Are developers jerks?

Of course generalizing is a logical fallacy. All developers can’t be jerks by default. The hard truth is that not just a few of them are jerks. This is not only based on personal experience (which of course can be biased) but that’s what I’ve been told by people that work with developers on a daily basis.

Let’s try to spot why.

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Lack of soft skills

In case you are a developer, you know that software development is not an easy job. You have to study hard to stay up to date, solve the problem you faced earlier today or prepare for tomorrow’s task.

It has always been like that. Most developers have been studying about computers in general, the internet and programming languages since they found out they want to be developers. Possibly, even when they were kids and were still attending school.

In this really common case, they have spent a great amount of time in front of a computer, mainly studying, while all other kids were practicing their social skills and getting emotionally more efficient. That’s done by interacting with people, trying to be a good team member, be kind etc, through the process of learning anything: practice, fail and retry.

That means that jerk developers have missed that important life lesson and expanded their computer skills against their soft skills, leading them as grown-ups to inefficiently interact with people.

Note that interacting with people through a computer doesn’t produce the same stimuli as interacting with people in real life.

The lack of soft skills is a key here but, of course, the personal or prior working experience is also important to form their behavior in the office and everywhere.

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Knowledge is precious for developers

Think of a person spending lots of time handcrafting a wooden artifact. That artifact will get emotionally important for the maker. What would happen if someone disputes the beauty of the artifact?

The low soft-skilled maker would defend his creation with passion or, even worse, fight back. What the maker really defends is the effort they have put on the artifact and his abilities which the artifact represents.

That’s pretty much how the jerk developer would react if their idea, solution or implementation is questioned. The knowledge they have acquired is important for them, like the wooden artifact for its maker.

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Questioning coworkers based on their profession

As we previously said, computer science is not an easy field and fellow devs may even study their whole life to master it.

In case you are in a different field, considered “easier” than computer science, your constructiveness on an organization may be questioned by a low soft-skilled developer.

Developers can become elitists, believing they stand out in an organization, being more constructive and therefore deserve greater authority than others.

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How can a developer fix that?

For me, the key is self-observation. Taking a few minutes at the end of the day by yourself thinking of interactions with other people that you possibly didn’t behave well. The next day you can fix that (if you didn’t do anything that stupid!) and make yourself clearer to the others.

If someone else made you feel bad, you can try to revisit the conversation with them again the next day and try to solve the issue.

Patience and coolness are very essential here. If the issue is important and you cannot solve it with the other party yourselves, you can both discuss it with the closest head on the hierarchy.