I don’t think engineers need encouragement to be cynical. More often engineers need to lighten up.
I just want them to stop acting like egotistical know-it-all jerks all the time. They love to speak in black-and-white absolutes and IMO it just shows how much they really don’t know.
I think Dunning-Kruger also applies to smart people… you don’t stop when you are estimating your ability correctly. As you learn more, you gain more awareness of your ignorance and continue being conservative with your self estimates.
A bit off-topic, but:
Knowing about these cognitive distortions always makes it so hard to self-evaluate too! Am I actually better than I think and I am just aware of how much I do not know, causing me to evaluate myself too lowly? Or am I an arrogant asshole, “knowing about the Dunning-Kruger effect does not make you special, especially with how often it’s cited everywhere online now,” and I should keep evaluating myself lowly? Imposter syndrome exists, but some people really are faking it and do not know anything, so am I underevaluating myself and feeling like an impostor when I should not be?
However, I also know if I state things with confidence or say I’m good at something, I’m more likely (at least online) to receive challenges and arguments about why I’m a puffed-up blowhard who actually knows nothing about anything, so I always trend towards “actually I’m just stupid” to avoid being whacked with the “ARROGANT FUCKHEAD” stick. (This is in general, not just about the tech topics this forum is for.)
I’ve read another article on his site that I have to be able to just at least appear to confidently make a decision and live with the consequences that maybe my guess is wrong instead of presenting the whole pro-and-con list, instead of hemming and hawing about how my judgment is imperfect and I’m afraid of thinking I’m competent but actually being someone the internet would tear apart for gross incompetence and the audacity to assume I’m not. (I went through a lot of his articles on a rabbit hole from another of his articles posted on programming.dev.) But luckily I’m not in the decision-making-advise-non-tech-folks-on-big-decisions-most-qualified-person-in-the-room position that this advice is geared towards and do not bear that responsibility.
What I’ve seen lead to success:
- Arrogance
- Overconfidence
- Schmoozing with the right people
- Doing flashy work, whatever that means in a given situation
What I have seen lead to failure or, at best, being undervalued and ignored:
- Caring about teammates and your future self
- Caring about the end user and the business itself, when it conflicts with something sales, marketing, or a PM want
- Creating resilient, well-engineered systems
It’s the same problem as anywhere else. Well-crafted systems are invisible and taken for granted. Saving the day by putting out a fire is applauded, even when you’re the one who laid out the kindling and matches. Managers at all levels care about their own ego more than the company, product, or team.
Maybe I just spent too much time with ex-Microsoft hacks.
“Companies are structurally set up to collude on salaries, but they’re not set up to deliberately make their employees sad - they just don’t have that kind of fine-grained control over the culture!”
This is such an insane take. I’d argue that hiring freezes are more common dictates than corporations following the law.
Counterpoint : Fuck big tech. Fuck startups. Start a software co-op and make something actually useful, instead of yet another middle-man leech like Uber and Netflix.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with either Uber or Netflix. They are, in theory, good services that people find useful. Greed and capitalism are what ruin it.
I’d much rather be able to request a driver through an app with a pre arranged price, than call for a cab which uses an an easily exploitable system that is often use to rip off people (especially people from outside the area). The only problem is that the driver’s get paid like crap.
And streaming is obviously superior to TV
Software co-ops are often indistinguishable from startups in the US. Without money they don’t matter and getting money turns you into a shitshow or requires full-time staff fighting for grants and other forms of not blood money. Maybe this is easier outside the US.
Fuck big tech tho
The way the tech world has unfolded in the last 25 years is bound to make most people cynical.
It’s a cynical way to view the C-staff of a company. I think it’s also inaccurate: from my limited experience, the people who run large tech companies really do want to deliver good software to users.
From my much broader experience, this is missing the required cynicism that C-staff want to deliver software they think is good based on the criteria cynical yes staff tell them constantly is good. I’ve never met an exec that didn’t want to deliver something good; most execs I’ve met don’t actually understand what good is or how to benefit people.
