Nine years ago, I wrote about the
three virtues of a programmer. Having spent some number of years making an honest living as a software developer, I've come across quite a number of virtues that don't make the grade. They
are virtues, but only in appropriate doses. In a work setting, focusing on them for their own sake, can lead to ruin.
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Be virtuous. |
They say you should put yourself into your work. That's a load of baseless claptrap. At work, it pays to
not apply many virtues you would to your own life. Because your office is not your home, your colleagues are not your friends, and your employer is not your dad. Unless of course, your office is literally your home, your colleagues literally your only friends and your dad literally is your boss, in which case I can offer you only my sincerest condolences... and an exhortation to make better life choices.
But enough of that! We're here to explore some virtues in the workplace that are not only outdated, but dangerously overrated.
1. Hard Work
Few employers are going to tell you that hard work is a
bad thing. That's because hard work
isn't a bad thing. In the absence of actual talent, hard work can be your only saving grace. Therein lies the problem; focusing too much or solely on the ability to work hard makes it look like it's your
only saving grace.
It's not that being willing to work hard isn't important. It's just that being effective at your job enough that you
don't have to work hard, is of significantly greater value. After all, horses and oxen can work hard, too. What separates a hard worker like yourself, from those simple creatures?
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Oxen work hard too, so what? |
Forget what the older generations tell you about hard work. They were fortunate to exist in a time where actual talent wasn't that big an issue and hard work could provide an honest living. Times are different now. We have automation and robots, and soon we will have A.I. No amount of "hard work" is going to overcome the advantage that machines have over human beings.
Ultimately, work is about results. As long as acceptable results are produced, it should not matter if hard work wasn't put in. In fact, the less work the better. Every innovation in the past century has been about reducing work and producing more.
Unless you enjoy being laughed at, stop talking about hard work to programmers. Hard work is antithetical to the quintessential programmer. Our job, at its core, is to eliminate hard work by automating it.
2. Honesty
Honesty involves telling the truth. And telling the truth is commonly known as a virtue... until it starts to do harm. Remember when
Jack Nicholson barked "
You can't handle the truth!" to
Tom Cruise's character in the thrilling climax to
A Few Good Men? He might as well have been saying that to us, the audience. Not everyone can handle the whole unfiltered truth; in fact, most of us can't. Most of us look at facts through certain lenses or perspectives, in order to cope.
The late great
Adrian Tan had this to say during a
NTU Convocation speech in 2008.
Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.
So stop treating honesty like a child would, like it's the be-all-end-all of virtues. Even the truth has context. People who insist on honesty, funnily enough, are often incapable of handling it.
While telling the truth is often a good thing, the truth is also packaged in a way to be useful. What use is the whole unvarnished truth if listeners get confused, offended or otherwise disinclined to listen, and simply discard the entire message? It is not enough to tell the truth. When, where, and how to tell it are equally important, if not more so.
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The value of silence. |
In effect, it's a matter of knowing when to speak, and what to say. And knowing when to STFU. Many people forget that keeping their damn mouths shut is often
also an option.
But yes, to own thineself be true. One should always endeavor to be honest to oneself. To everyone else... exercise discretion.
People like to tell me that they find my frankness refreshing. That's hilarious. Do they even have any idea how much I hold back on a daily basis? If I went for full unfettered honesty every damn time, if I said
exactly what I thought every single time, I would have burned every bridge available by now. If people had even an inkling of how little I think of them, they wouldn't find my frankness quite so appealing.
Honesty is one of the most overrated virtues in human history.
3. Loyalty
This next virtue is one that you'll often see employers harp on. Loyalty - the ability to stick with a company no matter how much better conditions are elsewhere. And let's get one thing crystal clear - things can
always be better elsewhere and most employers worth their salt aren't unduly worried. It's only when things are often
significantly better elsewhere, that's when you hear employers yammer on repeatedly about loyalty.
I say loyalty is overrated. I mean, seriously? Dogs are loyal too. If all you have to contribute is loyalty, what separates you from Man's Best Friend?
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You want loyalty? Get a dog. |
While loyalty is overrated, that's not to say it's a bad thing. However, employers have a concerning habit of mistaking a lack of options, for loyalty. Back in the day, employees put their careers at the mercy of their employers and pledged their lifelong loyalty. And in many cases, they were even rewarded in the form of promotions and pensions.
Those times are gone, and they're not coming back. In a world increasingly driven by capability and competence, promoting your longest-serving employee on the basis of duration of service alone, is laughable. It's insane. And when having to restructure in order to save on costs, it would not be sensible practice to retain the longest-serving (and sometimes, also the highest paid) employees purely on sentiment. This goes against business principles. Thus, while employers still
say they value loyalty, they're no longer able (or willing) to pay for it and employees should adjust accordingly.
4. Being Right
This next overrated virtue is tangentially related to honesty. And that is, always needing to be right. Not being wrong. Even for a second.
Only machines can't be wrong. If there's ever an instance where they do not produce perfect output, that's because they weren't programmed to do so, or the user did things wrongly. By definition, it's not the
machines being wrong. You never, ever, want to be thought of as a machine, or to be held to a machine's standards. Because you're
not a machine. That would be akin to a rabbit being held to the standards of, say, a hippo.
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I may be biased, but hippos are way more awesome. |
In essence, don't get hung up about being right, or take it personally when your assertions are challenged. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like academics suffer from this an awful lot. Being wrong isn't that big a deal when the lives of millions of people don't hang in the balance over the correctness of your work. And let's face it; in most cases, it doesn't.
Being right all the time should not be the goal. Being right should be an objective to work towards, but the journey to get there should be valued more because that's where you learn the most. You don't learn anything from being right all the time; in fact, it promotes complacency and worse, it introduces fear of change. You don't ever want to try something new because it could be (gasp!) a mistake. You know how many mistakes I've made from the day I wrote my first
Hello World program? Countless. Some were minor. Some were embarrassing. And some got me in serious trouble. And by the time this blogpost is published, I'll have made countless more.
Not making mistakes is great. What's even better is the ability to
recover and learn from mistakes.
5. Ambition
It's admirable to be driven by a desire to do great things. Ambition has driven many amazing feats. It's given rise to innovations that will echo on through eternity.
Steve Jobs is long dead, but he lives on through the iPhone.
Steve Jobs was undoubtedly a visionary, but let's be real. The creation of the iPhone is owed not only to his genius, but to the sweat and tears of thousands of anonymous workers who have their labor to the cause. Without that labor, Jobs could have taken his ideas and basically gone off to fuck himself. What are the chances of you being a Steve Jobs, rather than one of the countless anonymous workers?
The pyramids, similarly, weren't built by a handful of men with great vision and ambition, but by thousands of slaves whose only ambition was to not starve. What are the chances of you being the guy with the whip, rather than one of the many dudes hauling those stones?
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Was it only ambition that built things like these? |
The problem is that these days, everyone seems to think that they're destined for some great purpose. They think about their legacy, and want their deeds to leave an echo long after their deaths. Legacy? That's just your vanity talking, buddy. Statistically speaking, you're far more likely to be a schmuck like the rest of us. And having ambition means you will
never be OK with that. Which would be fine if your capabilities actually
matched your ambition.
Earlier, I talked about speaking the truth. Here's an ugly truth: many think they're special and talented and that the rules don't, or shouldn't, apply to them. They are largely (and tragically) mistaken. Everyone's unique in some way, but not enough to move the needle in that regard.
The problem with wanting to be remembered long after your death, is that not everyone can be
Albert Einstein and make great scientific inventions. Not everyone can perform feats of supreme athleticism like
Usain Bolt. The vast majority of us are painfully average. That's how averages work. (More
medians if we wanted to be pedantic about it)
But the Internet and Social Media somehow make people feel like they
should be able to make themselves memorable. More often than not, they end up going through life being bitter and feeling like failures... because they couldn't reach those largely imaginary lofty heights.
All things in moderation!
There's no doubt that the five things I listed above are virtues. However, they're overrated. Some
way overrated. It can't hurt to practice some (or even all) of these, but make them a selling point of your professionalism at your own peril.
Remember, programmers. Evolution is a constant in our industry. This does not just apply to tech; it applies to the virtues you display in the workplace.
Stay virtuous,
T___T