you are the media

Have you ever noticed the inherent need for some people to convince themselves that everyone they encounter is somehow less intelligent or more inept than they are? I don't mean that in a completely literal sense, more in the sense of it being a common method by which people maintain inner superiority and add validity to their own observations. I've found that these people will go to great lengths of confirmation bias to protect these internal notions. I also find myself falling victim to the initial tendency from time to time, and often think, "Do I have any reason to be contentious here?", "Why am I engaging in this argument?", or "Why am I silently judging this person's ideas and not offering them the ability defend their position?"

To understand why people default to operating in this fashion, we have to understand our need to feel valid. In the technology age, with our thoughts allowed to go unchecked and run wild behind a computer screen, it's only natural that we build up walls to protect our own perspectives and opinions, given the storm of information we are faced with every day. After all, if we run the numbers, people of slightly above average intelligence can fairly assume that more than 50% of the people they encounter randomly will be more inept than they are.

Everyone has their own internal motivations that define what they perceive as relevant, some people require more tangible information from their achievements and outcomes, and will settle for only the most profound and measurable results in their life. Others have the ability to simply make it up as they go along, convincing themselves of their own relevance vs. objectively finding out where they stack up. This spectrum of separation in how we model our lives comes from a culmination of life experiences, and is at the core of what make us individuals.

I believe that of the subjectively motivated and objectively motivated, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. It's the ones that lean heavily to the subjective side that become a problem in the professional world, because of a selfish approach that often requires their personal issues to be catered to at the expense of others.

An example of this would be an objective person presenting valid information for the group to consider, and a subjective person presenting a counter argument based on emotions arising from being challenged, and possible defensive feelings of inadequacy. This requires the objective person to waste time entering into an argument based solely on irrelevant motives, instead of moving forward toward a solution or group consensus.

The following list is a brainstorm of ways to avoid being "that guy (or gal)".

Communication is Hard

Don't allow yourself to silently nitpick inconsistencies in communication at the expense of truly understanding the idea being conveyed. We can't read minds, so instead of shooting the messenger and telling them they don't make sense, make an honest effort at understanding what they are trying to say.

Choose your Battles

If you're about to engage in an argument, do it for the right reasons. These reasons should not include petty, personal motivations, but valuable ideas built from your experiences that prove your point. Don't argue every pedantic point you can come up with so as to inappropriately position yourself as more detail-oriented and relevant.

See the Big Picture

Every team should have core objectives and goals. If these objectives are clearly stated and understood, it would be inappropriate to lose sight of them to pursue self-promotion, coworker sabotage, or any number of tendencies toxic to team productivity or the goals of the group. Don't let self-serving ideas get in the way of progress.

Stop Assuming other People are Like You

This one is a biggie. If your motives for marginalizing and dismissing a professional associate are personal and subjective, you are completely in the wrong. For the subjective and trivial person, it is difficult to separate your observations from your own tendencies, thinking people approach problems and situations the way you do. Don't let yourself fall victim to this, it is toxic! The members of your team are there for a reason, trust their expertise.

Be more Flexible

We all find ourselves in professional situations where a little flexibility can build trust and confidence. Put your personal tendencies aside from time to time and let things happen differently than you originally planned, you just might learn something. There can be lots of benefits to not being the smartest person in the room.

Identify the Source

Lastly and most importantly, make a conscious effort at identifying where your ideas are coming from. Nine times out of ten in the professional world, the ideas that come from an objective place of reasoning (flawed or not), will win out against the ones that come from self-serving biases.

In a world of Chaos Muppets and the Dunning-Kruger effect, it's important to stop and look around from time to time. We all look out for #1, but sometimes we need to lighten our grip so that things can be better for everyone.

There's something I keep seeing in the field of engineering, specifically on engineering teams that need to impress non-technical people. There's a game of politics being played by people who either aren't interested in the nuts and bolts of the technology side, aren't interested in doing their jobs in general, or don't have the actual cognitive capabilities to learn the job skills need. Usually, this game is as simple as gaining the false trust of upper level management through buzz words, presenting the false ownership or contribution of the work of others, or appearing vocally dominant in some way in a group setting.

At first, these people weren't a huge problem, because outputs were measurable and management usually had some technical acumen. But now that engineering has become something the bullshitters are more interested in, and bullshitting technology has been made exceedingly easy via LLMs, it has become what I pointed out: A huge fucking problem.

There are reasons why putting petty politics over real technical learnings is dangerous and toxic, and I think there are some reasons why these toxic people are able to embed themselves, which I will point out later. Some are obvious, and some are less obvious, and some are just red flags. Recently, I began to see these red flags during the decision phase of joining a startup. Rather than listening to my gut, I went with the higher paycheck. I spent more time with petty arguments and trying to expose petty credit-robbing repetition of my own work and ideas than I did doing my own work.

The actual work was exhausting enough, but trying to keep up with people who lie behind your back to make you look bad while rebranding your efforts, well that's just soul sucking.

I believe this started with the cultural changes that took place in software in the late 2000s. During that time, usable development frameworks were just coming into their own, the social media boom was just beginning, and people were starting to see how valuable technology startups could be after the tech bubble of the late 90s/early 2000s. Software was becoming cool, and being a part of it even cooler. People who never would've thought of being part of the field started to flood in and stake their claim, but only some of those people had any technology background at all.

People like Steve Jobs, Zuckerberg, and even Steve Ballmer landed in the spotlight as tech visionaries, the "creative thinkers" of engineering. This made people with the gift of gab think there was a place for them in every startup. This is where the pigeon holing culture began and the engineers found themselves dealing with a brave new world of bullshitters and silver-tongued devils.

Here are a few of the profiles I've seen that espouse the arrogance I describe, and the political plays that allow it to be repeated without consequence. These people can be seen at any level, but usually, they're just above the main engineering team as a Lead, GM, or some form of Architect that gives them a platform to report to upper leadership without the rest of the team(s) present.

There's something central to all of the profiles I will mention, and they ALL have disdain for engineers and believe they're only capable of one thing. And that any level of abstract thinking or "big picture" thinking can only be accomplished by them, otherwise, what's the value of their job to begin with? It's the only thing in this mindset that's correct: What's the value of their job to begin with?

The Technical People Manager
(Usually exists at the people manager level of a single scrum team)
Typical quote: "I used to write code but it's been years and I just don't do that anymore."

• 90% of these people never wrote code but were able to bullshit into a people manager role. They repeat their wisdom learned from their single COBOL job, or from school to gain clout with engineers

• They are in a position to go to bat for their team, but always seem to over-commit and make the team AND senior leadership miserable. After senior leadership becomes aware that the teams never meet their deadlines, this type of manager applies excess pressure and tries to make their team's life a living hell.

• Everything is set up for failure by this person, and eventually the team becomes miserable and begins to quit, at which time this manager usually scurries away to find another internal or external position.

The Senior Architect
(Usually interfaces with multiple engineering teams making technical decisions or roadmap decisions)
Typical quote: "Hold on, doing it that way is extremely risky and dangerous and I know better because I'm the Architect, and there's no other proof needed, so change what you're doing."

• When this role harbors a politician and you're an engineer underneath it, you may as well just move on. When they begin to steal code and ideas as their own, you generally won't even know it's happening until senior management mentions it.
• These people are some of the toughest to expose, because they usually don't write much code, they usually have almost zero measurable output, and they almost always have the ear of some leadership role that doesn't have time to talk to engineers directly.
• This person always thinks they know better and usually selects some standards or requirements for all teams that buys them about a year of undetected operation. These requirements can be design patterns, code coverage requirements, or new PR/delivery requirements that ALL make it harder to get code out and slow things to a crawl.
• Their decisions always put them in a position to be noticed, and always make things harder for developers, and usually pollute codebases with useless overhead. As seen above, eventually developers become miserable and begin to quit, projects don't get completed, things begin to fail, and they are usually fired or force-resigned.

The Senior Director
(Usually over multiple teams and makes final decisions for all teams based on input from a few people they trust)
Typical quote: "Developers aren't good at communication and big picture thinking, that's where I come in."

• These individuals have developed a god complex and believe that their soft skills are infinitely more important than any coding skills that ever existed. When met with a detailed explanation, they pretend they don't understand. When met with more abstract information, they want more detail, the engineer is always to blame.
• If challenged, they will literally burn the product to the ground and rule over the ashes before they will be proven wrong about any of their own decisions. SME input from engineers is secondary, and some engineers that challenge too often will NEVER be heard. The opposite path will always be taken and the more things fail, the more they develop disdain for actual engineers.
• These people usually move on or unfortunately, move up, so that they can be replaced with someone that has the tools to right whatever immense wrongs they've built into the fiber of their organization.

The GM
(They represent and report on behalf of the entire org which doesn't just include engineering)
Typical quote: "I need to you think more like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. Don't say we can't, say we can IF..."

• When this fake political implant is detected, run. It won't take long for them to endanger everyone's job, any funding that was ever acquired, or any positive bottom line that was attained by hard work and true vision.
• These people are so disconnected from engineering, they don't care if a good engineer exists on the team. They think AI and LLM will solve all of their problems soon and they won't have to deal with any of these naysayers.
• When provided standard approaches to doing things, they hate it. They would rather think in a faux-abstract manner and disregard standards and fail for the same reason the standard exists than ever acknowledge the basics of the field.
• They don't care what a job requirement looks like. A candidate can pass all levels of review but if they find one thing the candidate can't do, they'll veto it subjectively and claim they're the visionary of the Gods and saw something that won't work.
• Usually, when these politicians lodge themselves in place, the result is a burning pile of ashes and a lot of displaced technology people. They will move on, and make everyone else pay for the myopic decisions that got them here. Those are the main profiles that drive real engineers to insanity.

And there's one thing that they all have in common: They do not respect or appreciate actual engineers. To them, engineers are tools, and simply a means of advancing their career. When you notice this level of disrespect, or your ideas being dismissed and then used by these people, get it out in the open. Your job is to create solutions to problems, not serve as a stepping stool for arrogant goons who think the whole industry is their bitch.

Ok, the first article is complete. Thanks for your feedback.

That WackBang is SO hot right now...

/!

WackBang is your every day tech blog allowing developers, engineers, tech bros, overly critical evangelistic architects and managers to share their approaches, opinions, standards and rants.

Most content is welcome, don't break the law, and try to have fun!

---

if (you.stepBack() && you.fuckYourselfintheFace()) { console.log('Elon like'); }