Dear Software Engineers: Try Not To Be Jerks

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Hey folks, I'm just headed to CrossFit. I'm super late. Um, be a pretty short drive though. Um, I figured I feel like YouTube is hiding. Sorry, I had to get through those lights cuz I'm late. Um, feel like YouTube's hiding comments from me in the app, which is kind of annoying. Uh cuz I feel like there's been a couple of people that have left comments and I've responded being like that's a great idea for a video and then I can't find it now. Um which is super annoying. And uh it's funny building Brand Ghost. we have commenting uh on the platform and there's times where I'm on there and if I look at what brand goes can see through the API versus what the YouTube studio app shows me like there are different comments and I don't understand like how that's possible that their their app just isn't showing that.

So kind of annoying. Um, apologies if I've seemingly lost your your question. Um, because I'm in such a rush this morning, I didn't end up even looking at Reddit. Uh, but there was I figured there's a a topic. It's a little bit off topic, but might be kind of interesting. Uh, just because as a content creator in sort of the tech space, this comes up non-stop. Um, and I wanted to talk about like uh sort of mirroring or similarities with how people approach like disagreements online and then like how that carries over. This person can't stay in the lines. Uh, we got to get past them. Sorry if you're swerving into my lane on a turn. Like I'm not driving near you. um how people have disagreements online and how they're able to kind of carry that over into their professional career.

And don't get me wrong, my disclaimer here is like I realize these are different things, but um there's like almost like a level of maturity that I think some people actually do not have in a professional environment which uh which makes it really difficult to do your job effectively as a software engineer. And I say that because when when we're building stuff in teams, right? Like you're going to have smart people like generally I would say statistically probably software engineers are, you know, intelligent people. I think I think that I would be willing to put some money behind that without having stats uh directly in front of me. And so what I'm thinking when I say this is like if someone has a perspective on something as a software engineer, right? They've they're like, I I believe this, whether it's a design or an approach, whatever it happens to be, there's probably some some good reason for it, right?

Like it's not like they just maybe they did make it up and it's built on intuition, but there's probably some reasoning behind it at least. Not to say that they shouldn't back it up with data, but there's probably some reasoning. Now, when we have smart people with different perspectives, what's going to happen, if you can't tell where this is going, is that eventually there's going to be these situations where people disagree, right? That's just natural. And there's nothing wrong with that. I I think that, you know, if you're going through your career trying to to shy away from situations like, "Oh man, I got to avoid any confrontation. And I can't got to avoid any situation where there's a disagreement like it's like basically going to be disastrous. Like you c you should not try to go through your career or life like that. Instead, I'm not saying like cause problems or like create situations where you're like creating friction.

Uh but understand that like it's a natural thing, right? People will disagree. Nothing wrong with that. And the reality is when we have disagreements, this is just, you know, different understanding, different perspectives coming together. And when you get to the other side of a disagreement, this is generally where you create even better things. Right? If you have two perspectives that are conflicting, it's not like both perspectives are 100% right or 100% wrong. There's going to be truths to both. There's going to be gaps in both. Um and the reality is even if they're both you know say accurate how we weigh pros and cons of things the amount of weight we assign to them may look different and that's why someone has you know chosen or you know prioritize something over something else because in their worldview the weight of something is more valuable or less valuable.

So when we have conversations about this kind of stuff and we have these different perspectives, it's an opportunity for us to come together and say wait a second like do we as a group agree on the weight of these things and if not we should discuss that we should get alignment right and then what you create afterwards is generally not always but like generally some combination between different perspectives right it might be more heavily one perspective and then you take some elements of another. But the point is that after you've brought together several perspectives, you're more equipped to make better decisions. So, what does this have to do with online conversations and stuff? Well, I feel like when people are unable to jump into acknowledging different perspectives, right? Like if you have a an inability to even perceive something differently, right? If your immediate reaction is like attacking, then I think that uh probably this is like a level of uh I don't know emotional maturity that's like that's lacking.

And you may find that it's difficult like you might be kind of lashing out uh because you're like you avoid these types of things all the time in a professional environment. Now you're like taking it out somehow. Uh or maybe you do this kind of thing in a professional environment as well. But my point is that like that kind of behavior I feel like is not is not a good alignment with like what you probably should be trying to do professionally. The reason I say this is like again I post content everywhere online. I can understand if someone's in the YouTube comments and they think like no one's ever going to see this whatever. I have an alias. I can talk whatever kind of I want. Like, sure. Like, that's fine, I guess. I don't know. I don't know why you want to live your life like that.

So, there was a comment um on like one of the recent videos about someone rewriting code, like an engineer, and someone stopped in. I don't have the comment pulled up, but basically stopped in. You know, I'm I don't know if I can say the f word on YouTube without getting demonetized. I think I can say like a couple uh lighter curse words and it's okay, but I don't know if I can say the f word. But they're basically saying like you're all idiots for not for not acknowledging this person's using AI. And it's like, you know, there's a I think there's a way to share that perspective without being a total piece of that no one wants to have around. And unfortunately, when you enter a conversation like that, that's exactly what you are. Literally, no one wants you around in a conversation like that. It's going to be very difficult if you approach things with that mindset to get buy in from people.

Like, what are you expecting that everyone around you is going to go, "Oh, now that you've mentioned it, excellent perspective. We should acknowledge this person." No. People are going to want to say like, "Who's this idiot?" And I want nothing to do with them. Right? So, if you think about what the goals are, is the goal of the comment to basically try to just be rude? If so, like I guess mission accomplished, I just don't know what the point is. If the goal is to raise awareness about a different perspective, uh like I want to say mission accomplished, but done extremely poorly. Uh if the goal is to have a conversation about it, absolutely not. you're gonna get a video like this one basically calling you an absolute because this is the wrong way to do it. So, I say this like I don't I don't have the person's handle in front of me.

Some people are using their their actual names on YouTube. Um, it was funny. I I posted, I think from my main channel, someone was being like pretty pretty outrageous in some of the comments about how I'm like wast I'm wasting their time because they watched a video, left a terrible comment that was talking about me wasting their time and then two months later, not making this up, two months later came back to respond to the comment again. And I'm thinking like how much time am I wasting of yours buddy if you're the one coming back. But anyway was sharing this online and someone online was like man they use their real name as their YouTube and like took me 2 seconds to find them on on LinkedIn. And this is how I want to bring things back together. Okay. So, you might say, Nick, like I can talk however I want online because like I have an alias or like I don't give a about your opinion.

And that's totally fine, right? Like I don't control what you say, right? Makes sense. You talk however you want. America, free speech, I don't know, whatever you want to say. Um, but like I see enough of this happening on social media and especially when things come over to LinkedIn where it's uh you might disagree if I say it's more of a professional network. At this point it's basically Facebook but real identities, real companies, real hiring managers, employers, right? I have seen enough instances of people getting completely destroyed because they have an outrageous take or there's people that are being racist, there's people that are being sexist, there's people attacking other people and this is like their public professional profile that the companies see. I don't like I don't know what you're expecting, right? I'm not It's not like a threat. It's more just like a I just don't know what you're expecting to see when you say ridiculous on the internet that probably people are not going to appreciate.

Like, hm, this it seems like this person has a really difficult time working with others. They can't they can't even have a conversation without attacking someone, right? Or without insulting someone or without whatever. Like, it's not it's not an open conversation or this person's being racist or they're being sexist or whatever it happens to be. Like when this is how you're engaging online and this is how your public persona is, I'm I'm just saying like I feel like that's kind of risky unless you are I don't know your own employer and your clients don't see that. Like I I I don't know. So kind of two meta points here. One is like what I was just talking about which is you know how you're perceived how you're like coming across on the internet is how people will see you and I realize that's like an

obvious statement but I feel like it's not that obvious based on the dumb stuff I see people doing right the the problem is like you can delete comments and stuff but like I don't know sometimes I see stuff that goes up and it's screenshot right away like Once you do it, it's not like it's it's been done, right? Like it's been done. You can always apologize, that kind of thing. I'm of the mindset that sometimes people say things in a particular state uh they don't actually mean it. I've had many conversations online where people were heated and once we get discussing, they're like, "Hey, like wasn't in a good spot. sorry, you know, I disagree with your perspective, but like here's here's actually what I meant and like didn't mean to to attack. It's pretty rare, but like those are awesome conversations because it takes a lot of like takes a lot for someone to kind of acknowledge something like that.

So, I've seen that happen. Um, but like I don't know, man. It's people be out there saying some stuff. So the other thing is that I encourage you if you disagree with things to have like open conversations about it. Okay? If your gut instinct is to attack someone to like just call them names or to insult them like what what is your goal with with such with such engagement, right? Like I don't care because you can say things and basically if they're attacking me enough I will just block you. Like if it's attacking of my character and stuff like that just get blocked. I don't care. Um otherwise it's a teaching opportunity for me. I can make content about it. I can post your dumb comment that's insulting and have other people go, "Yeah, you know what?

Like that is not a good model of how we should be behaving." you can be made an example of because I think that it's important people realize that when people are trying to create content, share perspective, try to be helpful, that if the way that you react is just insulting like other people that are creating content, like you need to be able to have thick skin for this kind of stuff. People need to be aware that there's just rude people out there. How do you deal with feedback like this? Right? There's a lot of teachable moments with this stuff. Plus, it's engagement. you're just creating engagement for me. I don't care. Um, so I don't mind, but I don't think it's a good use of your time. You're you're mostly wasting your time. Someone on one of the videos said something along the lines of like, "I don't know why this algorithm keeps recommending me stupid stuff like this or whatever." And I'm like, "I don't know, man.

Maybe it's because you watched the whole damn video and then left a comment on it." And YouTube's algorithm was like, great, we just literally maximized the amount of watch time that this person had on this type of content. So like, what do you think it's going to do? It's going to give you more stuff like that. So anyway, um, some things to think about, but uh, try to be nice to each other on the internet. Take care.