There’s a reasonable origin for this line of thinking. Back in the dot com days, business majors were raising 50 million to make online wedding invitations and going public because they had a homepage. [1] Ignores our immigration problem, since it’s better if this isn’t about politics. So there you have it, the asshole was born. 7. But for Pete’s sake, people! Of course, those tech companies imploded and for most of them, technology wasn’t the primary cause. We are some of the most sarcastic people you will ever meet. Actually, it’s mostly[1] because 1) most people think programming is about as sexy as mopping floors, and 2) for the past decade, smart people who just wanted to make money could make more for the same hours and less risk — in finance. But you only have to enjoy the journey, not the subject. Why Engineers are Assholes (and why Chemists are Smug) January 1, 2014 | thequarkstar. You can even travel the world with a career in engineering. Terry joined us a few weeks later. Of course, he didn’t spend any time explaining why he had bounced around. Why You Shouldn’t Hire Engineers That Are Jerks By Brett Fox. It’s narcissism, plain and simple. I have had bad experiences with engineers- like 70% of my experiences with engineers were underwhelming or negative. But in general, I've met SO many software engineers who are total jerks, who just speak about themselves and constantly condescend others. In High school we weren't the quarterbacks of the hockey team, and they mocked us. I need this class for my B.S. They are so fking arrogant like you said! Our choices were constantly mocked one way or another because of this culture of ignorance. This phenomenon coincides with a related one that also annoys me: the insinuation that being an engineer automatically demonstrates your superior intellect. Because it is their coping mechanism for dealing with their emotions. Let's face it: Few of us enjoy confrontations. they all think they are capable of reshaping the fabric of space and time with sheer brainpower. I don’t regret us taking the chance on Terry because it’s oh so hard to find really good engineers. Doesn’t come without challenges. About four months later, I attended the design review for Terry’s product. It also means engineers need to stop waving their diplomas around like they’re computer astronauts[3]. According to Scott, the Engineers periodically visit worlds they've seeded with life and occasionally will "wipe the slate clean" if they discover their offspring have lost their way. It was clear that he wasn’t used to be being challenged. Work that you will be proud of Unlike taking up a role in the financial world, the thing with being an engineer is that most of the work you do are tangible – bridges, buildings, products, etc, these are … The product would either be a huge success or a mammoth flop because it was going to serve a very small customer base. “This pattern holds up across the board,” Grant wrote—from engineers in California to salespeople in North Carolina to medical students in Belgium. I think many computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, etc. It presupposes that engineering is the only thing that matters, and that everything else must defer to it. Don't ask people why they haven't had children yet. I have to do most of my work on shore as the application I use is web-based, and the network connectivity on the vessel is terrible. Who do you think comes up with this stuff? No matter how good you think they might be, don't do it! This is stupid, and a waste of time. Alice cares about the company. “So, walk me through your career,” I said. For more, read: How You Can Hire 10X Engineers For Your Startup. “I think you should meet with him.”, [Do you want to grow your business? Oddly enough it seem like you have reach self awareness..how did it feel, to fall to human level…did you shed a tear of pain ? It takes a lot of hard work to become an engineer. Yes, you should you get rid of them, and don’t hesitate. Me: “Please provide a business justification as your current laptop is fully functional. QED. I watched Terry’s body language and responses to the questions he was being asked. Please don’t make threats or encourage violence here. In reply to this question, Why are many lawyers jerks?, ... to cure cancer and diseases and basically do an important service for society as they help people live longer. MBAs were looking for some engineers to “code up this idea quick,” as if the tech part of a tech company was just this checkbox that needed filling. So over it. It was our mistake to expect something different. My goodness, we’ve got a genius in our midst – one of the glorious members of the intellectual elite! [2] Speaking strictly about proficiency, of course. We don’t see physics majors or lawyers walking around like celebrity astronauts, whereas every other sophomore in a computer science/engineering program seems to think he is already an unusually gifted and accomplished human being deserving of recognition and status. Class D amplifiers are the audio amplifiers used in cellphones. Not surprisingly, everyone is wrong, but engineers have convinced themselves that because the MBAs were demonstrably wrong about engineering, engineering must be right. After 20+ years I am much more mellow then I … The questioning from the team, as always, was tough. We are watching you. There was a lot of time and money at stake every time we approved a project for production. I've maintained my 4.0 GPA since freshmen year. I wanted Terry to relax, so I could get an idea who he was. I’ll get to it shortly, but even though 90% of initial ideas are flat out terrible, a good chunk of the time, with a little tweaking, they become brilliant. Stop trying to rub it in other everyone’s faces! If you don’t drive, you will not be in control of where you are driven! I gave Jeroen the go-ahead to hire Terry pending reference checks. And it pains me to have to point this out because I could just blissfully go along with it, and give myself that self-congratulatory pat on the back that most of the tech world is doing on a nearly daily basis. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. Here’s a recent experience that sums up the “superior intellect” of all the Engineers I work with on a daily basis: Engineer: “I need a new laptop to replace my existing one”. I’m certain it is a mere ruse so that you can walk amongst the plebe and feeble-minded organism ! Start being humble for once. Thank you for proving the point of the lead author. The tape-out alone would cost us over $150K (BTW, that’s cheap for an integrated circuit) plus it would take 8 weeks before we could evaluate the results. This kind of alarmist propaganda is nonsensical and should be laughed out of the room. After all, the vocation is in high demand and the market is expanding so rapidly that even better opportunities are to follow. But even really great business ideas often failed for lack of technical expertise. Plus, we have the advantage of having nerd humor. There’s no substitute for computer literacy, but saying everyone should learn to code is like saying everyone should learn to drive manual transmission and change their own oil: cars are everywhere! Ok I'm a server and i have been doing this for a year and a half. You’ll thank me later. I want to know if my method is wrong:-Greet the table (smile, get drinks, mabe an appitizer, tell of specials)-Ge Your email address will not be published. Of course this will vary by university but engineers intellectual elitism is to some degree justified. Even in a tough job market, statistics show that engineers are in demand. Something must change! All kinds of businesses recognise engineers as people that are very well-educated and good at solving problems. Most engineers are douche bags who think very highly of themselves and don’t want to be bothered at all around work or jobs or networking. Thank you for the opportunity to allow my commentary. He was clearly talented, but I still wondered about all the job changes. The concepts we study are way beyond intermediate calculus. I done enterprise engineering and Ive done enterprise sales too. I was a mathematics and physics double major, and when a group of engineering majors tried explaining to me why their courses were so hard because of … Alice is a brilliant engineer. Engineers do have to be smart. Great blog! “Look at his resume, he’s bounced from one company to the next.”, “’Terry’s’ a really talented engineer,” Jeroen responded. Sure it was. And please, for the love of all things good, get a life and learn some people skills! No technical incidents have been logged for your current laptop and we are under tight budget constraints for this fiscal. Exploring the world. Joe Stump is the co-founder of attachments.me, Sprint.lyand SimpleGeo — and ex-Lead architect at Digg.In this First Round CTO Summit talk, Joe shares how to build a great engineering culture. It makes us all look like elitist assholes, and it’s holding back our profession. This false premise (engineering is everything) leads to all sorts of crazy conclusions. Hey Engineers, Let's Stop Being Assholes? Hence they can only generalize from the self. She is direct and honest. Also there is a very large failure rate due to students not being able to reach the level of understanding of the subjects necesary to pass the courses. As much as we'd rather not admit it, jerks often get ahead in our world -- usually at the expense of a lot of other people along the way. Within six months of finishing university, 85% of engineering graduates go into paid work or further study. My cellphone rang. My question was more of an ice-breaker question. As if engineers were these interchangeable cogs in the machine of a startup. Here in San Francisco-SV, your fresh perspective is sorely needed. As those in the know have known for a long time, it turns out things like business development and “having customers” is pretty important too. Click here.]. Terry was a really talented engineer, and those are hard to find. [3] But don’t take this to mean we shouldn’t be proud of what we do. Full disclosure: I’m studying telecommunications engineering. I know that my undergraduate work in civil engineering didn’t include any courses on project management, let alone communications or leadership. That’s why brainstorming is so powerful, but not if you shut people down before you get things right. My point is there isn’t anything *uniquely* hard about computer science or engineering that distinguishes it from, say, physics, medicine, or getting a law degree. “Why are we interviewing this guy?” I asked Jeroen, our VP Engineering. What happened there?”. “What happened at Company Y. It was not unusual for an engineer to emerge from one of our design reviews with a laundry list of action items that needed to be fixed. Why Engineers Need to Care About Project Management Skills . This employability is set to continue as there is a looming demand for engineering skills in the UK. But we are far enough along in our development, with enough successes behind us, that we could afford to take a risk. There’s a certain subset of people in the tech community who think they do everything, are everything, and ignore the complexity of the world around them that they interact with every single day. It’s not even based on facts, either, which is supposedly the divine realm in tech circles, yet facts are whatever you want them to be in this group of people. And that’s how far the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Engineer: “I work on a vessel part time. Unfortunately, of all the engineers that I know; not one of them read your blog…every single one of them is an elitist, self- absorbed, condescending narcissistic asshole. I opened the door and I entered the room. We all know there’s a very high skill ceiling, and being a “great engineer” is a whole other ballgame. He asked me the same question 15 different ways. He stood up to shake my hand and smiled. Add to that the fact that our companies need our expertise to keep running, so to a degree our coworkers put up with it. You have to learn to grow a … Geesh. Please explain to me. Engineering industries are global industries, spanning the Americas, Asia and Europe. He had a great disruptive idea for a “Class D” Amplifier. Everyone already knows you’re smart. I date an engineer. Here’s my thought, I pray for another downsizing, rightsizing to occur so they will be out of jobs and their overlvalued, overpriced salaries are gone. I guess I’d been avoiding it for a while as it sounded like it could quickly get pretty morose or preachy. Hi Peter, Iapologize for my immature outburst. As Engineering students, can you please explain to me why engineers are so incredibly arrogant and obnoxious? However, this was another reminder that you shouldn’t expect someone to suddenly change on a dime and be something different. It presupposes that engineering is the only thing that matters, and that everything else must defer to it. Engineers have a dry sense of humor. fuck these scumbag software engineers! Which is just a logical fallacy wrapped in wishful thinking sprinkled with the chocolate covered bacon bits of all your friends who also happen to be engineers agreeing. “They had layoffs and let go the whole group in the Silicon Valley,” he said. Kidding. Why did you only spend two years there?”, “I was recruited by Company Z. The recent shortage of engineering talent in the US exacerbates this feeling, because it’s easy to conclude that the problem is because people aren’t smart enough to become software engineers. Fictional Alice, the selfless brilliant jerk. Anna North notes new research on why women leave the science and engineering fields, which often comes down to women not enjoying being mistreated by jerks:. Engineers are in demand. I've enrolled for winter Calculus 2 and all I see are ugly men there. If she believes that an unpopular position is … To be honest he’s a real pain in the ass. Most branches of Engineering are highly competitive and stressful professions. Ordering this huge 1000$ 100 chicken sandwich meal with delivery service without saying one word of “Thank YOU!” FUCK U VERY HARD! Our design review process was very rigorous. Software engineering is actually not that hard. It’s a mixed bag but I think the majority are jerks, even the introverted ones. Basic computer science type education and work is not much harder, conceptually, than intermediate calculus. The majority of the population is capable of being taught, and understanding, intermediate calculus. Work becomes a cold game of political posturing and problem dumping that saps the life out of companies and drives talent away. All the senior engineers in the company attended the meeting. Go ahead pat yourselves on the back but no one except you thinks your doing a good job. A few weeks ago, I was browsing non-fiction titles on the Kindle and came across Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture”. There are lots of engineers proudly proclaiming that everything that isn’t engineering is just some checkbox department filled with warm bodies who weren’t good enough to be programmers. If you do a Google search about brilliant jerks, one of the suggested searches is Why are Engineers Such Assholes?Rest assured, not all engineers are assholes but part of the reason why they get that bad rap is probably because of so many workplace cultures that hire, reward and promote these unsavory characters. They made me a much better offer.”. What other business can build a product that works but is glitchy, crashes, is not intuitive? Physics if I ever want to get a career. No industry frustrates people more than the computer industry. There’s this toxic idea in tech circles right now that’s starting to get really tiring. Need to be a bit more humble. Except for that one five year stint, there’s no continuity. As a fellow computer scientist, I'm actually very insulted by it and turned off. That's a great person to have in any team, in any industry. Because of the high levels of spectrum engineers lack empathy – the most human of emotions. “That’s a good sign,” I said to myself. Techs and non-techs need each other. We can be the life of a party! As the interview progressed, I understood why Jeroen was excited about him. It was Tina, our Controller, calling. The whole point of software engineers is so other people don’t have to code! All he is doing is trying to find the wrong answer or if I’m lying about something I’m not. I'm only into tall and handsome men. Another hiring mistake. MYTH: Engineers aren’t creative people. I deleted your other comments because of this. They will not respect you for it! We just choose to not go to them or we just don’t have the time! “But look at his resume,” I said. It’s the elitism. As a matter of fact, the demand for IT engineers has increased by 22% from 2012. I’m left to assume that she’d had a number of bad interactions with them over the years, but she never bothered to back up her expressions of disapproval with any sort of details. Engineers are valuable to businesses because they don’t balk at difficult assignments and will dig in to find a solution. But then I read in the summary that he had a PhD in computer science and taught classes on virtual reality at Carnegie Mellon. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of great developers and nice people who are software developers, and there are lots of great supportive environments and thriving communities in software development land, but there are also lots of jerks. I’m not an angry person but a city full of transplant aholes who think and act like they are superior to you…..this is insufferable, and I’m IN the industry. Your experience is fairly typical, and not without merit. “Brett, Terry just walked out of the office and said he was quitting.”, “Yeah, thanks for letting me know. When engineers are put under this kind of chronic stress for long periods of time, it will erode their ability to form healthy work-relationships. I love solving derivatives, but hate the stares of these ugly nerds. And believe me the sales job was 100 fucking times easier. There’s this culture (cultivated by engineers) that worships engineers and shuns everyone else for not ‘being technical.’ This culture is backwards and counterproductive. During a podcast with Empire Magazine, Ridley Scott explained the motives behind the Engineer race and why David bombed them. The nickname was attached to it during production on Alien. The interview ended, and I felt that Terry would fit our company culture. In college we were busting our ass to graduate and they mocked us. Most tech companies here in engaged in really awesome forward thinking ideas, and its great. “It’s one year here, two years there for 20 years. Cars are the future! This means that being a software engineer is not beyond the intellectual capacity of the average joe[2]. Thank you for enlightening us poor, brain-addled mouth-breathers with your words of wisdom! So as demoralizing as it can be to work with office jerks, most of us try to ignore them. I asked Terry, “Why did you only spend one year at ‘Company X’? I’ll talk to Jeroen when he’s back in the office Monday (Jeroen had the day off).”. Terry then proceeded to tell me about his career path and the companies he had worked at. These are engineers who by default act like jerks, not engineers who sometimes act that way. They either learn to imitate empathy or become incels. Here are top reasons why you should consider the path of an engineer. Also, my laptop is too heavy so I want something lighter.”. One of them is that everyone should learn to code. I highly agree with your perspective. I'm the only girl in that class. Hell, we have to take two advanced calculus classes and some algebra to even begin to learn propper communications concepts. People are illogical. “Why are we interviewing this guy?” I asked Jeroen, our VP Engineering. Terry seemed like the typical, geeky, analog IC engineers I had been working with for years. Or when they are going to lose their baby weight. There, I said it. I have to go anonymous on this one. It's because engineers are assholes -- You know why engineers are assholes? Why are most engineers jerks? I walked over to the small conference room to meet with Terry. It turns out people who don’t know how to create software are also terrible at recognizing how important (and hard) it is. I … Im studying EE at MTU myself. All technical people, be they programmers or engineers, are used to working with logical systems and equipment. He explains how to recruit rockstars (no, really), why managing engineers is like herding cats, whom to fire, why to avoid technical zealots and why peer code reviews matter. Uh, time of the month? I left work early on an April Friday afternoon to take Avery to her six month doctor checkup. Its fine! The business requires a valid business reason to justify upgrade expenditures on assets that have not reached end of life”. Anything they don’t get (history, art, theater etc) is hence in their eyes worthless. Nevertheless, Terry committed to fixing the issues that were pointed out by his peers. The advanced math classes merely test your resolve. Continued Office Jerks Are Rarely Called on Their Bad Behavior. but he over analyzes every single thing I do. 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Product would either be a huge success or a mammoth flop because it was going lose.