alt Hacker NewsEgo, empathy, and humility at work
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> The following is a short, incomplete list of typical statements we as developers might say or hear at work. If you parse them more precisely each one is an attempt at self-justification: […]
> “We should start using this new tool in our pipeline.”
> “We should never use that new tool in our pipeline.”
I don’t get what’s “wrong” with those two. There’s no justification (self- or otherwise) whatsoever in any of those statements, not even a hint of an attempt. Justification, as I understand it, requires a “why” (possibly, only suggestively implied, but nonetheless present in some form) and I see absolutely none, just a call to action.
If someone sees it, can you please explain?
Thanks, Matt!
This is a difficult thing to talk about, and I’m glad you did.
I wish could say we age out of this through experience, but I feel like it goes this way: either people respect your experience or they don’t and either you respect your own ignorance or you don’t.
As I’ve gotten older, I forget shit all of the time, and don’t keep up with all of the latest. Then I do things and others do things that are terrible, and I don’t do or say anything about it. I can’t convince anyone anymore that what they’re doing is terrible, and I can’t stop the terrible behavior in myself as I get worse, because I can’t keep up.
I think the article mixes different things.
> That’s the way we’ve always done it.
That's not ego, that's laziness. At least based on experience, engineers are reluctant to change simply because they feel comfortable enough with their codebases.
> Assign it to me. Nobody else will be able to fix it.
Yep, that looks like ego.
> This feature is too important to assign to the junior dev.
Bad communication style perhaps? There are features that require a senior to drive them. What's wrong with that? Sure thing, I wouldn't phrase it as the author, but I don't see the ego anywhere. I see transparency and being upfront.
> We should start using this new tool in our pipeline
Again, perhaps it's just bad communication style. An engineer that says this is someone who cares enough to suggest things, even when nobody is asking. I know engineers who never suggest (or gatekeep) anything, they simply don't care
>Simply mashing a few letters together can be empowering for ourselves while being exclusionary for others. It’s an artifact—albeit a small one—of our egos. We know what the technobabble means. Our justified place in the universe is maintained.
Your Oh So Humble Ego has you thinking there's some ulterior motive to me typing 3 letters instead of 20.
It's always a challenge to write on topics like empathy and ego because of how heavily they are steeped in your own experiences, both professional and personal, and especially to do so without falling into the same ego-driven traps you describe.
What experience did the author have, for example, to link his various examples to both gatekeeping and calling people "wizards and towers with their dusty books and potions"? I imagine there's something behind that.
The risk, or challenge, is that you take your own ego-driven experiences and try to make them generic, maybe redefining a few terms along the way for convenience. Someone who has had a run-in with someone more experienced, for example, and miscalculated it as ego or gatekeeping. There's nothing wrong with that as a lived experience but of course, empathy goes both ways and that includes understanding why exactly someone may be 'gatekeeping', which is what this post seems to be about, really.
Daily standup being absolutely useless has nothing to do with ego.
Not a developer myself, I work in finance and work with developers from time to time. From my experience the issue is developers assume because they have some sense of self evaluated expertise in whatever they do they also can extrapolate that expertise in things they have absolutely no clue about.
Surprisingly, Anne Rice novels do a good job of discussing experience, respect, and power dynamics. For anyone interested in this subject, I recommend her Vampire series.
I don't believe armchair diagnostics is a productive way to inspire change in others. Even if you happened to be correct, which I won't opine on, it's using pop-psych to make people malleable rather than empower them to growth.
why should experts dumb down their interpersonal discussion for perusal by the unaware ? if gatekeeping anything is weak , why is it ok to gatekeep virtue by stating that empathy and humility are obviously virtuous ? honestly some of the article's points are good but anyone capable of understanding and implementing these practices was probably not that egotistical to start with. I don't particularly enjoy the focus on dev egoism when the manager class is by design de-empathized (iirc commanding another human intrinsically down regulates empathy). anyway all of this ramble is definitely egotistical itself and that's intentional - everything is indeed so much bigger than us as individuals , without some form of separation we are liable to be subsumed.
> As developers we’re more susceptible to letting our egos run free.
Kind of funny because it shows a complete lack of empathy. Comes after the author claims:
> In our daily lives empathy and humility are obvious virtues we aspire to
If this was the case why are so few people humble and empathetic?
>Breaking News! Developers Have Egos!
That concerns cleaners too. Ego is a universal currency and a strong element of the human nature.
Counterexample to give stark contrast, but in the field of aviation:
The Most DISTURBING Pilot I've Ever Investigated! https://youtu.be/DyY4AtpQLy8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlink_Flight_5719
PSA: Please don't be like Marvin.
> Gatekeeping is weak unless you've been hired to literally guard a gate.
What a silly argument. So money is the only valid reason to guard a gate? Many people guard gates for the simple reason that they believe they should be guarded.
Gatekeeping itself does fuel some of the toxicity, but much of that toxicity also just comes from internet comments being more like performing for an audience than talking to a person.