Smart-ass complex, not giving a shit & incompetence

There’s no short of snarky, condescending tech articles out there, sometimes they are pure BS but often they are an attempt to paint the “picture” in black and white by some frustrated programmer. Stumbled upon Dimitry’s take - incompetent people are the problem, while we are strangers, his words struck a chord.

I resonate with these bits from Dimitry’s article & PS: all views are my own.

  • The smart-ass complex

    • Knowing how to code or open a terminal and use git grep doesn’t make you smart nor educated.
    • Not being smart is totally fine. We just need to avoid being stupid. And we need to be humble and not let our egos blind us.
    • If we recognise we aren’t smart, we can start going back to basics by keeping it simple.
    • If we aren’t smart enough to predict future problems, we shouldn’t even try. Instead, let’s solve the problems at hand as they come and do our best at keeping things clean and flexible

  • Not giving a shit

    • Having a “no fucks given” culture is a disease. It poisons everything around it.
    • At some point everyone stops trying to improve things. They simply go with the flow.
    • Not owning stuff creates bigger snowballs. People don’t care and sometimes people are unable to confirm crappy code isn’t shitty for a reason.

  • Incompetence

    • If someone’s used hammers and nails all their life and you give them screws and a screwdriver, they’ll simply say “oh that’s a pretty crappy hammer but the job is a job” and proceed to smashing the screw into the wood with the handle. If you want them to use it properly, invest in their education or at least handhold them until proficient. Do people do that? Less often than one would expect. And don’t forget teams where the tech leads have no idea what they’re doing either.
    • Incompetent people hire other incompetent people who then get involved in hiring. It’s exponential.
    • If you don’t care about the company, care about yourself. And speak up
    • Don’t worry about the company’s success if your skin is not in the game. Think about your own comfort. What could we change so you felt a bit better? Identify those problems and speak up

He also talks about what is his version of “competence”, that part is nice too.. mostly text book. Things that we as professional programmers should live and breath. Do we? Well, that’s an article for another day. Ciao for now 👋