2
I hate business people. On the other hand, I also love them. My take here is that business people need to be constantly involved in the technology.
Same goes for coders. Business isnt "just talking to people".
The stereotype that annoys me personally the most is that being a good software developer is equivalent to being good at writing code.
People just completely skip over the fact that developing software is a team effort and, as in any team, communication skills are crucial.
When asking themselves "I wish to progress my career further, what should I do today?" I wish more people would answer: