Why Are Software Engineers Online SO ARROGANT?!

Transcript is auto-generated and may contain errors.

good morning it is January 2nd I'm just leaving CrossFit here we'll get the GPS up got to back into of this spot okay um okay I'm a little winded I should be able to talk though um going to Reddit again for a question this one is from CS career questions so I've been trying to jump between experience devs and some other subreddits for what I think are some interesting topic so this morning's on the way to CrossFit was also from that subreddit and this topic is going to be about um perception of I guess the the focus is on like te I don't know if it's like necessarily big Tech professionals or just people in Tech that have you know employment um and and seeming arrogant in particular online so I wanted to talk through that as a content creator kind of uh share some

perspective on probably what's going on and then so that way people can maybe navigate it a little bit more clearly um so with that said if you have uh questions you want answered please leave a comment uh I say this on every video now right but send me a message to Dev leader on any social media channel you want and you can offer as much detail as you want there I'll keep it Anonymous uh so thanks for doing that and then a reminder if you like content like this my main Channel Dev leader I do a live stream every 7 every Monday at 700 p.m. Pacific you can tell I can't speak properly um okay so my my thoughts on what's going on here is that uh I don't think there's like a like a unique level of arrogance for whether it's big Tech employees

or people that are are working in their careers we have a this challenge with social media in general okay so kind of want to talk about what happens with social media and I think this is more common or more uh easy to understand when we think about other people posting con uh content on social media right uh I think the one that's really pardon me typical or understandable for me is like Fitness influencers and uh I realize a large majority of my audience cuz I can see stats is like almost exclusively male like over 99% it's kind of crazy uh and that's like even on my main Channel Dev leader it's like extremely heavy uh male demographic right but I kind of uh unfortunately expect this with uh just software engineering in general um so this example might not ring as true but like I

think people are still probably familiar with like you know beauty standards from social media right so uh the reason I want to talk through this a little bit is just to kind of uh build up some evidence outside of just software engineering to illustrate my point but uh I think it's pretty widely understood that like social media you're getting the best view of uh best view into anyone's life right people generally use social media to post the best things that are going on and as a result we get this very heavily skewed perspective as to what's going on so with like uh whether it's like uh Instagram models that kind of stuff going on you'll get this like very skewed perception of like a beauty standard for especially for women right and uh for Fitness it's like you'll see the most fit people at their

top level of Fitness because they work hard at that stuff and it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to show off um not in their best shape right if they're especially if they're trying to uh to educate or if they're trying to sell products they don't want to be in their uh off peak of uh physical appearance and then say like hey like here's why you should trust me look I don't I don't look as amazing as I could right like you're everyone's always trying to show their best on social media um and my point with kind of walking through these two examples is to give you two that are just nothing to do with software engineering where this kind of thing happens okay so um with content creation online um I kind of frame this I mean there's multiple angles but generally

when I talk about content creation online I talk about either learning in public or like having expertise in an area and I mean there's everything in between but these are the two main categories I look at and I think what ends up happening is that there are fewer people that are learning in public and making it very clear that like hey I'm just learning here are the things that I think I'm I'm learning here's my interpretation and instead what we get is that even even beginners are uh kind of masquerading as experts and there's a reason why people do this though okay it's not because people are trying to like be malicious necessarily it's because when you speak with a level of confidence on social media um it's about kind of building that uh what's the word I want to use um I can't think

of the right word cuz it's it's escaping me right now and obviously I can't I don't edit these so um but when you build up this p uh perception that you are an expert what you're saying becomes much more believable people are more willing to pay attention they're more willing to follow and let me be clear I'm not necessarily encouraging that you just do that for the sake of getting followers and an audience because if you're acting confident about stuff that you literally do not have expertise in that is dangerous right I don't think there's anything wrong with individuals saying like hey this is something I'm learning about here here's my Learning Journey here's my understanding of how it works but to to be learning and then say like kind of act as if you're an expert on it like to me that's not okay

um it's misleading so I think generally what's happening is that you have a lot more people that are not willing to admit that they are learning or or they don't I guess they don't know better I'm not trying to say they're doing it maliciously so go posting online and their their goal ends up being like okay like if we think about this literally from a numbers perspective almost like a game well how do I make that that follower count go up how do I get more Impressions more likes on things well part of that truthfully is that when you speak with confidence you will convince more people that you know what you're talking about now imag like just to give you an example imagine you're listening to this video and I'm here going like I don't really know like I'm wrong a lot but like

I wonder if I don't know but maybe maybe people are kind of doing this like maybe it could be because and then I start giving you examples you you'd be listening what I'm saying like I don't know man like why am I wasting my time listening to this person you might listen to me for other reasons maybe it's more entertaining or something else but uh in terms of like coming to me for knowledge you'd be like this guy never seems to actually have any confidence in what he's saying so why would I go to someone who's not confident to learn from them okay so it's it's a bit of like a I don't know like psychology like a social kind of thing going on where people that are speaking more confidently will get better traction with their content creation so again I'm telling you this

to kind of arm you with a perspective on it not to Def like it's a little bit of defense for what people are doing but it's more of an explanation people do that because it works it's the same like same argument where people will say I and I this is my opinion too people are like I hate when YouTubers make those stupid faces on thumbnails or they use clickbait titles like it's so cringy why do people do it I wish people would stop I'll tell you exactly why they do it they do it because it literally Works they have made a conscious decision and I've talked to other YouTubers uh like some really big creators who will say big creators in like the you know software engineering or c space in particular uh not like a Mr Beast kind of thing but people will say

like yeah like it's awkward to do it but it works so like I don't care right people people get frustrated or you know they might not understand why people are doing things but they're doing it because it works okay so I'm I just want to give you that perspective so that you understand why it's happening and then that way it's less like I don't know I find when things are easier to understand like where people are coming from it's less frustrating now it doesn't mean that I'm condoning people that are putting out information that is false or they have no experience on like that actually really bothers me where and I've seen this happen tons as a content creator where someone who has very little experience and like if you see enough of their content you kind of get a feel for like someone's level

of experience and then you'll hear them talk about so it's like oh I've been in in I've been in software development for a year now and like bu my course on becoming a pro software engineer in like 60 days or less and I'm like no like that's like that's actually bull crap it's bull crap because you you actually do not know what you're talking about it's not to say that you're not good or you won't aspire to be even better but like that's misleading to me it's a false promise it's kind of not based on a lot and it's misleading so like I don't that kind of stuff I don't appreciate I think is kind of dangerous um but again like if you said like why is someone doing that or why does it appear this way that's why so the final part that I

kind of wanted to touch on here is that especially when we're talking about social media like it's going to be very biased right I if you think about what was saying earlier about people putting their best effort forward they're trying to show you the best version of themselves and whatever Niche it happens to be we're talking about software engineering in particular here um it's going to be biased right you're not you're not going to have if we think about the number and I don't have stats on this but the number of people that are creators online posting stuff online versus the number of people that are actually in industry working as professional software developers it's going to be a very small number of people that are actually creators right like very small so to have this impression of are our professional software developers arrogant based

on the lens of like just what you see on LinkedIn for example I mean you you have a very narrow view of what's actually happening in software development unfortunately right but that's the reality of it it's it's a narrow View and it's through the lens of social media so you have to kind of recognize these these ridiculous biases this windshield will not clear up let's wait here for one more sec okay um sorry it gets so hot in here I can't even think straight when that windshield is being cleared off okay so you have a limited pool of people that are kind of representing a larger um group of people and that group of people is going to be be very uh much representing stuff in a particular way okay so there's just such a huge bias that's created when we look at things through

that lens so in terms of like oh they must be arrogant no um you have like I said that particular lens and I hope that it's a little bit more obvious that people are generally doing it because speaking with confidence when creating content uh is more effective now I only got a few minutes before I'm home but the other thing I wanted to touch on here and you'll see more and more of this uh going forward but like for example I think that people tune into this channel in particular um a couple reasons one is that like uh because of the style of content you can probably just let this run in the background right like Nick's just blabbing about stuff I can like I could be driving to work or sitting on a bus and just kind of have it in the background so

that's one part but the other part that I'm hope for is that um you see that I'm kind of just speaking to you plainly right like on my main Dev leader Channel I start every single video on my main Dev leader Channel by saying hi my name is Nick centino and I'm a principal software engineering manager at Microsoft I do that to build um I still can't think of the word it's ridiculous um it'll come to me like great when I'm pulling to the driveway but uh I do that so that you understand that like I'm I'm speaking from a place of experience right so that's on purpose it's not me bragging I think I have a long way to go in so many areas and I love learning so like I'm not trying to do that to say like hi like look how cool

I am I'm doing that so that you know that I'm speaking from a place of experience on this channel I don't even do that because I'm just trying to shortcut all of that and just speak to you very plainly about all these things going on so I talk about similar things between both channels I talk about similar things uh on you know what you're listening to right now on code commute I talk about all this kind of stuff in all of my content creation across platforms but how I'm explaining this information or how I'm delivering the information to you this way is very plain very much like a conversation like if you were to just chat with me as a friend this is how I would talk to you right if you if you were a buddy of mine and you said hey Nick like

could you tell me about how some of this stuff looks in software engineering this is the kind of conversation we'd be having and that way I hope that for you know different audiences this is much more appealing versus like uh you know this is someone who's trying to be an authority figure in the space like I don't want them lecturing me I just kind of want it casual cool so that's what this channel is for right but I think people um there's a particular group of people that really appreciate that and I think that that's kind of poking through more and more on social media you'll have more uh people that are like air quotes here like influencers uh and I'm not just talking about like in software engineering I mean like especially in other other areas uh you'll see this in Fitness and stuff

as well people that are just being like more real are kind of poking through this like overwhelming majority of like I don't know the same same kind of cookie cutter thing right um I like looking at like Fitness as a is such a more like obvious kind of thing going on if you were to go to any like Fitness account you're going to have you know a very attractive man or a very attractive woman they're going to be uh you know extremely in shape they're going to talk about like their perfect workouts their perfect meals whatever um and there's just like a million of these people and it's not like they're bad or anything like that that's not my point but there's so many of them that are so similar and what's happening is you're having other let's call them influence fencers other influencers that

are kind of poking through and it's like sure like they're going to be showing you like some of their their bad days are going to be show like talking to you about like their challenges and that stuff is resonating more and more uh with more people right people are going like there's so much of this stuff that seems like that social media level of like Perfection I just want someone who's relatable right so I think I think over time I don't know what the answer is here uh but I think we'll see some of that shifting and I'm hopeful that you know especially in software engineering and stuff you'll see more of it too like uh I try to make sure like I have videos out on me failing my Google interview right I interviewed for Google before Microsoft and uh I bombed the technical

part uh and not like you know I was very clear in the video it's not because I don't think I'm technical right right as an engineering manager I programmed straight for 8 years at a startup and built most of their products I had two patents for my work and two more pending so like to say that I'm not technical like that was the feedback is like part of my language is kind of but oh we weren't even in sport mode what the hell um to say not technical it's not fair but like the way that I was graded in the interview I feel like isn't really representative of what the work I would be doing is so like you know I was just very transparent in that video like here's me failing and here's what I did as a result right instead of trying to

pretend like oh like everything in my life has been perfect I'm such a good engineer and software engineering manager no I got tons of I got to do better tons and most people do like that's just the reality so again I'm going to wrap up this video just cuz I'm about to pull into the driveway but like um you know I I just want people to think more critically about what they're seeing online so if things look perfect like they're not you know no one lives a perfect life you're seeing a very um oh my wife's walking the dog that's cool I just drove faster um you know it's just this skewed view of what of what people want to put online so um keep that in mind when you're seeing things going on I hope you understand a little bit more clearly why you

see people sharing information in a certain way I think the word I wanted I told you I was going to think about it was pulling again was just like building authority right if there if someone's speaking from a place of authority people want to believe it more so I hope that helps I know that was a little bit different than the usual thing but I saw people talking about it on Reddit and figured I could shed some light on as to why it's happening so thanks so much I'll see you next time take care