This is something that's been gnawing at me for a little while and I had no real answer for. I got into development after working in physical security and manufacturing for about 10 years (total). I got used to taking a ton of verbal and even sometimes physical abuse from coworkers, my bosses and from clients (as a security guard). You're meant to just "deal with it" because that's expected in those industries. I kept hearing the same thing about tech, but... I had a passion for games, computers and technology in general, fell in love with programming and decided to just go for it. I interviewed with a few places where the hiring team felt very familiar. And strangely, I almost felt a weird sense of relief in experiencing the warning signs of the same toxicity and brutal culture I was actively trying to leave. I eventually got hired by a company and I remember thinking "these guys seem oddly laid back." I've been here 6 months and I've never felt more stressed and anxious in my entire life. I couldn't really figure out why until I started talking with a friend. To summarize a long conversation, she basically laid it out and said "You're so used to being abused that the fact you aren't anymore has you constantly looking over your shoulder expecting it to come any time now." Who would have thought finally getting to work with people that aren't complete douchebags would be difficult to adjust to lol.
I found the nicest coworkers at local jobs, although those jobs also paid me the least (the manager was still toxic though). Once I started to get into the bigger leagues with coworkers from English-speaking countries.... It started to get real toxic.
I was so surprised when i realized how overpaid seniors sometimes hang out on stackoverflow to help out interns. Thats the opposite of toxic. Look at the Fashion Industry. People there stab each other over an unpaid internship
Oh boy, I've been in IT with both healthcare AND finance. Fortunately my grad degree was in education so I'm immune to the general nastiness that comes from mentoring younger programmers. I'd give them a unit test and if they passed it then I'd say, "oh, that's beautiful beautiful code" even if it was horrible code. If it was truly horrible, then I'd just ask them or show them how to refactor the code. I was popular among the younger programmers, and I always thought being able to explain what certain code does made me a much better programmer. I stopped telling programmers "can you do better" decades ago.
@@BrentMalice Absolutely. You think yelling and threatening programmers fresh out of college is going to do any good whatsoever? The coding and critical thinking will eventually come, no need to be nasty. I've seen both.
no i just think your equally as worthless as someone who yells. what if you just worked on your social skills to a point that you can help someone recognize their problems and overcame them without yelling and threatening them@@langhamp8912
@@langhamp8912 The issue is a lot of people also use code review for example as gatekeeping where code review takes 1week but when it's someone they like the review is done in 15min
I think there's definitely a difference between being a likeable person and being a good mentor though. If you see obvious mistakes or horrible code I still think you should've pointed out for the junior devs so they can recognize it in the future
Never be a maintenance programmer, i.e working on an already existing project if you can avoid it. Be the first programmer on a project. Programmers don't understand how hard it is for new team members to grasp your crappy code and they think you are stupid. I am always infinitely patient with new team members. Software environments are "sink or swim" because nobody has time to educate and mangement is absolutely terrible because it does not really understand what the decelopers are doing.
Yes, especially when it's a giant legacy system and the idiots who designed it are still there. Management doesn't understand that it can take the author 2 minutes to fix something that would take a new (senior) programmer weeks to figure out. The original programmers are just annoyed by the fact their code isn't modular so they blame the new programmer every time. Agile then makes it so four people are nagging you about one bug being late.
Said it perfectly dude. I literally started Software Development a year ago and it was so ridiculous how I was expected to assist in existing code with a team of developers that barely had any interest in trying to educate me on a low level on wtf is even going on. A lot of the projects were REALLY EASY, but it doesn't matter if I do not get proper guidance, then everything is super hard because I have to figure out things that should be properly taught to me. Now I know a lot, I love giving out KTs to new comers (Senior & Juniors...im a Junior Assoc II), but holy sht when I give such detailed KTs upon request even for the senior dev who is naturally and specifically requesting them... I start thinking, if the Senior dev also think its crazy to not give KTs on this level then wtf were my actual seniors thinking by just letting me cook in anger and confusion for a whole year like man wtf. Way too many projects for that whole year I'll get handed to me and I'm expected to solve it without ANY reference, it doesn't matter if I understand JAVA or w/e I need you to properly explain to me how your project works and all the related things it is connected to or else I cannot help you
I got into tech at age 40 after being in mortgage banking....and man I tell ya-I've never met more terrible people than I have in the tech space LOL. No social skills, no self-awareness, and arrogance. Conversely, because I was in mortgage banking and oftentimes had to be blunt with my emplooyees, I took that into the tech world. When I was assertive and direct (without being rude), a lot of my coworkers weren't sure how to REACT (haha-see what I did there?). I also ran stand-ups, and no one really had a sense of humore, either.
Most developers are insecure introverts who think that once they start making good money their lives will magically change for the good. After a couple of years they learn the job is very stressful and they are still introverts with a nice bank account.
and the reality as well. Software developers, the hidden industry secrete, are basically exploited. So they're dicks. I agree about the personality thing man.. Software developers are grouchy toxic people about as interesting as the ingredients listed on the back of a box. Plus they're catty, backstabbing and ridden with imposter syndrome.
Yes, and so is life. People in this position need to look into anti-fragility. It was accidentally baked into much of gen x but is lacking after that. Just an observation not a criticism. Learn to fix the things you can, but not to waste energy on things that you can't. Being able to navigate this decision will bring you more satisfaction
I agree. At 45yo now I've been in like five completely different industries thru my life. Every industry is the same as long as it relays on people. In every industry there are good people and toxic people. The more stressful job is, the more toxicity we can expect if the work-life balance is crushed, I guess. But the biggest problem usually are not good people who went into burn out or are stressed too much, the worst - in my opinion - are narcissists and emotional vampires who rely their good state of mind on making other people feel miserable.
The seniors who are nicest at my jobs are the ones who are self-taught and/or transitioned from other fields. The ones with comp sci degrees are generally horrible in personality and soft skills. Ironically, the self taught engineers are more capable as well..
Senior Devs are being driven to they're utmost limit. They're expected to constantly deliver under threat of job at every moment. It's like working with a prison inmate holding a shank at your back. There's no way the industry wont burn you out. If you stay in it.. You'll be coding on a toilet at night with your lap top.. So you don't loose time on your project having to use the toilet. You have no one to ask.. You gotta figure it out or screw you your fired. Stress.. how you gonna pay your rent. What if I get fired.. Im trying to buy a house right now. Now here comes some irritating junior dev trying to crash the party... And make you show him his ass. How do you think that plays out? Your being paid to have a heart attack basically... And here comes newbie wanting you to be his private google.
Yes, they pay well but NEVER let you have 2 years without threatening to fire you over something. It's like it's built into their management plans. The closed door meeting about performance. It's always a non-programmer lecturing a programmer and there is no way to prove your innocence. You're like Trump in a NYC courtroom. I've been doing it 30 years. The bigger the company, the more it sucks. It's even worse if you are a consultant with your own technology they are using. It upsets their pecker-order. The female managers and HR types especially freak out if any "new guy" is percolating up and will cause a problem over your mask being below your nose when you're in the middle of a revolutionary project. You have to be willing to get fired or you'll be miserable. It's usually 2-3 months between jobs but what keeps you sane is having your own projects to work on. They remind you how productive you can be.
Who is holding the shank? That's the real problem. Executives can have reasonable expectations. Unfortunately, how someone gets to be the executive, is rarely reasonable.
If you help the dev maybe he can alleviate your burden in future projects But like above comment said, the real issue is how the deadlines are decided before being delivered to us. It's too easy to let tunnel vision distract you from the real problem, and the real problem is that planning is done top down instead of down top, so we get bulldozed with a ridiculous amount of work with no time to think and of course we tunnel vision and blame the people around us instead of assholes on top who decided everything.
I like the last 3 videos you did. I feel like we need to talk more about that. If the industry isn't changing course soon, I really think they will not be able to find anyone to work for them anymore.
Most people have the wrong attitude - its going to be better because new devs with AI going to make lots of mistakes and then I'll clean them up. Niceeee$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!
Competitive environments are certainly another huge factor. Regardless, the competition to get hired doesn't have to include competition to stay employed or get deserved promotions.
just avoid r/programming, r/learnprogramming and all the programming related subreddits and there you go. toxicity solved 👍 just avoid reddit altogether tbh. You don't need any of that negativity in your brain.
Some smaller subreddits with more specific focuses like r/commandline are way nice and if you post your projects people try them and give feedback. I avoid r/programming because it's too broad and full of opinionated people and I've never learned anything from scrolling through it. Just a waste of time
Gatekeeping isn't so much about their wanting you to suffer, it's about their being the ones who originally wrote the code, not having made it modular, and then keeping secrets that make them look more productive than you. They ALWAYS tell management "I'm surprised he didn't know that, he's supposed to be a senior" and management ALWAYS believes them. My favorite response from my (bad) manager in this situation was describing me as having "poor debugging skills" for not knowing how to fix bugs that had been in the code for 20 years when the author still worked for the company.
Same, I was fired for fixing a bug which had been in the code already but because the module wasnt used no one cared, somehow fixing it brought out more bugs.
KC, I think you would have made an awesome Senior Dev and mentor. I don't know if your personal calling at this point, but from watching your videos, you bring a lot of attained wisdom. KUTGW.
Wonderful video. Very well thought out! I actually agree with the essence of the engineer's message that wanted the junior workers to Google the answer, because it encourages self-reliance and proactivity. However, I disagree with the way he delivered the message. Often times, a good message can be corrupted by toxic delivery, and that is a sad truth because the natural reaction is to discard the message due to poor delivery, even if the message itself is sound.
put yourself first. very well said. and those seniors not willing to help or (gate)keeping their leverage in a corporate job in an industry full of layoffs are just being toxic. wow. like a real sswe. soft software engineer.
My willingness to help out highly differs from question to question. More then often you get questions, you google it and the first result fixes the issue. That´s not something I really want to be bothered with all the time.
I am SO grateful. I've recently met someone living up the road who is obsessed with writing code; he dreams about it lol, and since offering to guide me, he's always there to answer my questions and help guide me. He even gave me one of his old mechanical keyboards and a bag of energy drinks lol! This man is super experienced but also really kind. I love this field ❤
The first reddit post that you showed... If someone asked him to explain an inner join, it's basically him who should report on them to his boss because it's a lack of basic knowledge required for work (and something that could not be more easily googleable). I would not yell at them if I was in such a position and I would give some general clue but then I would calmly suggest that they should do some reading on this topic because it's basic db theory used on the project. If they are my subordinate then I would follow up on this. The issue about project manager is very common too.
It's a bigger issue that companies don't want to train anymore (but they will gladly give someone a low level title and low level pay), best thing indeed is to point them towards learning resources to fill gaps in their knowledge. It's expected college graduates will have many gaps in their knowledge since they can't get to focus on coding alone long enough to cement all the core concepts they really need with all the other coursework and life events mixed in. It's up to them how they leverage those resources and apply them, then that is the reason that entry level roles are disappearing in essence (maybe except for companies that can't pay higher salaries to mid-range developers and beyond). You would think some questions like that would be asked in the interview too.
@@TheSoulCrisisthis is not something that the company should train for. It's *basic* knowledge. Indeed, I still remember joins was something I was asked on the interview for my first full time work. The fact that more senior peer points you out on that is supposed to be embarrassing (certainly not a reason to go tell on them to the boss). But ok, people have gaps, and they might not have vetted them enough on the interview... That's ok, really. But then, the first thing you do when you encounter some syntax you don't know, you go google or ask LLM. This is sql syntax for crying out loud, not some complicated problem. But they didn't even bother to try. It's outright disrespectful to more senior peers.
Interesting, I always try being helpful but I've also experienced colleagues who get offended personally multiple times and when they do that i don't help them anymore. The ones who reply well to my help i will keep helping and I've seen juniors overtaking seniors in a very short time period because of that. Im a lead developer btw and i have a big interest in having the entire team perform well. People are complex and it can be quite hard to handle them
I started in consulting and I was lucky enough to have a senior to lean at my first client. I’m not sure where I would be at today without his help. I try not to forget that when dealing with anyone more junior than me.
I don't mind helping juniors, we all started some where. The issue is when that junior has over 5 years experience and still doesn't understand basic concepts like data structures, method signatures, freaking for loops and always keeps asking the same question or commenting that their IDE is broken on every new laptop they get.
I will allow myself a bold statement, but it seems to me that absolutely any toxicity in any job, field or computer game, in personal relationships, on social networks or instant messengers is when a person PROJECTS his problems onto you. When he sees a problem in you, he knows it and takes it into account, it doesn’t make you toxic. Projecting your problems onto other people makes you toxic. The problem for many professionals is that career growth can make it obvious that this is not where happiness lies, because the stress that they experience at some point makes itself felt and you would give a lot of your money just to live a healthy life. Especially if the body is no longer young and the first signs of disease and aging begin to appear.
When someone asks you for help you have two choices: 1) Tell them they are an idiot for not already knowing that, making yourself worse than useless. 2) Help them, remind them how it took you time to learn that and make yourself useful. The problem is management trying to force deadlines (especially under Agile which tries to pretend new systems are just a sum of simple, routine bug fixes).
Sir I 💯 percent agree with you. I worked in the tech field (Help Desk) for 19 years. We worked in varying hours or rotating shifts (one week we work an early morning shift and the next week we were working a later morning shift) we were on call (24 x 7) on top of troubleshooting we were movers of computer 💻 equipment (endlessly moving employees from one department to another) Short deadlines, endless projects, multiple help desk tickets assigned to some and maybe a few to others. We were forced to do training (and required for performance appraisals) on our off duty. I am retired two years and hearing these stories brought back bad memories. Yes I loved computers but at the end the customers would come to me and ask for favors because I was so helpful and they would pass my name around also and I started to hate helping customers. I am studying full stack right now. I don't know if I want to return to the hectic life of IT Thank you for this video.
As a junior software engineer, I was asked for help by another junior engineer multiple times. She did not seem to try to understand but just ask for help and get away with her daily work with others' help. She asked me for one issue that I had answered and showed before. I still helped her but just by correcting her and giving guidance not by doing the entire thing. She approached another male co-worker and had him do her job. She did not have any portfolio and low GPA at average school, I confronted boss on why she was hired in the first place. The boss said she like the looks in her eyes.
Honestly there is a change in new engineers I've seen. They're less willing to research and experiment and therefore never build expertise and intuition in the system. Research and figuring it out is literally what's meant by problem solving.
I made the mistake of asking the senior devs (2 men) in my team for help, from time to time, something which they told me to not be “shy about”. I always ask if they have availability and specify the help, and I spend time figuring it out on my own only for them to give me a bad mid year review stating that I don’t know how to develop on my own and finding out they don’t want to help me by another senior dev (a woman) and them saying that I need my hand held to develop. She doesn’t agree with them.
I can answer questions of my fellow devs but if the question feels like I'm doing the job itself to answer it - No way. 😂 I often gives suggestions instead of directly resolving it.
Yes, there are toxic seniors. Also, I've seen toxic junior engineers too. They try to argue with you with something they learnt on youtube that does not fit in the team projects. Showing no respect to seniors and not believing them. Software engineering takes a LOT of time to understand even for simple stuff: "why and when DRY code is bad", and you have this junior keeps pushing the argument that we have to break down the every bits of the project code to keep it pretty.
i really disagree with this. i think in Tech, there is a ton more compassion and wholesome people helping each other out. If you compare it to like the fashion industry, where people stab each others back to get to that unpaid internship.
The developer (no matter who) is supposed to develop a reliable project for sale. Ask yourself if you know any project you want to do, and can you find a customer who would pay for it? If you knew, created, and sold that kind of project, then you are a developer. Otherwise, if you work for some company as "a software" developer, then you are not that developer. You are just an employee helping others with project development. People are/were under the misapprehension that computers will give you always high-paying jobs, however, if there is no customer, there is no money.
The only people with money are the 1% and the disparity is growing. Meanwhile, commodities are sold by the few monopolies that employ few people. What about the remaining population that needs to make a living? They will all end up working to make products for the 1%.
My wife and I will always be sure to let our EE kids know that they're always welcome to stay with us as long as they need to. Security and taking care of one's basic needs for full self-fulfillment are incredibly important. We have their backs.
It's the 'revenge of the nerds syndrome'. A lot of people in tech during their younger days where pretty much invisible or not much happening in their lives; except maybe a lot of videogame sessions. Once they get a decent tech paying job and get into a position of power they suddenly feel this sense of power that they probably never felt before. Because of of these tech kids never really developed strong social skills it becomes a problem when they become seniors or managers and just don't know how to deal with a multitude of people. Having worked in big tech, in the Cloud Industry, surprisingly the people who were the most balance workers were the ones that previously they didn't work in tech but switched over. They are generally more sociable and work well in teams and have balanced communication. The ones that grew up with tech since their childhood are the ones you need to worry about if they ever get into a position of some type of power.
From my limited experience in tech, it tends to be male dominated, ego driven, not so much gatekeeping as it is territorial. Additionally, the skillset required to sit for 20 hours staring at very small font code looking for that 1 misplaced character that compiles fine and runs mostly fine except for seemingly random runtime errors not caught by tests, during which you must have both crystalline memory recall and plastic memory adaptation, tends to attract a specific type of person, often well on the autistic spectrum, with little, no, or negative social skills, sometimes with extreme rigidity, lack of imagination, insecurity and/or superiority complexes. And then there's the bosses, they get paid 5x more money, don't know how to do a damn thing, can't even fix their computer, can barely use Office and insist a spreadsheet is a viable database platform... And then there's the junior workers, in 2 categories, the first, they ask dumb questions, like, if you ask a question, it should be reasonable. Like, if you're standing in front of the restroom, don't ask me where the restroom is, or how to use toilet paper, or how to wipe your own arse. There's a certain level of intelligence you need to have to be able to ask reasonably intelligent questions, not easily solved by 5 seconds of effort to try it yourself by searching. If you can't even use a search engine, no. Just get the F out of the industry. You're done here. Beyond that, I have great patience to explain things in detail, step by step. But I am spending MY time here to do YOUR job. I expect you to write sh*t down, take notes, record it and write notes later, REMEMBER it, don't keep asking me the same thing, just because you're too lazy or too stupid to remember. I once had a multi-week 1-on-1 training in blocks of 3-4 hours at a time, with minimal notes. I remembered hundreds of details about physical, mechanical equipment, electronic controls, software controls, design quirks, etc. I was told once and remembered. I was an apt pupil, which led to me being taught more, and more often. There's surely a lot of unnecessary toxicity, but some is justified. Requiring competency isn't gatekeeping. This isn't T-ball for 3 year olds where everyone gets a ribbon for having a pulse. A certain level of skill and talent is necessary. A lot of it comes down to tenacity, determination, curiosity, and consistency. Anyways, the 2nd category young worker is the whizkid who does the work of 10 of you for 1/5 the pay, and your a** is out on the curb in a week.
I’m toxic because my dumbass boss hired two idiots who can’t even read code and now I’m doing the job of three people. I’m about to quit, going to be very bad for this team lmao. We need to have a conversation about “gatekeeping”, the last few years saw a lot of unqualified people hired into the industry. It’s a real problem. That’s not gatekeeping it’s just real. I’m not talking about education or experience but people who can’t even sit in front of a computer for more than 5 minutes.
As a senior guy, I don't see anything wrong in helping juniors IF i am getting paid for the time rounded out to the hour. But if it's unpaid time, that's not happening.
Exactly 💯. They expect us to answer their Reddit questions for free, no matter how lazily and poorly written. We are basically training our replacement and using our free time to do that
With 25 years of experience, im having a different issue. Where are all the eager and curious junior developers?? Maybe companies are not hiring for those same junior roles, where there is an expectation of the need for growth and even mentoring. My recommendation is to build trusted relationships wirh helpful senoir developers. Realize that helping them is helping you. Dont be taken advantage of, but be useful
Also they will never say omg dude don't do that and then give you a list of things that you should do to be like them unlike say bodybuilding community, model making community, farming community, maker community, car community, electronics repair community, nah nah nah these guys will just berate you for something bc they are insecure about their sexuality and physical form.
"Don't want to help", "Lack of social skills", "Burnout". Well, let's put also "Less-than-junior-skilled colleagues paid like a Senior", "Idiotic questions that a Google search can solve" and "Clueless Management". That will give a better overview on the issue and let me tell you, it's not only in Tech but in every field where skilled labour matters (I worked in manufacturing for 10 years and the situation was exactly the same but no one talks about it).
Its pretty interesting because I follow both CompSciCarreerQuestions and ITCareerQuestions subreddits and notice that the CompSci subreddit is much more toxic than the IT one, you have SWE asking questions in the ITCareerQuestions because of how toxic the other one is. People come off as so egotistical in the CompSci reddit even though they are just fresh college grads for the most part, and look down at anyone who isn't making a crazy TC.
1. Junior salary being to close to a senior 2. Asking questions without googling first expecting me to be your slack GPT 3. Asking the same question more than once. 4. Company hiring people without proper skills. Any of those will get me pretty toxic.
@@T1Oracle I think by toxic they meant that injustise and laziness of other people can be really frustrating and demotivating, wich can't affect your mental state and friendliness
A lot of switchers think that they can get out of troubles by talking or don't want to learn. Senior software engineers don't really take bs and talk straight about work. Many call this "Toxic". I see this for 7 years and don't consider this a problem.
The saddest fact of all of this is healthcare, finance and software pay way above the average. Can anyone just be grateful for where they are and what they do? Or do they also actually hate the job and tough out for that salary? As for me, I love my industry, but not my current role while sticking it out for that April bonus. However, I try to be as helpful as possible to all around me and when I hand in my notice I'll look for something I'll enjoy rather than just the bottom line salary. Although TBH I did walk out on my previous role before this current one on the first morning, even though the salary was higher, because the company seemed an absolute mess and was not what i was looking for!
Other professions are gate keeping much more. In Korea, if they open more spots in college for medical students than last year, doctors go on strike. They treat their job security and high salaries very seriously. They don't want more competition. Software engineering is the only profession where we not only encourage more competition, but we are using our free time to train our competition. Is this not completely crazy? And we are not even realizing the mess that we have made yet. With recent huge layoffs, and lack of jobs (especially for juniors), AI coding bots, we are maybe getting a glimpse of it. Software enginers will as a profession soon realize what mess we have made, and it will be too late, and its all our fault. We made the bed, now sleep in it.
I don't think it is toxic when I am trying to focus to get something done and it is clear I I got my headphones on, then someone taps me on the shoulder to ask me a question because they are too lazy to Google. That is not gatekeeping or being mean, that is the other person being lazy and inconsiderate. I should be able to spend he vast majortity of my time focusing and getting stuff done, being a juniour doesn't mean you need to be treated like a baby, Now, if it is unclear or a serious question, then I can make time, but the idea that people whether it be a junior or your boss expect you to interrupt your work but rely on you to get it done at the same time is annoying. I usually make sure that after the morning SCRUM everyone is able to do their tasks. If they ask a question they can get from a google search, I will send them an article or a link to the instructions to read for themselves. I don't snap at people but I also don't allow them to interrupt me when I need to get my work done.
I think restaurant kitchens and being a chef should be added to other "toxic environments" - it seems like being in the army! Gordon Ramsay said his mentor called him a "piece of shit on his shoe" so therefore he should treat his mentees the same way...
Toxic/egotistic coworkers and garbage management is why I walked away from software engineering. I literally don’t blame anyone for quitting. Sure, WFH is great. But man… there was no work/life balance cause my job was taking place in my own home…
I think I am so lucky i've been surrounded with very nice senior coders, for example a friend I have from Canada got me into the tech world, people irl have been also so nice! But how toxic and mean some tech bros areeee it's an undeniable fact
If you coach youngsters, you need to be a good and empathetic Tutor, while still under the project pressure. I haven't met much guys who were able to keep a relaxed and safe learning environment open while keeping the project in progress. And if a company has some of these rare guys, they let him go. Some might want to read Gerald M. Weinberg or Frederick P. Brooks.
If someone just posts a screenshot of their screen - I'm sorry but they 100% deserve roasting, so they won't do that again. The worst thing of people asking for help online is the sheer laziness of the interaction, often they want help with a piece of code they won't give you, or will not provide an example repo of something not working - or my favourite, can I just write it for them now I've been suckered into trying to help.
People aren't toxic, you're too soft. Full stop. Get it done, or get out of the way. If you do it wrong, f-off until you can do it correctly. If you need help, seek help in the *correct* place. If you can't handle the workload, quit; let someone more qualified step in. Stop whining. Not going to coddle whiners.
Law enforcement, military... hahaha, you ain't seen nothing yet. Things have gotten better, because hazing in military is illegal (haha, right). Ever seen memes of soldiers outside in the pouring rain... mopping asphalt? Yeah, it can always be worse. A friend of mine dug foxholes... facing a building... in the desert during Desert Storm. Then he would fill them in and dig them again. No matter what profession, humans are shit. We like to be mean, so when we have power we tend to get toxic. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People be people.
So what I'm gathering from this (work in healthcare, worked in tech prob going back-raised by a network engineer, besties are law ppl or in tech) is that the cycle of abuse is being pushed. Sounds like a systemic problem with corporate jobs. And yes, healthcare counts (that doctor's bill may have their name but it prob also says LLC)
Some of the most toxic people I have ever met were serious cyclists so if you run into a software/firmware engineer who is a cyclist, they are most likely the number one toxic person around. I have heard that the healthcare field is especially toxic for women. I have been told that the backbiting is particularly vicious.
The root of the evil is the tight deadlines management purposely put it on the engineers. They would rather sacrifice quality to achieve that. So it initiated an environment of stress and toxicity. Couple that to yesmen types of leaders, your stress and burnout levels will shoot through the roof😊
There are junior engineers that cannot be helped. I'm willing to explain stuff 1 or 2 times but if you come back to me with the same question after a month or two, gtfo
Three: 1- most toxicity you describe is caused by USA work and office culture. 2- yes software engineers are disproportionately effected by internet related toxicity. 3- A majority of people working a job labeled software engineer are seriously under qualified. Many countries (I’m not sure about the USA / states) have the title Engineer protected. You are only allowed to call yourself engineer if you have a masters degree in a technical discipline at a university of technology. No exceptions. Mechanical engineers, civil engineers, physics engineers, electrical engineers have a common body of knowledge. Thus juniors and seniors also have a common jargon and a common understanding of design trade offs. Nowadays everyone in the USA (and India?) who did an online training JavaScript gets a job as software engineer. NO. You are not an engineer. You are an apprentice mason. You know NOTHING. It takes five years on the job plus five years of higher education plus a master accomplishment before you are an engineer.
Oh I wish I could avoid toxic people in healthcare. Working with a small clinical team of 5 or less people, including the physician, doesn't make that possible 😂
I would never train or help junior developers. I would require a 100% increase in my salary to do so. No way I am going to train my replacement. The only reason I am still in tech is that I have enough FU money, so I don't have to take any bullshit.
Exactly. This Chinese guy missed the point with this video. As a senior, you are gone as soon as the first layoffs hit. And the junior that you have trained will be allowed to stay.
in the 70s the majority of programmers were women, and it was a nice place. then boys took over and it became toxic, like the movie industry. my experience is that young professionals do not want to learn and are more focused on not be annoyed instead of doing their job.
This is not even remotely true. What women were doing was feeding the punch cards into the machine. This is not programming. Where did you learn this, in feminist dance theory classes or something?
This is perhaps a cultural difference between the US and Europe but “toxicity” in this setting is unheard of the loud minority of left wing ideologues in entry level jobs aside. SWEs and IT professionals are usually very humble and eager to help junior talent in my experience.
The software industry's worst culture problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Its the root of all misanthropic belief systems in tech that makes a career requiring lifelong learning unbearable. Your only option to have some sanity is to become arrogant, work your way to leadership roles and be in a position where proving yourself usually means pointing out your more junior coworkers lack of context or knowledge.
The younger you are, the more gatekeepers. The more there is a tendency to want to treat you as junior even if you have senior-level competency. For me, I found that the best I can upgrade my net worth is maybe 5+%. So I jumped into crypto... this WILL be the exit route s.t. I know many of these leaders are busy 1.5Xing their bag & will 10-100X. Gave me a bit more peace & rest. Sounds like toxic positive mindset but if you can't level up vertically, go horizontal & scale then upward.
Eh, everyone thinks their way of doing things is the only correct answer. It's not just software engineering, but life in general. Of course software engineering is breeding ground for such a behavior tho considering how many different ways there are to do the same thing.
Wow ... welcome to the real world. You sound like you expect senior employees to lay down the red carpet for you. Of course there are no excuses for rudeness and being an ass but I've seen so many juniors wanting it all to be easy and to ask really basic questions all the time... to a point where you wonder if they put any effort in it at all. It works both ways and I think that juniors that actually want to learn and put in the effort pay for the slackers and more senior employees don't have any patience anymore for no one. My final comment, life is too short to put up with toxic people and a toxic workplace. If you go in IT and expect a 9 to 5 job, don't, when you are not working you are learning and perfecting yourself on your own time and it will be like that all your career unless you want to become useless, that is the nature of the field.
Okay, that reddit post, it does make valid points, it's really frustrating when people ask questions that are just a google search away from being solved, it is annoying. i hate it too
"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, feed him for a lifetime." That tells me that person really hasn't worked on many projects under any sort of real deadline and has coasted most of their time leading up to their current role. It's so easy to solve that element of the issue though, you can give them a learning resource to reference if they haven't done anything yet towards solving the problem (then ask them what other resources they feel they need). Alternatively you can just ask them "what have you done so far?" This will tell you their current skill level, research abilities, and efforts made in tackling the problem. It might be really easy for them, so making sure they do their research first is key and then finding out what gaps are happening after that point. Doing something and failing is a good step to take before asking questions because it shows you're serious about your work, but it also strengthens your mental muscles in improving at the job and shows others active efforts being made to solve a problem (something is falling short vs. you haven't even tried to apply yourself). Making someone apply themselves is a fundamental step in making them a stronger developer or professional anywhere.
You misunderstood what gate keeping is. It is NOT: “if i had to go throguh the pain, so must you“. But what it IS is limiting the amount of people on the field, preventing competition and protecting their salaries and social status. And this is a GOOD THING. If only software engineers gatekeeped a bit more, rather than helping train their own competition using their own free time (answering questions on reddit or stackoverflow)
This is something that's been gnawing at me for a little while and I had no real answer for.
I got into development after working in physical security and manufacturing for about 10 years (total). I got used to taking a ton of verbal and even sometimes physical abuse from coworkers, my bosses and from clients (as a security guard). You're meant to just "deal with it" because that's expected in those industries.
I kept hearing the same thing about tech, but... I had a passion for games, computers and technology in general, fell in love with programming and decided to just go for it. I interviewed with a few places where the hiring team felt very familiar. And strangely, I almost felt a weird sense of relief in experiencing the warning signs of the same toxicity and brutal culture I was actively trying to leave.
I eventually got hired by a company and I remember thinking "these guys seem oddly laid back." I've been here 6 months and I've never felt more stressed and anxious in my entire life. I couldn't really figure out why until I started talking with a friend. To summarize a long conversation, she basically laid it out and said "You're so used to being abused that the fact you aren't anymore has you constantly looking over your shoulder expecting it to come any time now."
Who would have thought finally getting to work with people that aren't complete douchebags would be difficult to adjust to lol.
i think software engineers who hang out on reddit are toxic but most of my coworkers so far have been really nice and helpful
Exactly this ^. I was in the r/learnprogramming, cs etc and gosh those people were keyboard warriors. So much negativity! stay away!
@@rattletrapfox1001I agree, I hopped off of Reddit because of this.
I found the nicest coworkers at local jobs, although those jobs also paid me the least (the manager was still toxic though). Once I started to get into the bigger leagues with coworkers from English-speaking countries.... It started to get real toxic.
I was so surprised when i realized how overpaid seniors sometimes hang out on stackoverflow to help out interns.
Thats the opposite of toxic.
Look at the Fashion Industry. People there stab each other over an unpaid internship
>spent several months in /g/ board of 4chan
>became an excellent troller
>with no progress in programming
Oh boy, I've been in IT with both healthcare AND finance. Fortunately my grad degree was in education so I'm immune to the general nastiness that comes from mentoring younger programmers. I'd give them a unit test and if they passed it then I'd say, "oh, that's beautiful beautiful code" even if it was horrible code. If it was truly horrible, then I'd just ask them or show them how to refactor the code.
I was popular among the younger programmers, and I always thought being able to explain what certain code does made me a much better programmer. I stopped telling programmers "can you do better" decades ago.
so you ust lied to people to make them like you lol
@@BrentMalice Absolutely. You think yelling and threatening programmers fresh out of college is going to do any good whatsoever? The coding and critical thinking will eventually come, no need to be nasty. I've seen both.
no i just think your equally as worthless as someone who yells. what if you just worked on your social skills to a point that you can help someone recognize their problems and overcame them without yelling and threatening them@@langhamp8912
@@langhamp8912 The issue is a lot of people also use code review for example as gatekeeping where code review takes 1week but when it's someone they like the review is done in 15min
I think there's definitely a difference between being a likeable person and being a good mentor though. If you see obvious mistakes or horrible code I still think you should've pointed out for the junior devs so they can recognize it in the future
Never be a maintenance programmer, i.e working on an already existing project if you can avoid it. Be the first programmer on a project. Programmers don't understand how hard it is for new team members to grasp your crappy code and they think you are stupid. I am always infinitely patient with new team members. Software environments are "sink or swim" because nobody has time to educate and mangement is absolutely terrible because it does not really understand what the decelopers are doing.
Yes, especially when it's a giant legacy system and the idiots who designed it are still there. Management doesn't understand that it can take the author 2 minutes to fix something that would take a new (senior) programmer weeks to figure out. The original programmers are just annoyed by the fact their code isn't modular so they blame the new programmer every time. Agile then makes it so four people are nagging you about one bug being late.
I got fired because I wasn't I couldnt grasp the complexity of a system in one month that took them 10 years to write. Make that make sense.
Said it perfectly dude. I literally started Software Development a year ago and it was so ridiculous how I was expected to assist in existing code with a team of developers that barely had any interest in trying to educate me on a low level on wtf is even going on. A lot of the projects were REALLY EASY, but it doesn't matter if I do not get proper guidance, then everything is super hard because I have to figure out things that should be properly taught to me.
Now I know a lot, I love giving out KTs to new comers (Senior & Juniors...im a Junior Assoc II), but holy sht when I give such detailed KTs upon request even for the senior dev who is naturally and specifically requesting them... I start thinking, if the Senior dev also think its crazy to not give KTs on this level then wtf were my actual seniors thinking by just letting me cook in anger and confusion for a whole year like man wtf.
Way too many projects for that whole year I'll get handed to me and I'm expected to solve it without ANY reference, it doesn't matter if I understand JAVA or w/e I need you to properly explain to me how your project works and all the related things it is connected to or else I cannot help you
I got into tech at age 40 after being in mortgage banking....and man I tell ya-I've never met more terrible people than I have in the tech space LOL. No social skills, no self-awareness, and arrogance. Conversely, because I was in mortgage banking and oftentimes had to be blunt with my emplooyees, I took that into the tech world. When I was assertive and direct (without being rude), a lot of my coworkers weren't sure how to REACT (haha-see what I did there?). I also ran stand-ups, and no one really had a sense of humore, either.
Most developers are insecure introverts who think that once they start making good money their lives will magically change for the good. After a couple of years they learn the job is very stressful and they are still introverts with a nice bank account.
and the reality as well. Software developers, the hidden industry secrete, are basically exploited. So they're dicks.
I agree about the personality thing man.. Software developers are grouchy toxic people about as interesting as the ingredients listed on the back of a box.
Plus they're catty, backstabbing and ridden with imposter syndrome.
Nice pun there hehe.
react.js? Isn't that for making front-end GUI's?
I prefer bluntness over everything. Many guys with corpo speak are so sugarcoaty about things.
At one point I just gave up and accepted the job is stressful. Now I'm happier and help anyone who needs it regardless of how much pressure I'm under.
That doesn't help anything. That's what you're NOT supposed to do. That is a recipe for burnout always saying yes.
Yes, and so is life. People in this position need to look into anti-fragility. It was accidentally baked into much of gen x but is lacking after that. Just an observation not a criticism. Learn to fix the things you can, but not to waste energy on things that you can't. Being able to navigate this decision will bring you more satisfaction
I agree. At 45yo now I've been in like five completely different industries thru my life. Every industry is the same as long as it relays on people. In every industry there are good people and toxic people. The more stressful job is, the more toxicity we can expect if the work-life balance is crushed, I guess. But the biggest problem usually are not good people who went into burn out or are stressed too much, the worst - in my opinion - are narcissists and emotional vampires who rely their good state of mind on making other people feel miserable.
The seniors who are nicest at my jobs are the ones who are self-taught and/or transitioned from other fields. The ones with comp sci degrees are generally horrible in personality and soft skills. Ironically, the self taught engineers are more capable as well..
You are so very right and wonderful KC. Well said. I completely agree with you. Awesome.
Senior Devs are being driven to they're utmost limit. They're expected to constantly deliver under threat of job at every moment. It's like working with a prison inmate holding a shank at your back.
There's no way the industry wont burn you out. If you stay in it.. You'll be coding on a toilet at night with your lap top.. So you don't loose time on your project having to use the toilet. You have no one to ask.. You gotta figure it out or screw you your fired. Stress.. how you gonna pay your rent. What if I get fired.. Im trying to buy a house right now.
Now here comes some irritating junior dev trying to crash the party... And make you show him his ass. How do you think that plays out?
Your being paid to have a heart attack basically... And here comes newbie wanting you to be his private google.
Yes, they pay well but NEVER let you have 2 years without threatening to fire you over something. It's like it's built into their management plans. The closed door meeting about performance. It's always a non-programmer lecturing a programmer and there is no way to prove your innocence. You're like Trump in a NYC courtroom. I've been doing it 30 years. The bigger the company, the more it sucks. It's even worse if you are a consultant with your own technology they are using. It upsets their pecker-order. The female managers and HR types especially freak out if any "new guy" is percolating up and will cause a problem over your mask being below your nose when you're in the middle of a revolutionary project. You have to be willing to get fired or you'll be miserable. It's usually 2-3 months between jobs but what keeps you sane is having your own projects to work on. They remind you how productive you can be.
Who is holding the shank? That's the real problem. Executives can have reasonable expectations. Unfortunately, how someone gets to be the executive, is rarely reasonable.
If you help the dev maybe he can alleviate your burden in future projects
But like above comment said, the real issue is how the deadlines are decided before being delivered to us. It's too easy to let tunnel vision distract you from the real problem, and the real problem is that planning is done top down instead of down top, so we get bulldozed with a ridiculous amount of work with no time to think and of course we tunnel vision and blame the people around us instead of assholes on top who decided everything.
You are 100% right on point on this video, KC!! In my experience, IT and Tech are mostly toxic, in my experience!! I love your videos, KC!!
I like the last 3 videos you did. I feel like we need to talk more about that. If the industry isn't changing course soon, I really think they will not be able to find anyone to work for them anymore.
this content felt like a hug
i think it’s gonna get more toxic because the job market is getting more competitive
Thats just wonderful.
Most people have the wrong attitude - its going to be better because new devs with AI going to make lots of mistakes and then I'll clean them up.
Niceeee$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!
Competitive environments are certainly another huge factor. Regardless, the competition to get hired doesn't have to include competition to stay employed or get deserved promotions.
just avoid r/programming, r/learnprogramming and all the programming related subreddits and there you go. toxicity solved 👍
just avoid reddit altogether tbh. You don't need any of that negativity in your brain.
Add to that StackOverflow and any Arch Linux community. Gentoo people are nicer.
yea I feel like most of the feeds I touch in reddit are just generally toxic
Some smaller subreddits with more specific focuses like r/commandline are way nice and if you post your projects people try them and give feedback. I avoid r/programming because it's too broad and full of opinionated people and I've never learned anything from scrolling through it. Just a waste of time
I have had good experiences with the React subreddit, I think too general of a programming subreddit the more you find the toxic intorverts.
@@TowerOfMasochism reddit is a bunch of mask Karens. It's like hanging out at a Women's March or in the HR lounge. Stackoverflow is good.
Let me hop in there, I love helping others understand the ropes!
I experienced bullying during my bootcamp!! It’s hard out here! 😢
Always very good talks.
Gatekeeping isn't so much about their wanting you to suffer, it's about their being the ones who originally wrote the code, not having made it modular, and then keeping secrets that make them look more productive than you. They ALWAYS tell management "I'm surprised he didn't know that, he's supposed to be a senior" and management ALWAYS believes them. My favorite response from my (bad) manager in this situation was describing me as having "poor debugging skills" for not knowing how to fix bugs that had been in the code for 20 years when the author still worked for the company.
Same, I was fired for fixing a bug which had been in the code already but because the module wasnt used no one cared, somehow fixing it brought out more bugs.
@@BillClinton228 this made me want to quit so bad bro
I'm so glad I watched this video. It gave me an idea of the work culture in tech. Very valuable info!
KC, I think you would have made an awesome Senior Dev and mentor. I don't know if your personal calling at this point, but from watching your videos, you bring a lot of attained wisdom. KUTGW.
Wonderful video. Very well thought out! I actually agree with the essence of the engineer's message that wanted the junior workers to Google the answer, because it encourages self-reliance and proactivity. However, I disagree with the way he delivered the message. Often times, a good message can be corrupted by toxic delivery, and that is a sad truth because the natural reaction is to discard the message due to poor delivery, even if the message itself is sound.
Sounds like my family tuning out my grandpa lol.
put yourself first. very well said.
and those seniors not willing to help or (gate)keeping their leverage in a corporate job in an industry full of layoffs are just being toxic.
wow.
like a real sswe. soft software engineer.
My willingness to help out highly differs from question to question. More then often you get questions, you google it and the first result fixes the issue. That´s not something I really want to be bothered with all the time.
Depends if the question stems from proprietary internal workings of the code or quirkiness too (if it wasn't just a general coding type issue).
I am SO grateful. I've recently met someone living up the road who is obsessed with writing code; he dreams about it lol, and since offering to guide me, he's always there to answer my questions and help guide me. He even gave me one of his old mechanical keyboards and a bag of energy drinks lol! This man is super experienced but also really kind. I love this field ❤
This really resonates with me. I can unfortunately confirm all you have said in this video.
The first reddit post that you showed... If someone asked him to explain an inner join, it's basically him who should report on them to his boss because it's a lack of basic knowledge required for work (and something that could not be more easily googleable). I would not yell at them if I was in such a position and I would give some general clue but then I would calmly suggest that they should do some reading on this topic because it's basic db theory used on the project. If they are my subordinate then I would follow up on this.
The issue about project manager is very common too.
It's a bigger issue that companies don't want to train anymore (but they will gladly give someone a low level title and low level pay), best thing indeed is to point them towards learning resources to fill gaps in their knowledge. It's expected college graduates will have many gaps in their knowledge since they can't get to focus on coding alone long enough to cement all the core concepts they really need with all the other coursework and life events mixed in. It's up to them how they leverage those resources and apply them, then that is the reason that entry level roles are disappearing in essence (maybe except for companies that can't pay higher salaries to mid-range developers and beyond). You would think some questions like that would be asked in the interview too.
@@TheSoulCrisisthis is not something that the company should train for. It's *basic* knowledge. Indeed, I still remember joins was something I was asked on the interview for my first full time work. The fact that more senior peer points you out on that is supposed to be embarrassing (certainly not a reason to go tell on them to the boss). But ok, people have gaps, and they might not have vetted them enough on the interview... That's ok, really. But then, the first thing you do when you encounter some syntax you don't know, you go google or ask LLM. This is sql syntax for crying out loud, not some complicated problem. But they didn't even bother to try. It's outright disrespectful to more senior peers.
Interesting, I always try being helpful but I've also experienced colleagues who get offended personally multiple times and when they do that i don't help them anymore. The ones who reply well to my help i will keep helping and I've seen juniors overtaking seniors in a very short time period because of that. Im a lead developer btw and i have a big interest in having the entire team perform well. People are complex and it can be quite hard to handle them
Love the content brother
I started in consulting and I was lucky enough to have a senior to lean at my first client. I’m not sure where I would be at today without his help.
I try not to forget that when dealing with anyone more junior than me.
I don't mind helping juniors, we all started some where. The issue is when that junior has over 5 years experience and still doesn't understand basic concepts like data structures, method signatures, freaking for loops and always keeps asking the same question or commenting that their IDE is broken on every new laptop they get.
I will allow myself a bold statement, but it seems to me that absolutely any toxicity in any job, field or computer game, in personal relationships, on social networks or instant messengers is when a person PROJECTS his problems onto you. When he sees a problem in you, he knows it and takes it into account, it doesn’t make you toxic. Projecting your problems onto other people makes you toxic. The problem for many professionals is that career growth can make it obvious that this is not where happiness lies, because the stress that they experience at some point makes itself felt and you would give a lot of your money just to live a healthy life. Especially if the body is no longer young and the first signs of disease and aging begin to appear.
When someone asks you for help you have two choices:
1) Tell them they are an idiot for not already knowing that, making yourself worse than useless.
2) Help them, remind them how it took you time to learn that and make yourself useful.
The problem is management trying to force deadlines (especially under Agile which tries to pretend new systems are just a sum of simple, routine bug fixes).
Sir I 💯 percent agree with you. I worked in the tech field (Help Desk) for 19 years. We worked in varying hours or rotating shifts (one week we work an early morning shift and the next week we were working a later morning shift) we were on call (24 x 7) on top of troubleshooting we were movers of computer 💻 equipment (endlessly moving employees from one department to another) Short deadlines, endless projects, multiple help desk tickets assigned to some and maybe a few to others.
We were forced to do training (and required for performance appraisals) on our off duty. I am retired two years and hearing these stories brought back bad memories. Yes I loved computers but at the end the customers would come to me and ask for favors because I was so helpful and they would pass my name around also and I started to hate helping customers. I am studying full stack right now. I don't know if I want to return to the hectic life of IT
Thank you for this video.
As a junior software engineer, I was asked for help by another junior engineer multiple times. She did not seem to try to understand but just ask for help and get away with her daily work with others' help. She asked me for one issue that I had answered and showed before. I still helped her but just by correcting her and giving guidance not by doing the entire thing. She approached another male co-worker and had him do her job. She did not have any portfolio and low GPA at average school, I confronted boss on why she was hired in the first place. The boss said she like the looks in her eyes.
Honestly there is a change in new engineers I've seen. They're less willing to research and experiment and therefore never build expertise and intuition in the system. Research and figuring it out is literally what's meant by problem solving.
experienced the same but my team at the moment is really great because the software is so complex no one alone can handle it :D
I made the mistake of asking the senior devs (2 men) in my team for help, from time to time, something which they told me to not be “shy about”. I always ask if they have availability and specify the help, and I spend time figuring it out on my own only for them to give me a bad mid year review stating that I don’t know how to develop on my own and finding out they don’t want to help me by another senior dev (a woman) and them saying that I need my hand held to develop. She doesn’t agree with them.
I can answer questions of my fellow devs but if the question feels like I'm doing the job itself to answer it - No way. 😂 I often gives suggestions instead of directly resolving it.
Fortunately i havent had this problem. My project manager also submits pr and actively encourages jr devs to correct him and have active discussions.
Try to work in a factory as a process engineer then you get the real meaning of toxic.
Greed, hyper-competition, stress...it's common elements of tech with finance, law, etc..
Yes, there are toxic seniors. Also, I've seen toxic junior engineers too. They try to argue with you with something they learnt on youtube that does not fit in the team projects. Showing no respect to seniors and not believing them. Software engineering takes a LOT of time to understand even for simple stuff: "why and when DRY code is bad", and you have this junior keeps pushing the argument that we have to break down the every bits of the project code to keep it pretty.
i really disagree with this.
i think in Tech, there is a ton more compassion and wholesome people helping each other out.
If you compare it to like the fashion industry, where people stab each others back to get to that unpaid internship.
The developer (no matter who) is supposed to develop a reliable project for sale. Ask yourself if you know any project you want to do, and can you find a customer who would pay for it? If you knew, created, and sold that kind of project, then you are a developer. Otherwise, if you work for some company as "a software" developer, then you are not that developer. You are just an employee helping others with project development. People are/were under the misapprehension that computers will give you always high-paying jobs, however, if there is no customer, there is no money.
The only people with money are the 1% and the disparity is growing. Meanwhile, commodities are sold by the few monopolies that employ few people. What about the remaining population that needs to make a living? They will all end up working to make products for the 1%.
My wife and I will always be sure to let our EE kids know that they're always welcome to stay with us as long as they need to. Security and taking care of one's basic needs for full self-fulfillment are incredibly important. We have their backs.
it all comes down to arrogance. That is why it is toxic because they think they can be rude.
It's the 'revenge of the nerds syndrome'. A lot of people in tech during their younger days where pretty much invisible or not much happening in their lives; except maybe a lot of videogame sessions. Once they get a decent tech paying job and get into a position of power they suddenly feel this sense of power that they probably never felt before. Because of of these tech kids never really developed strong social skills it becomes a problem when they become seniors or managers and just don't know how to deal with a multitude of people. Having worked in big tech, in the Cloud Industry, surprisingly the people who were the most balance workers were the ones that previously they didn't work in tech but switched over. They are generally more sociable and work well in teams and have balanced communication. The ones that grew up with tech since their childhood are the ones you need to worry about if they ever get into a position of some type of power.
Bro you are more than right about that sadly not a lot of people talking about it
From my limited experience in tech, it tends to be male dominated, ego driven, not so much gatekeeping as it is territorial. Additionally, the skillset required to sit for 20 hours staring at very small font code looking for that 1 misplaced character that compiles fine and runs mostly fine except for seemingly random runtime errors not caught by tests, during which you must have both crystalline memory recall and plastic memory adaptation, tends to attract a specific type of person, often well on the autistic spectrum, with little, no, or negative social skills, sometimes with extreme rigidity, lack of imagination, insecurity and/or superiority complexes. And then there's the bosses, they get paid 5x more money, don't know how to do a damn thing, can't even fix their computer, can barely use Office and insist a spreadsheet is a viable database platform... And then there's the junior workers, in 2 categories, the first, they ask dumb questions, like, if you ask a question, it should be reasonable. Like, if you're standing in front of the restroom, don't ask me where the restroom is, or how to use toilet paper, or how to wipe your own arse. There's a certain level of intelligence you need to have to be able to ask reasonably intelligent questions, not easily solved by 5 seconds of effort to try it yourself by searching. If you can't even use a search engine, no. Just get the F out of the industry. You're done here. Beyond that, I have great patience to explain things in detail, step by step. But I am spending MY time here to do YOUR job. I expect you to write sh*t down, take notes, record it and write notes later, REMEMBER it, don't keep asking me the same thing, just because you're too lazy or too stupid to remember. I once had a multi-week 1-on-1 training in blocks of 3-4 hours at a time, with minimal notes. I remembered hundreds of details about physical, mechanical equipment, electronic controls, software controls, design quirks, etc. I was told once and remembered. I was an apt pupil, which led to me being taught more, and more often. There's surely a lot of unnecessary toxicity, but some is justified. Requiring competency isn't gatekeeping. This isn't T-ball for 3 year olds where everyone gets a ribbon for having a pulse. A certain level of skill and talent is necessary. A lot of it comes down to tenacity, determination, curiosity, and consistency. Anyways, the 2nd category young worker is the whizkid who does the work of 10 of you for 1/5 the pay, and your a** is out on the curb in a week.
you need to refactor this paragraph 😂
Damn didn’t expect an essay but ok
What did I just read...
I was on reddit talking about career paths and some guy was a senior engineer and was like well if you don't get it now you might as well give up
The answer: because a lot of assholes with poor social skills escape to their computers, of which some choose to become programmers...
And poor social skills is also among extroverts. It is even more harmful to others then.
I’m toxic because my dumbass boss hired two idiots who can’t even read code and now I’m doing the job of three people. I’m about to quit, going to be very bad for this team lmao.
We need to have a conversation about “gatekeeping”, the last few years saw a lot of unqualified people hired into the industry. It’s a real problem. That’s not gatekeeping it’s just real. I’m not talking about education or experience but people who can’t even sit in front of a computer for more than 5 minutes.
As a senior guy, I don't see anything wrong in helping juniors IF i am getting paid for the time rounded out to the hour. But if it's unpaid time, that's not happening.
Exactly 💯. They expect us to answer their Reddit questions for free, no matter how lazily and poorly written. We are basically training our replacement and using our free time to do that
@@ZelenoJabkowell i am sorry you are feeling that way but u need to remember that there was a time you used to be just like them
@@azizt6773 yes. But I learned everything on my own from books. When I was learning coding, I did not have internet.
With 25 years of experience, im having a different issue. Where are all the eager and curious junior developers?? Maybe companies are not hiring for those same junior roles, where there is an expectation of the need for growth and even mentoring. My recommendation is to build trusted relationships wirh helpful senoir developers. Realize that helping them is helping you. Dont be taken advantage of, but be useful
I'm interested in working a tech job but software engineering/design ain't for me 🚮
Also they will never say omg dude don't do that and then give you a list of things that you should do to be like them unlike say bodybuilding community, model making community, farming community, maker community, car community, electronics repair community, nah nah nah these guys will just berate you for something bc they are insecure about their sexuality and physical form.
"Don't want to help", "Lack of social skills", "Burnout". Well, let's put also "Less-than-junior-skilled colleagues paid like a Senior", "Idiotic questions that a Google search can solve" and "Clueless Management". That will give a better overview on the issue and let me tell you, it's not only in Tech but in every field where skilled labour matters (I worked in manufacturing for 10 years and the situation was exactly the same but no one talks about it).
Its pretty interesting because I follow both CompSciCarreerQuestions and ITCareerQuestions subreddits and notice that the CompSci subreddit is much more toxic than the IT one, you have SWE asking questions in the ITCareerQuestions because of how toxic the other one is. People come off as so egotistical in the CompSci reddit even though they are just fresh college grads for the most part, and look down at anyone who isn't making a crazy TC.
1. Junior salary being to close to a senior
2. Asking questions without googling first expecting me to be your slack GPT
3. Asking the same question more than once.
4. Company hiring people without proper skills.
Any of those will get me pretty toxic.
If you can "get toxic," then you need to work on yourself and stop looking for excuses for your bad behavior.
@@T1Oracle I think by toxic they meant that injustise and laziness of other people can be really frustrating and demotivating, wich can't affect your mental state and friendliness
A lot of switchers think that they can get out of troubles by talking or don't want to learn. Senior software engineers don't really take bs and talk straight about work. Many call this "Toxic". I see this for 7 years and don't consider this a problem.
The saddest fact of all of this is healthcare, finance and software pay way above the average. Can anyone just be grateful for where they are and what they do? Or do they also actually hate the job and tough out for that salary?
As for me, I love my industry, but not my current role while sticking it out for that April bonus. However, I try to be as helpful as possible to all around me and when I hand in my notice I'll look for something I'll enjoy rather than just the bottom line salary.
Although TBH I did walk out on my previous role before this current one on the first morning, even though the salary was higher, because the company seemed an absolute mess and was not what i was looking for!
This is exactly why. They know that additional competition will drive down their high salaries. Doctors do not want more doctors, or medical students.
Other professions are gate keeping much more. In Korea, if they open more spots in college for medical students than last year, doctors go on strike. They treat their job security and high salaries very seriously. They don't want more competition.
Software engineering is the only profession where we not only encourage more competition, but we are using our free time to train our competition. Is this not completely crazy?
And we are not even realizing the mess that we have made yet. With recent huge layoffs, and lack of jobs (especially for juniors), AI coding bots, we are maybe getting a glimpse of it.
Software enginers will as a profession soon realize what mess we have made, and it will be too late, and its all our fault. We made the bed, now sleep in it.
So glad I switched to electrical engineering. Way less toxicity
Glad you did bro
I've only come across a small amount of toxic engineers, everyone else.. which is a vast majority are humble and great.
I don't think it is toxic when I am trying to focus to get something done and it is clear I I got my headphones on, then someone taps me on the shoulder to ask me a question because they are too lazy to Google. That is not gatekeeping or being mean, that is the other person being lazy and inconsiderate. I should be able to spend he vast majortity of my time focusing and getting stuff done, being a juniour doesn't mean you need to be treated like a baby, Now, if it is unclear or a serious question, then I can make time, but the idea that people whether it be a junior or your boss expect you to interrupt your work but rely on you to get it done at the same time is annoying. I usually make sure that after the morning SCRUM everyone is able to do their tasks. If they ask a question they can get from a google search, I will send them an article or a link to the instructions to read for themselves. I don't snap at people but I also don't allow them to interrupt me when I need to get my work done.
sure, but everything is nuanced. There are both rude senior developers, and rude junior developers.
Nobody wants you to be smarter thaan then, or to ask them questions. Its hard out here.
I think restaurant kitchens and being a chef should be added to other "toxic environments" - it seems like being in the army! Gordon Ramsay said his mentor called him a "piece of shit on his shoe" so therefore he should treat his mentees the same way...
Toxic/egotistic coworkers and garbage management is why I walked away from software engineering. I literally don’t blame anyone for quitting. Sure, WFH is great. But man… there was no work/life balance cause my job was taking place in my own home…
I think I am so lucky i've been surrounded with very nice senior coders, for example a friend I have from Canada got me into the tech world, people irl have been also so nice!
But how toxic and mean some tech bros areeee it's an undeniable fact
You can work in literally any industry and visiting Reddit will be more likely to hurt than help
If you coach youngsters, you need to be a good and empathetic Tutor, while still under the project pressure. I haven't met much guys who were able to keep a relaxed and safe learning environment open while keeping the project in progress. And if a company has some of these rare guys, they let him go. Some might want to read Gerald M. Weinberg or Frederick P. Brooks.
If you think the software industry is brutal, you should look at welding as a career field.
If someone just posts a screenshot of their screen - I'm sorry but they 100% deserve roasting, so they won't do that again.
The worst thing of people asking for help online is the sheer laziness of the interaction, often they want help with a piece of code they won't give you, or will not provide an example repo of something not working - or my favourite, can I just write it for them now I've been suckered into trying to help.
People aren't toxic, you're too soft. Full stop.
Get it done, or get out of the way. If you do it wrong, f-off until you can do it correctly. If you need help, seek help in the *correct* place. If you can't handle the workload, quit; let someone more qualified step in. Stop whining. Not going to coddle whiners.
Ok
You toxic
Law enforcement, military... hahaha, you ain't seen nothing yet. Things have gotten better, because hazing in military is illegal (haha, right). Ever seen memes of soldiers outside in the pouring rain... mopping asphalt? Yeah, it can always be worse. A friend of mine dug foxholes... facing a building... in the desert during Desert Storm. Then he would fill them in and dig them again.
No matter what profession, humans are shit. We like to be mean, so when we have power we tend to get toxic. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People be people.
So what I'm gathering from this (work in healthcare, worked in tech prob going back-raised by a network engineer, besties are law ppl or in tech) is that the cycle of abuse is being pushed.
Sounds like a systemic problem with corporate jobs. And yes, healthcare counts (that doctor's bill may have their name but it prob also says LLC)
Some of the most toxic people I have ever met were serious cyclists so if you run into a software/firmware engineer who is a cyclist, they are most likely the number one toxic person around.
I have heard that the healthcare field is especially toxic for women. I have been told that the backbiting is particularly vicious.
Hey man you're videos are amazing :) I am about to finish my degree and yeah finding jobs are hard and it does take a mental l;oad on me :/
Wow. Looks like high school. 😂😂😂😂
The root of the evil is the tight deadlines management purposely put it on the engineers. They would rather sacrifice quality to achieve that. So it initiated an environment of stress and toxicity. Couple that to yesmen types of leaders, your stress and burnout levels will shoot through the roof😊
There are junior engineers that cannot be helped. I'm willing to explain stuff 1 or 2 times but if you come back to me with the same question after a month or two, gtfo
Three:
1- most toxicity you describe is caused by USA work and office culture.
2- yes software engineers are disproportionately effected by internet related toxicity.
3- A majority of people working a job labeled software engineer are seriously under qualified. Many countries (I’m not sure about the USA / states) have the title Engineer protected. You are only allowed to call yourself engineer if you have a masters degree in a technical discipline at a university of technology. No exceptions. Mechanical engineers, civil engineers, physics engineers, electrical engineers have a common body of knowledge. Thus juniors and seniors also have a common jargon and a common understanding of design trade offs. Nowadays everyone in the USA (and India?) who did an online training JavaScript gets a job as software engineer. NO. You are not an engineer. You are an apprentice mason. You know NOTHING. It takes five years on the job plus five years of higher education plus a master accomplishment before you are an engineer.
Software engineers aren't toxic. Toxic people are toxic. Humanities downfall will be attributing things like this based on generalities.
Oh I wish I could avoid toxic people in healthcare. Working with a small clinical team of 5 or less people, including the physician, doesn't make that possible 😂
haha
I would never train or help junior developers. I would require a 100% increase in my salary to do so. No way I am going to train my replacement. The only reason I am still in tech is that I have enough FU money, so I don't have to take any bullshit.
Exactly. This Chinese guy missed the point with this video. As a senior, you are gone as soon as the first layoffs hit. And the junior that you have trained will be allowed to stay.
Ok good luck with that
Why am I toxic?
There's no such thing as human nature through. In science, it's nature via nurture.
in the 70s the majority of programmers were women, and it was a nice place. then boys took over and it became toxic, like the movie industry. my experience is that young professionals do not want to learn and are more focused on not be annoyed instead of doing their job.
This is not even remotely true. What women were doing was feeding the punch cards into the machine. This is not programming. Where did you learn this, in feminist dance theory classes or something?
This is perhaps a cultural difference between the US and Europe but “toxicity” in this setting is unheard of the loud minority of left wing ideologues in entry level jobs aside.
SWEs and IT professionals are usually very humble and eager to help junior talent in my experience.
The software industry's worst culture problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Its the root of all misanthropic belief systems in tech that makes a career requiring lifelong learning unbearable. Your only option to have some sanity is to become arrogant, work your way to leadership roles and be in a position where proving yourself usually means pointing out your more junior coworkers lack of context or knowledge.
Interesting
The younger you are, the more gatekeepers. The more there is a tendency to want to treat you as junior even if you have senior-level competency.
For me, I found that the best I can upgrade my net worth is maybe 5+%. So I jumped into crypto... this WILL be the exit route s.t. I know many of these leaders are busy 1.5Xing their bag & will 10-100X.
Gave me a bit more peace & rest. Sounds like toxic positive mindset but if you can't level up vertically, go horizontal & scale then upward.
In my experience the tech industry is also overrun by a lot of misogyny and queerphobia that goes largely unchecked.
Yeah, sure if they make the face on the thumbnail, that's a good plan to repulse anyone from helping them.
Eh, everyone thinks their way of doing things is the only correct answer. It's not just software engineering, but life in general. Of course software engineering is breeding ground for such a behavior tho considering how many different ways there are to do the same thing.
Comment: People need hobbies, and a passion for life. People need the church because people are full of Envy. 2023
y'all need to get good.
Wow ... welcome to the real world. You sound like you expect senior employees to lay down the red carpet for you. Of course there are no excuses for rudeness and being an ass but I've seen so many juniors wanting it all to be easy and to ask really basic questions all the time... to a point where you wonder if they put any effort in it at all. It works both ways and I think that juniors that actually want to learn and put in the effort pay for the slackers and more senior employees don't have any patience anymore for no one. My final comment, life is too short to put up with toxic people and a toxic workplace. If you go in IT and expect a 9 to 5 job, don't, when you are not working you are learning and perfecting yourself on your own time and it will be like that all your career unless you want to become useless, that is the nature of the field.
Dude, just leave software engineering, its BS job
Okay, that reddit post, it does make valid points, it's really frustrating when people ask questions that are just a google search away from being solved, it is annoying. i hate it too
"Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, feed him for a lifetime."
That tells me that person really hasn't worked on many projects under any sort of real deadline and has coasted most of their time leading up to their current role. It's so easy to solve that element of the issue though, you can give them a learning resource to reference if they haven't done anything yet towards solving the problem (then ask them what other resources they feel they need). Alternatively you can just ask them "what have you done so far?" This will tell you their current skill level, research abilities, and efforts made in tackling the problem. It might be really easy for them, so making sure they do their research first is key and then finding out what gaps are happening after that point.
Doing something and failing is a good step to take before asking questions because it shows you're serious about your work, but it also strengthens your mental muscles in improving at the job and shows others active efforts being made to solve a problem (something is falling short vs. you haven't even tried to apply yourself). Making someone apply themselves is a fundamental step in making them a stronger developer or professional anywhere.
You misunderstood what gate keeping is. It is NOT: “if i had to go throguh the pain, so must you“. But what it IS is limiting the amount of people on the field, preventing competition and protecting their salaries and social status.
And this is a GOOD THING. If only software engineers gatekeeped a bit more, rather than helping train their own competition using their own free time (answering questions on reddit or stackoverflow)