I wrote this two years ago, but never posted it, due to the high emotions surrounding the Presidential election. Now, with John McCain dead and Lord Trump’s midterm popularity contest upon us, I think it’s a fair time to share.


For virtually my entire life, the political world has been divided between Republicans and Democrats.

Americans favor compromise

Americans favor compromise

The Republicans see themselves as the champions of small government, low taxes, strong defense, and individual initiative. Their opponents are quick to point out the shortcomings of Republican policies, which include corporate rapacity, military adventurism, blind nationalism, and selfishness and greed that run counter to the common good.

The Democrats espouse high-minded ideals like fairness, compassion, equality, inclusivity, and a social safety net. However, their government handout programs are expensive, and their idealism can get in the way of real-world pragmatism.

Republicans accuse Democrats of diluting the Christian values of America, while the Democrats point out the hypocrisy of vocally Christian Republicans whose behavior is anything but charitable.

All this posturing obscures the values that we as Americans have in common: freedom, fairness, individualism, a strong economy, and an overall greatness that lends us a justifiable position of world leadership.

This year has brought to light fundamental challenges for the American two-party system. The Republican party has fractured into moderate and radical factions with no viable leadership and no apparent path to reconciliation. The Democratic party faces a similar split between centrists and socialists, although the two factions appear to be able to play together, at least for now.

This is all symptomatic of the fact that the two-party system no longer serves the best interest of Americans. For the first time in decades, the American people have abandoned traditional political parties and the mediocre candidates they typically nominate. The mainstream Republican candidates were all weak and easily toppled by an outspoken, brash, demagogue who gleefully spews the most un-American and shameful vitriol. While the Democrats could only offer us another untrustworthy business-as-usual chameleon.

Meanwhile, the Republican Congress is doing its damnedest to avoid its Constitutional duty to ratify a new Supreme Court justice. The radical faction is the tail that is wagging the Republican party, leaving the Republicans I know in a quandary. There is no longer any space in the Republican party for intelligent people who are fiscally conservative (low taxes and small government) but socially liberal (reproductive rights, LGBT rights, equality, immigration reform). Meanwhile, Democrats don’t exactly welcome members who are fiscally conservative. Where are those voters—and there are plenty of them—supposed to go?

Lost amidst all this shortsighted partisan tantrum-throwing is the old-fashioned notion of hearing one another out and finding mutually-acceptable legislative solutions. Political theory suggests that the majority party honor and address the concerns of the minority party, to produce a stronger piece of legislation that earns bilateral support.

In the past, this has worked well. Democratic social programs can only succeed with assertive watchdoggery. Corporate profit-seeking enhances our standard of living only if its excesses are regulated for the benefit of all. A huge military must be tempered with strong diplomacy and compassionate leadership.

Everyone acts as if the winner gets to mandate how the country is run, but it has always been—and always will be—a political process of communication, negotiation, and compromise. The wisest political solutions only come about when civil people with diverse views work together, which our current political parties have forgotten.

It amazes me that I need to point this out to my fellow Americans, but even radical views don’t need to lead to radical conflict. This is America, for chrissake! Our whole 240-year experiment in democracy is built upon a foundation of political tolerance and respect.

A high-minded but political realist named Lincoln, when asked why he didn’t call Confederate rebels his irreconcilable enemies, once replied, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

Every time I venture into the job market, I’m shocked and more than a little insulted by the job titles on offer.

Let’s be clear. I am a professional software engineer focusing on user interface design and development.

I am not a Ninja or a Jedi. Nor am I a Rockstar or a Guru or a Wizard. I am neither an Animal, a Unicorn, nor a Unicorn Tamer.

And yet, those are words I’ve seen employers choose when posting job openings in my field.

“Sure”, you say, “but those are just metaphors. What they really want are the best coders they can get.”

By way of reply, I ask you to consider the primary attribute of a person who would respond to such an ad. While confidence is usually considered a positive trait, someone who thinks of themselves as a ninjajedirockstarguruwizard clearly lacks the perspective and balance that comes with an equal portion of humility. Whatever the term, employers who use such superlatives are communicating that the primary trait they are looking for is arrogance.

“They’re just looking for energetic, motivated, go-getter types,” you counter. “And is arrogance really a bad trait for a coder?”

Absolutely!

First, let’s dispel the myth that arrogance (or even confidence) is correlated with competence; it isn’t. That’s a simple association fallacy. While confidence can be the outcome of competence, confidence can just as easily be a symptom of delusions of grandeur. And I know plenty of workers who, despite their obvious competence, struggle with their self-confidence.

With arrogance comes a disdain for others which easily hardens to contempt. With arrogance comes technical hubris and the belief that anything done by other employees (and certainly other companies) is inherently flawed and inferior. If you’ve been around the software industry for any time at all, you will have seen countless examples of NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here). Arrogance is the most pervasive threat to any business process that is based on teamwork, knowledge sharing, and mutual respect.

When I see a developer exhibit arrogant behavior, it’s usually because they lack the perspective that comes from real-world experience; they haven’t been in the industry long enough to be confronted with their own mistakes and realize their fallibility, nor to appreciate the ingenuity and expertise of other practitioners. If I’m really looking for the best coder I can find, I’m going to hire someone who has made their share of mistakes, acknowledged them, and been willing to learn from them and improve their skills by asking questions of others.

As you might imagine, I don’t consider myself a ninjajedirockstarguruwizard. Having successfully derived my livelihood from software engineering for the past thirty years, I have a pretty accurate understanding of my strengths, weaknesses, and the value I can add in any given situation. I do not hold the arrogant self-opinion these employers are looking for, nor do I want to work with colleagues who do; so as soon as I see such superlatives in a job listing, I simply delete it, unread, and move on.

There are additional reasons why I immediately reject such listings. By putting so much emphasis on the search for ninjajedirockstarguruwizards, employers are revealing some ugly things about their internal culture.

First, the company is exhibiting as much arrogance as the people they hope to hire. They believe that the company will (of course!) be compellingly attractive to the best coders in the industry. They think the best and brightest will be satisfied with the corporate culture, working environment, compensation, and growth opportunities that they provide. Ironically, once you look behind the curtain, you’ll find such companies rarely live up to their inflated self-opinion.

Second, the company devalues women. Immature titles like Ninja, Jedi, Rockstar, Wizard, and Guru generally don’t appeal very much to educated, professional women, who have struggled to be taken seriously even within their field. The few women who do interview probably won’t manifest the kind of arrogance that the company associates with “quality”. One further wonders what Asian expatriates must think of the casual use of culturally-appropriated terms like “ninjas” and “gurus”.

It’s unassailably clear that all those super-heroic job titles are designed to appeal specifically to adolescent boys. By emphasizing those terms in job listings, a company is telling me that their managers generally think of their development teams as a bunch of immature adolescents, and that I can expect to be treated in a correspondingly condescending fashion.

Sure, perhaps I’m being a bit humorless, but that’s just insulting, and not an experience I want to subject myself to. So I don’t.

Finally, I just want to confirm that the “Overly Zealous” and “Cookie Manipulator” in the title of this post did indeed appear as titles in job listings I’ve recently seen, along with “Enthusiastic”, “Audacious”, “Visionary Game-Changer”, “Badass” and “Programmer Extraordinaire”.

And one job specially asked for an engineer “with more cowbell!” (their exclamation point). Plus, believe it or not, one company sought a “Ruby Eating Python-o-saurus Rex”. What! The! Fuck! Yeah, that really shows that you will take me, my career, and the contribution I make to your company seriously.

And final (dis-) honorable mention goes to the listing for a “Principle Systems Engineer” (sic). I’m absolutely agog imagining what duties that might involve…

Update: My followup post contains a list of the more effusive job titles I saw during the two months subsequent to this article.

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