<story><title>Be nice to programmers</title><url>http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/be-nice-to-programmers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>Salespeople make the sale sometimes. A doctor sees someone walk back in for their checkup who couldn&apos;t walk a week ago. A technical support person often says goodbye to a cheerful happy customer. Musicians may have to deal with criticism in the papers, but if they delist their phone number it&apos;s because of the &lt;i&gt;fans&lt;/i&gt;, generally, not the critics. Actually that goes for almost all the creative industries.&lt;p&gt;Developers have very little positive to go off of, and few professions have customers as discerning and grumpy as compilers.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t claim it&apos;s utterly unique, and everybody&apos;s got their own problems. But I don&apos;t think it&apos;s healthy or a good idea to ignore the problems we face because some people sometimes in some particular way have things even worse.</text></item><item><author>AerieC</author><text>But this is true of any &quot;producing&quot; profession. Any time you&apos;re creating something and &quot;putting it out there&quot;, there&apos;s going to be a huge stream of criticism from every direction. Artists, writers, musicians, engineers, carpenters, etc.--all of their work is constantly under scrutiny by &quot;the customer&quot; and/or &quot;the boss&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Even non-producing professions have to deal with constant scrutiny of their performance and negativity. Salespeople might make one sale out of 20 attempts. Anyone in a medical profession is under extreme pressure to not make a mistake (and sometimes things go wrong even when you do everything right).&lt;p&gt;There are very few professions who don&apos;t have to deal with the whole &quot;focusing on the negative&quot; thing (I can&apos;t actually think of any). It&apos;s pretty much a fact of life that if you want quality, you have to systematically eliminate your weak spots.</text></item><item><author>jerf</author><text>The punches are pulled in this piece. Not only is the compiler continuously complaining, once you ship code, your customers call in to complain about every conceivable bug and a great deal that weren&apos;t conceivable. You can have thousands of happy customers, but you as the developer will hear from the three guys with obscure configurations and bizarre setups encountering bugs. Shipping software is ten seconds of &quot;Hooray&quot;, followed immediate by a breakdown of what terrible things are already wrong with the next release.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m surprised any of us can hold up under the withering torrent of negativity that is any serious programming job.&lt;p&gt;I actually don&apos;t mean this as a complaint, either. I&apos;ve adjusted. I&apos;ve been doing this for 15 years. But I&apos;ve been sort of stepping back lately and looking at my job from other points of view, especially as I deal with coworkers who aren&apos;t so adjusted/adapted, and not only do I now understand where they are coming from, I find myself wondering how adaptation is even possible. It&apos;s absurd how negative the interactions are. Keep track someday of your professional interactions and look at how many of them are negative; bug reports, missed deadlines, &quot;we can&apos;t do that&quot;, etc. Or perhaps, don&apos;t, if you&apos;ve never thought about this before. I sure hope you have an otherwise positive workplace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bradleyland</author><text>This is one of those cases where I wish we could all walk a mile in each other&apos;s shoes.&lt;p&gt;I can program. I am not &quot;a&quot; programmer. I&apos;ve written a Ruby Gem or two, and I&apos;ve even had some (very) small contributions accepted to widely used gems. I am really a project manager, but I recongize the value of understanding the tools that are used to build the projects I oversee.&lt;p&gt;I can sell. I am not &quot;a&quot; salesman. I&apos;m a good listener. I&apos;m able to establish positive relationships relatively quickly. After meetings, I receive positive feedback from customers We&apos;re a small company, so I often end up sitting in on sales meetings.  I find it&apos;s valuable to have a first-hand view in what customer objections are.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve walked a mile in both sets of shoes. I can tell you, unquestionably, that both careers can be equally frustrating. It&apos;s easy to center your world view around your own challenges, but to believe that yours are unique and more important than others crosses the line to narcissism.&lt;p&gt;Sales people have it plenty rough. Not only are they constantly hammered by objections from customers, but any time they take those items back to the development team, they&apos;re met with similar apprehension about adding to the backlog.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; But I don&apos;t think it&apos;s healthy or a good idea to ignore the problems we face because some people sometimes in some particular way have things even worse.&lt;p&gt;Who suggested that we ignore the problems? The important part about recognizing someone else&apos;s challenges is that we should seek to support each other in both directions.</text></comment>
<story><title>Be nice to programmers</title><url>http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/be-nice-to-programmers</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jerf</author><text>Salespeople make the sale sometimes. A doctor sees someone walk back in for their checkup who couldn&apos;t walk a week ago. A technical support person often says goodbye to a cheerful happy customer. Musicians may have to deal with criticism in the papers, but if they delist their phone number it&apos;s because of the &lt;i&gt;fans&lt;/i&gt;, generally, not the critics. Actually that goes for almost all the creative industries.&lt;p&gt;Developers have very little positive to go off of, and few professions have customers as discerning and grumpy as compilers.&lt;p&gt;I wouldn&apos;t claim it&apos;s utterly unique, and everybody&apos;s got their own problems. But I don&apos;t think it&apos;s healthy or a good idea to ignore the problems we face because some people sometimes in some particular way have things even worse.</text></item><item><author>AerieC</author><text>But this is true of any &quot;producing&quot; profession. Any time you&apos;re creating something and &quot;putting it out there&quot;, there&apos;s going to be a huge stream of criticism from every direction. Artists, writers, musicians, engineers, carpenters, etc.--all of their work is constantly under scrutiny by &quot;the customer&quot; and/or &quot;the boss&quot;.&lt;p&gt;Even non-producing professions have to deal with constant scrutiny of their performance and negativity. Salespeople might make one sale out of 20 attempts. Anyone in a medical profession is under extreme pressure to not make a mistake (and sometimes things go wrong even when you do everything right).&lt;p&gt;There are very few professions who don&apos;t have to deal with the whole &quot;focusing on the negative&quot; thing (I can&apos;t actually think of any). It&apos;s pretty much a fact of life that if you want quality, you have to systematically eliminate your weak spots.</text></item><item><author>jerf</author><text>The punches are pulled in this piece. Not only is the compiler continuously complaining, once you ship code, your customers call in to complain about every conceivable bug and a great deal that weren&apos;t conceivable. You can have thousands of happy customers, but you as the developer will hear from the three guys with obscure configurations and bizarre setups encountering bugs. Shipping software is ten seconds of &quot;Hooray&quot;, followed immediate by a breakdown of what terrible things are already wrong with the next release.&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m surprised any of us can hold up under the withering torrent of negativity that is any serious programming job.&lt;p&gt;I actually don&apos;t mean this as a complaint, either. I&apos;ve adjusted. I&apos;ve been doing this for 15 years. But I&apos;ve been sort of stepping back lately and looking at my job from other points of view, especially as I deal with coworkers who aren&apos;t so adjusted/adapted, and not only do I now understand where they are coming from, I find myself wondering how adaptation is even possible. It&apos;s absurd how negative the interactions are. Keep track someday of your professional interactions and look at how many of them are negative; bug reports, missed deadlines, &quot;we can&apos;t do that&quot;, etc. Or perhaps, don&apos;t, if you&apos;ve never thought about this before. I sure hope you have an otherwise positive workplace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steve8918</author><text>And if you&apos;re a programmer, sometimes you fix the big bug that a huge sale depends on, and sometimes you create a feature that your customers love.&lt;p&gt;And, I take it you&apos;ve never ever been in sales.&lt;p&gt;What many companies do is put everyone&apos;s name on a board, and everyone&apos;s sales are complete public knowledge.  Every time you make a sale, you walk up the board and add another tick to your column.  It&apos;s a way to shame people into not being the worst salesperson in the company.  And at the end of the month/quarter, you start all over again.  My closest friend as well as my cousin went through this process, and quit after a couple of years of having their self-esteem completely trampled upon.</text></comment>