It seems like software developers are often pitted against one another in some way.
What encourages this competition? Is it healthy?
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It seems like software developers are often pitted against one another in some way.
What encourages this competition? Is it healthy?
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
Latest comments (38)
What do you mean by "pitted"?
I think that it has a low barrier to entry - basically no diploma required which is a good thing - so that it is naturally becoming competitive ;)
I prefer emulation to competition personally.
No it's not, bring it! 🤣
Is this in relation to the US? Here in the UK software developers are in short supply and when I get fed up of a job or want a payrise (usually once a year or every 2 years if I like the company) then I usually find a new job within a week of searching. I find that once you have around 10 years of experience and have worked as a senior / technical lead or principle developer its super easy to get a new role even if you haven't worked with the latest tech as you can always say "I haven't worked with that before but it should be pretty easy to pickup"...
It is not healthy, and often all the war is about money and envy.
I have to maintain the code of an overpaid senior and get angry.
I think I work more than my partner and I want more money than him/her, then get angry.
I think it is not about the industry, it is about society in every work. We should learn about harder work and pretend to be better pro.
It’s because the whole IT technology is a black swan.
Just remember insane competition of motor or stock companies in 20th century. Competitive environment is a common thing for a black swan, such as much higher salaries.
Fortunately, modern individualism can help to prioritise the individual health and well-being rather than fragile professional success that can cost one a burnout but still come and go.
For example, what was called a “badass startup environment” in 90s now called a “unhealthy work-life balance”, and I like it.
Biggest contributors include but are not limited to:
Current time period
Information & content overflow/outburst
Conglomerate incentives toward 'money for nothing'
Decline/Debunk of Moore's Law
Increasing cultural phenomenon promoting psychosomatic isolation of one's self ;
Absolute increase in information has failed to produced a single thread of intel regarding 'true' innate existential necessities. (Meaning, none of the bs which has been put out there for public consumption is actually relevant to our basic, most primal questions/sense of self).
There is an entertainment factor which plays a fundamental role here as well:
"Given that the current outburst of information keeps us constantly "busy", the entertainment factor has surpassed relevance" > this, in turn, outcomes a byproduct which surpasses the one' previously established when language and semantics constraint imagination > the end result is: an ever-growing, hyper-speculative, ungrounded notion of 'time'.
That which matters today, is merely a reflection of our current over-reliance upon our present necessities with an increasing disregard for individuals within the collective (or, soceity as whole).
Competition is encouraged, however, the concept in itself is rooted upon a certain 'time constraint' and our necessity to compare ourselves to other.
Regarding the whole "health aspect" of it all, i can merely ask you to:
"stop and literally take a look around your environment" <<< it'll answer itself in a nanosecond.
When is one software engineer pitted against another? does one win and the other lose.
Do you work in 7.5 hours in the day and then stop. If the company wants you to work more you can decide to do it or you can move. There is a big requirement for developers.
You can make yourself more valuable by learning new skills.
There is a lot of opportunities in software development
Isn't competitiveness that brings us forward? One might say no, that's collaboration. But to be honest, people collaborate to compete other collaborating people...
We just have to find the right balance, not let the competition eat up our life.
That's a good point. I think most of the results apply for other knowledge worker jobs as well. I can't tell which competitive aspects are specific to software development, but exploring this would be an interesting direction for future work.
It's not exactly what you are looking for, but you'll find some information on developers' motivation and possible performance decline over time in this blog post and the corresponding research paper:
dev.to/s_baltes/software-developme...