Red Pill Advice for Software Engineers

PrisonerOfLife · 2014-08-10T22:26:58+00:00

It's sad that engineering of all careers has become a game of mere social charlatanism, but I suppose that's the marxist culture at work. The best case scenario is to work for a manager with real, meaningful engineering experience rather than a political pen pusher but sometimes you get stuck with insipid superiors who create zero value yet reap more benefits than those with the real ingenuity. Such is the nature of the rat race.

untitled1 · 2014-08-11T07:44:20+00:00

If you don't want to read the whole thing, this was the interesting part to me:

Status is more important than likability

Low and high status aren’t about being liked or disliked. Some people are liked but have low status, and some people are disliked but retain high status. In general, it’s more useful and important to have high status at work than to be well-liked. It’s obviously best to have both, but well-liked low-status people get crap projects and never advance. Disliked high-status people, at worst, get severance. As Machiavelli said, “it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.” People’s likes and dislikes change with the seasons, but a high-status person is more unlikely to have others act against his interests.

Moreover, if you have low social status, people will eventually find reasons to dislike you unless you continually sacrifice yourself in order to be liked, and even that strategy runs out of time. At high social status, they’ll find reasons to like you. At low status, your flaws are given prime focus and your assets, while acknowledged, dismissed as unimportant or countered with “yes, buts” which turn any positive trait into a negative. (“Yes, he’s good in Clojure, but he’s might be one of those dynamic-typing cowboy coders!” “Yes, he’s good in Haskell, but that means he’s one of those static-typing hard-asses.” “Yes, he’s a good programmer, but he doesn’t seem like a team player.”) When you have low status, your best strategy is to be invisible and unremarkable, because even good distinctions will hurt you. You want to keep your slate ultra-clean and wait for mean-reversion to drift you into middling status, at which point being well-liked can assist you and, over some time– and it happens glacially– bring you upper-middle or high status.

When you have high status, it’s the reverse. Instead of fighting to keep your slate blank, it’s actually to your benefit to have things (good things) written about you on it. People will exaggerate your good traits and ignore the bad ones (unless they are egregious or dangerous). You start at 70 and people start looking for ways to give you the other 30 points.

DexterousRichard · 2014-08-10T20:59:46+00:00

Some may think this is off topic, but this article is insanely good. Thanks so much for posting this.

Asoka11111 · 2014-08-10T21:41:28+00:00

Agreed. I read it as someone who hopes to study CS in college and I found it helpful for how to present myself in interviews.

Geryon667 · 2014-08-11T06:48:31+00:00

It's a great article. I'm an ancient software engineer that's been on the cusp of executive level management for a few years now, and I knew this intellectually, but it's really interesting to see it spelled out explicitly. The difference in treatment between "management" and "production" is amazing.

thethirdcoast · 2014-08-11T13:14:29+00:00

Thanks for the great find.

I particularly appreciated the Interview A: as Software Engineer section, because the way I presented myself resulted in several day-long technical interviews when I attempted to leave my firm a few years ago. A few turned out to be rather hellish.

After reading this it is obvious I need to go back to the drawing board the next time I make a career move.

rpkarma · 2014-08-11T09:03:45+00:00

Heh good old O'Church. I feel bad for him on HN sometimes. He likes to talk about some very inconvenient truths, but I've got a bit of respect for the guy. Good article.

dallz_beep · 2014-08-11T19:01:56+00:00

Great Red Pill career advice. Thanks OP, this is useful as fuck to me right now. This rivals the "powertalk" type of articles. I thirst for more of this type of knowledge.

TheDamnedEngineer · 2014-08-11T19:45:27+00:00

It's funny how reading this will probably change my life forever, but hey, that's TheRedPill for you.

Real thanks for posting this.

whatsazipper · 2014-08-11T04:23:57+00:00

Men in software and IT often get the social status they deserve.

Title	Red Pill Advice for Software Engineers
Author	captainramen
Upvotes	76
Comments	37
Date	August 10, 2014 7:09 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/TheRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/2d616l/red_pill_advice_for_software_engineers/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/TheRedPill/red-pill-advice-for-software-engineers.19199 https://theredarchive.com/post/19199

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