Geek Culture
Robby made a great post about geek culture and values. Quoting him:
This discussion is about *culture* of software more than it is about the *profession* of software. Most software people (especially those who hang out here) are passionate about their job. That passion translates into many realities (or at least semi-accurate stereotypes), including 70-hour work weeks, lack of bathing, respect for hacks, working at low wages, etc.
Other kinds of people in other fields, whether professional or service industries, seem to have a clearer work/life seperation. My girlfriend is a secretary, and she works hard and cares about her job, but she doesn’t continue to think about secretarial techniques at home nor argue passionately for different secretarial models at JoelOnAdministration.com until 5 AM.
The geek culture is both a great boon to our efforts and a great boondoggle. We owe much of the world’s technological advancement to Wizards Who Stayed Up Late. While other folks were selling cars, drinking beer and going to the gym, we forged the Internet, created the cellphone, and built Google.
Unfortunately, as seriously as we take ourselves, geek culture has spent practically nothing on PR. Few people outside the community understand or appreciate what we do; consequently they fear and disrespect software and software people. And because we build object libraries for fun (profit? oh yeah, need to eat…), we tend to be less organized about developing methodologies that meet precise business needs.
Our culture needs help, so that people know what we do and why we do it, so that we’re respected like other professionals, and so that loving what you do is the norm rather than the exception.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s amazing to find the perception of non technical people about us (geeks). Most of them seem to think that we make *easy* money. They simply can not see the fact that our job is (amazingly) complex. And as geeks, we have completely failed to convey the same. And unless that changes, I don’t think software engineers will get the respect they deserve.