Why Software Engineering Is So Toxic 

i think software engineers who hang out on reddit are toxic but most of my coworkers so far have been really nice and helpful

This is something that's been gnawing at me for a little while and I had no real answer for. I got into development after working in physical security and manufacturing for about 10 years (total). I got used to taking a ton of verbal and even sometimes physical abuse from coworkers, my bosses and from clients (as a security guard). You're meant to just "deal with it" because that's expected in those industries. I kept hearing the same thing about tech, but... I had a passion for games, computers and technology in general, fell in love with programming and decided to just go for it. I interviewed with a few places where the hiring team felt very familiar. And strangely, I almost felt a weird sense of relief in experiencing the warning signs of the same toxicity and brutal culture I was actively trying to leave. I eventually got hired by a company and I remember thinking "these guys seem oddly laid back." I've been here 6 months and I've never felt more stressed and anxious in my entire life. I couldn't really figure out why until I started talking with a friend. To summarize a long conversation, she basically laid it out and said "You're so used to being abused that the fact you aren't anymore has you constantly looking over your shoulder expecting it to come any time now." Who would have thought finally getting to work with people that aren't complete douchebags would be difficult to adjust to lol.

The seniors who are nicest at my jobs are the ones who are self-taught and/or transitioned from other fields. The ones with comp sci degrees are generally horrible in personality and soft skills. Ironically, the self taught engineers are more capable as well..

Oh boy, I've been in IT with both healthcare AND finance. Fortunately my grad degree was in education so I'm immune to the general nastiness that comes from mentoring younger programmers. I'd give them a unit test and if they passed it then I'd say, "oh, that's beautiful beautiful code" even if it was horrible code. If it was truly horrible, then I'd just ask them or show them how to refactor the code. I was popular among the younger programmers, and I always thought being able to explain what certain code does made me a much better programmer. I stopped telling programmers "can you do better" decades ago.

I got into tech at age 40 after being in mortgage banking....and man I tell ya-I've never met more terrible people than I have in the tech space LOL. No social skills, no self-awareness, and arrogance. Conversely, because I was in mortgage banking and oftentimes had to be blunt with my emplooyees, I took that into the tech world. When I was assertive and direct (without being rude), a lot of my coworkers weren't sure how to REACT (haha-see what I did there?). I also ran stand-ups, and no one really had a sense of humore, either.

The answer: because a lot of assholes with poor social skills escape to their computers, of which some choose to become programmers...

At one point I just gave up and accepted the job is stressful. Now I'm happier and help anyone who needs it regardless of how much pressure I'm under.

i think it’s gonna get more toxic because the job market is getting more competitive

You are so very right and wonderful KC. Well said. I completely agree with you. Awesome.

Never be a maintenance programmer, i.e working on an already existing project if you can avoid it. Be the first programmer on a project. Programmers don't understand how hard it is for new team members to grasp your crappy code and they think you are stupid. I am always infinitely patient with new team members. Software environments are "sink or swim" because nobody has time to educate and mangement is absolutely terrible because it does not really understand what the decelopers are doing.

I agree. At 45yo now I've been in like five completely different industries thru my life. Every industry is the same as long as it relays on people. In every industry there are good people and toxic people. The more stressful job is, the more toxicity we can expect if the work-life balance is crushed, I guess. But the biggest problem usually are not good people who went into burn out or are stressed too much, the worst - in my opinion - are narcissists and emotional vampires who rely their good state of mind on making other people feel miserable.

I'm so glad I watched this video. It gave me an idea of the work culture in tech. Very valuable info!

just avoid r/programming, r/learnprogramming and all the programming related subreddits and there you go. toxicity solved 👍 just avoid reddit altogether tbh. You don't need any of that negativity in your brain.

Always very good talks.

this content felt like a hug

Love the content brother

Senior Devs are being driven to they're utmost limit. They're expected to constantly deliver under threat of job at every moment. It's like working with a prison inmate holding a shank at your back. There's no way the industry wont burn you out. If you stay in it.. You'll be coding on a toilet at night with your lap top.. So you don't loose time on your project having to use the toilet. You have no one to ask.. You gotta figure it out or screw you your fired. Stress.. how you gonna pay your rent. What if I get fired.. Im trying to buy a house right now. Now here comes some irritating junior dev trying to crash the party... And make you show him his ass. How do you think that plays out? Your being paid to have a heart attack basically... And here comes newbie wanting you to be his private google.

KC, I think you would have made an awesome Senior Dev and mentor. I don't know if your personal calling at this point, but from watching your videos, you bring a lot of attained wisdom. KUTGW.

I like the last 3 videos you did. I feel like we need to talk more about that. If the industry isn't changing course soon, I really think they will not be able to find anyone to work for them anymore.

I will allow myself a bold statement, but it seems to me that absolutely any toxicity in any job, field or computer game, in personal relationships, on social networks or instant messengers is when a person PROJECTS his problems onto you. When he sees a problem in you, he knows it and takes it into account, it doesn’t make you toxic. Projecting your problems onto other people makes you toxic. The problem for many professionals is that career growth can make it obvious that this is not where happiness lies, because the stress that they experience at some point makes itself felt and you would give a lot of your money just to live a healthy life. Especially if the body is no longer young and the first signs of disease and aging begin to appear.

You are 100% right on point on this video, KC!! In my experience, IT and Tech are mostly toxic, in my experience!! I love your videos, KC!!

When someone asks you for help you have two choices: 1) Tell them they are an idiot for not already knowing that, making yourself worse than useless. 2) Help them, remind them how it took you time to learn that and make yourself useful. The problem is management trying to force deadlines (especially under Agile which tries to pretend new systems are just a sum of simple, routine bug fixes).

Let me hop in there, I love helping others understand the ropes! I experienced bullying during my bootcamp!! It’s hard out here! 😢

put yourself first. very well said. and those seniors not willing to help or (gate)keeping their leverage in a corporate job in an industry full of layoffs are just being toxic. wow. like a real sswe. soft software engineer.

This really resonates with me. I can unfortunately confirm all you have said in this video.

Wonderful video. Very well thought out! I actually agree with the essence of the engineer's message that wanted the junior workers to Google the answer, because it encourages self-reliance and proactivity. However, I disagree with the way he delivered the message. Often times, a good message can be corrupted by toxic delivery, and that is a sad truth because the natural reaction is to discard the message due to poor delivery, even if the message itself is sound.

experienced the same but my team at the moment is really great because the software is so complex no one alone can handle it :D

Software engineers aren't toxic. Toxic people are toxic. Humanities downfall will be attributing things like this based on generalities.

My wife and I will always be sure to let our EE kids know that they're always welcome to stay with us as long as they need to. Security and taking care of one's basic needs for full self-fulfillment are incredibly important. We have their backs.

I am SO grateful. I've recently met someone living up the road who is obsessed with writing code; he dreams about it lol, and since offering to guide me, he's always there to answer my questions and help guide me. He even gave me one of his old mechanical keyboards and a bag of energy drinks lol! This man is super experienced but also really kind. I love this field ❤

Interesting, I always try being helpful but I've also experienced colleagues who get offended personally multiple times and when they do that i don't help them anymore. The ones who reply well to my help i will keep helping and I've seen juniors overtaking seniors in a very short time period because of that. Im a lead developer btw and i have a big interest in having the entire team perform well. People are complex and it can be quite hard to handle them

Yes, there are toxic seniors. Also, I've seen toxic junior engineers too. They try to argue with you with something they learnt on youtube that does not fit in the team projects. Showing no respect to seniors and not believing them. Software engineering takes a LOT of time to understand even for simple stuff: "why and when DRY code is bad", and you have this junior keeps pushing the argument that we have to break down the every bits of the project code to keep it pretty.

Gatekeeping isn't so much about their wanting you to suffer, it's about their being the ones who originally wrote the code, not having made it modular, and then keeping secrets that make them look more productive than you. They ALWAYS tell management "I'm surprised he didn't know that, he's supposed to be a senior" and management ALWAYS believes them. My favorite response from my (bad) manager in this situation was describing me as having "poor debugging skills" for not knowing how to fix bugs that had been in the code for 20 years when the author still worked for the company.

Fortunately i havent had this problem. My project manager also submits pr and actively encourages jr devs to correct him and have active discussions.

i really disagree with this. i think in Tech, there is a ton more compassion and wholesome people helping each other out. If you compare it to like the fashion industry, where people stab each others back to get to that unpaid internship.

Sir I 💯 percent agree with you. I worked in the tech field (Help Desk) for 19 years. We worked in varying hours or rotating shifts (one week we work an early morning shift and the next week we were working a later morning shift) we were on call (24 x 7) on top of troubleshooting we were movers of computer 💻 equipment (endlessly moving employees from one department to another) Short deadlines, endless projects, multiple help desk tickets assigned to some and maybe a few to others. We were forced to do training (and required for performance appraisals) on our off duty. I am retired two years and hearing these stories brought back bad memories. Yes I loved computers but at the end the customers would come to me and ask for favors because I was so helpful and they would pass my name around also and I started to hate helping customers. I am studying full stack right now. I don't know if I want to return to the hectic life of IT Thank you for this video.

Honestly there is a change in new engineers I've seen. They're less willing to research and experiment and therefore never build expertise and intuition in the system. Research and figuring it out is literally what's meant by problem solving.

The first reddit post that you showed... If someone asked him to explain an inner join, it's basically him who should report on them to his boss because it's a lack of basic knowledge required for work (and something that could not be more easily googleable). I would not yell at them if I was in such a position and I would give some general clue but then I would calmly suggest that they should do some reading on this topic because it's basic db theory used on the project. If they are my subordinate then I would follow up on this. The issue about project manager is very common too.

I don't mind helping juniors, we all started some where. The issue is when that junior has over 5 years experience and still doesn't understand basic concepts like data structures, method signatures, freaking for loops and always keeps asking the same question or commenting that their IDE is broken on every new laptop they get.

Greed, hyper-competition, stress...it's common elements of tech with finance, law, etc..

My willingness to help out highly differs from question to question. More then often you get questions, you google it and the first result fixes the issue. That´s not something I really want to be bothered with all the time.

Try to work in a factory as a process engineer then you get the real meaning of toxic.

Hey man you're videos are amazing :) I am about to finish my degree and yeah finding jobs are hard and it does take a mental l;oad on me :/

it all comes down to arrogance. That is why it is toxic because they think they can be rude.

So what I'm gathering from this (work in healthcare, worked in tech prob going back-raised by a network engineer, besties are law ppl or in tech) is that the cycle of abuse is being pushed. Sounds like a systemic problem with corporate jobs. And yes, healthcare counts (that doctor's bill may have their name but it prob also says LLC)

I was on reddit talking about career paths and some guy was a senior engineer and was like well if you don't get it now you might as well give up

Other professions are gate keeping much more. In Korea, if they open more spots in college for medical students than last year, doctors go on strike. They treat their job security and high salaries very seriously. They don't want more competition. Software engineering is the only profession where we not only encourage more competition, but we are using our free time to train our competition. Is this not completely crazy? And we are not even realizing the mess that we have made yet. With recent huge layoffs, and lack of jobs (especially for juniors), AI coding bots, we are maybe getting a glimpse of it. Software enginers will as a profession soon realize what mess we have made, and it will be too late, and its all our fault. We made the bed, now sleep in it.

I'm interested in working a tech job but software engineering/design ain't for me 🚮

If you think the software industry is brutal, you should look at welding as a career field.

It's the 'revenge of the nerds syndrome'. A lot of people in tech during their younger days where pretty much invisible or not much happening in their lives; except maybe a lot of videogame sessions. Once they get a decent tech paying job and get into a position of power they suddenly feel this sense of power that they probably never felt before. Because of of these tech kids never really developed strong social skills it becomes a problem when they become seniors or managers and just don't know how to deal with a multitude of people. Having worked in big tech, in the Cloud Industry, surprisingly the people who were the most balance workers were the ones that previously they didn't work in tech but switched over. They are generally more sociable and work well in teams and have balanced communication. The ones that grew up with tech since their childhood are the ones you need to worry about if they ever get into a position of some type of power.

From my limited experience in tech, it tends to be male dominated, ego driven, not so much gatekeeping as it is territorial. Additionally, the skillset required to sit for 20 hours staring at very small font code looking for that 1 misplaced character that compiles fine and runs mostly fine except for seemingly random runtime errors not caught by tests, during which you must have both crystalline memory recall and plastic memory adaptation, tends to attract a specific type of person, often well on the autistic spectrum, with little, no, or negative social skills, sometimes with extreme rigidity, lack of imagination, insecurity and/or superiority complexes. And then there's the bosses, they get paid 5x more money, don't know how to do a damn thing, can't even fix their computer, can barely use Office and insist a spreadsheet is a viable database platform... And then there's the junior workers, in 2 categories, the first, they ask dumb questions, like, if you ask a question, it should be reasonable. Like, if you're standing in front of the restroom, don't ask me where the restroom is, or how to use toilet paper, or how to wipe your own arse. There's a certain level of intelligence you need to have to be able to ask reasonably intelligent questions, not easily solved by 5 seconds of effort to try it yourself by searching. If you can't even use a search engine, no. Just get the F out of the industry. You're done here. Beyond that, I have great patience to explain things in detail, step by step. But I am spending MY time here to do YOUR job. I expect you to write sh*t down, take notes, record it and write notes later, REMEMBER it, don't keep asking me the same thing, just because you're too lazy or too stupid to remember. I once had a multi-week 1-on-1 training in blocks of 3-4 hours at a time, with minimal notes. I remembered hundreds of details about physical, mechanical equipment, electronic controls, software controls, design quirks, etc. I was told once and remembered. I was an apt pupil, which led to me being taught more, and more often. There's surely a lot of unnecessary toxicity, but some is justified. Requiring competency isn't gatekeeping. This isn't T-ball for 3 year olds where everyone gets a ribbon for having a pulse. A certain level of skill and talent is necessary. A lot of it comes down to tenacity, determination, curiosity, and consistency. Anyways, the 2nd category young worker is the whizkid who does the work of 10 of you for 1/5 the pay, and your a** is out on the curb in a week.

The developer (no matter who) is supposed to develop a reliable project for sale. Ask yourself if you know any project you want to do, and can you find a customer who would pay for it? If you knew, created, and sold that kind of project, then you are a developer. Otherwise, if you work for some company as "a software" developer, then you are not that developer. You are just an employee helping others with project development. People are/were under the misapprehension that computers will give you always high-paying jobs, however, if there is no customer, there is no money.

You can work in literally any industry and visiting Reddit will be more likely to hurt than help

I can answer questions of my fellow devs but if the question feels like I'm doing the job itself to answer it - No way. 😂 I often gives suggestions instead of directly resolving it.

If someone just posts a screenshot of their screen - I'm sorry but they 100% deserve roasting, so they won't do that again. The worst thing of people asking for help online is the sheer laziness of the interaction, often they want help with a piece of code they won't give you, or will not provide an example repo of something not working - or my favourite, can I just write it for them now I've been suckered into trying to help.

"Don't want to help", "Lack of social skills", "Burnout". Well, let's put also "Less-than-junior-skilled colleagues paid like a Senior", "Idiotic questions that a Google search can solve" and "Clueless Management". That will give a better overview on the issue and let me tell you, it's not only in Tech but in every field where skilled labour matters (I worked in manufacturing for 10 years and the situation was exactly the same but no one talks about it).

Its pretty interesting because I follow both CompSciCarreerQuestions and ITCareerQuestions subreddits and notice that the CompSci subreddit is much more toxic than the IT one, you have SWE asking questions in the ITCareerQuestions because of how toxic the other one is. People come off as so egotistical in the CompSci reddit even though they are just fresh college grads for the most part, and look down at anyone who isn't making a crazy TC.

Nobody wants you to be smarter thaan then, or to ask them questions. Its hard out here.

Bru, what's toxic today is just the normal pitfalls having to deal with flawed humans. Why being alive is toxic and is just "dying slowly"...

As a senior guy, I don't see anything wrong in helping juniors IF i am getting paid for the time rounded out to the hour. But if it's unpaid time, that's not happening.

The saddest fact of all of this is healthcare, finance and software pay way above the average. Can anyone just be grateful for where they are and what they do? Or do they also actually hate the job and tough out for that salary? As for me, I love my industry, but not my current role while sticking it out for that April bonus. However, I try to be as helpful as possible to all around me and when I hand in my notice I'll look for something I'll enjoy rather than just the bottom line salary. Although TBH I did walk out on my previous role before this current one on the first morning, even though the salary was higher, because the company seemed an absolute mess and was not what i was looking for!

A lot of switchers think that they can get out of troubles by talking or don't want to learn. Senior software engineers don't really take bs and talk straight about work. Many call this "Toxic". I see this for 7 years and don't consider this a problem.

Toxic/egotistic coworkers and garbage management is why I walked away from software engineering. I literally don’t blame anyone for quitting. Sure, WFH is great. But man… there was no work/life balance cause my job was taking place in my own home…

I've only come across a small amount of toxic engineers, everyone else.. which is a vast majority are humble and great.

With 25 years of experience, im having a different issue. Where are all the eager and curious junior developers?? Maybe companies are not hiring for those same junior roles, where there is an expectation of the need for growth and even mentoring. My recommendation is to build trusted relationships wirh helpful senoir developers. Realize that helping them is helping you. Dont be taken advantage of, but be useful

So glad I switched to electrical engineering. Way less toxicity

I think restaurant kitchens and being a chef should be added to other "toxic environments" - it seems like being in the army! Gordon Ramsay said his mentor called him a "piece of shit on his shoe" so therefore he should treat his mentees the same way...

I’m toxic because my dumbass boss hired two idiots who can’t even read code and now I’m doing the job of three people. I’m about to quit, going to be very bad for this team lmao. We need to have a conversation about “gatekeeping”, the last few years saw a lot of unqualified people hired into the industry. It’s a real problem. That’s not gatekeeping it’s just real. I’m not talking about education or experience but people who can’t even sit in front of a computer for more than 5 minutes.

Interesting

Law enforcement, military... hahaha, you ain't seen nothing yet. Things have gotten better, because hazing in military is illegal (haha, right). Ever seen memes of soldiers outside in the pouring rain... mopping asphalt? Yeah, it can always be worse. A friend of mine dug foxholes... facing a building... in the desert during Desert Storm. Then he would fill them in and dig them again. No matter what profession, humans are shit. We like to be mean, so when we have power we tend to get toxic. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People be people.

I think I am so lucky i've been surrounded with very nice senior coders, for example a friend I have from Canada got me into the tech world, people irl have been also so nice! But how toxic and mean some tech bros areeee it's an undeniable fact

Why am I toxic?

I recommend every SWE read "How To Ask Questions The Smart Way" before they waste their own and other people's time. Sorry to say but being entitled to an answer that you could figure out yourself with some basic effort, is weakest link behavior.

There's no such thing as human nature through. In science, it's nature via nurture.

in the 70s the majority of programmers were women, and it was a nice place. then boys took over and it became toxic, like the movie industry. my experience is that young professionals do not want to learn and are more focused on not be annoyed instead of doing their job.

I would never train or help junior developers. I would require a 100% increase in my salary to do so. No way I am going to train my replacement. The only reason I am still in tech is that I have enough FU money, so I don't have to take any bullshit.

1. Junior salary being to close to a senior 2. Asking questions without googling first expecting me to be your slack GPT 3. Asking the same question more than once. 4. Company hiring people without proper skills. Any of those will get me pretty toxic.

Okay, that reddit post, it does make valid points, it's really frustrating when people ask questions that are just a google search away from being solved, it is annoying. i hate it too

The software industry's worst culture problem is the soft bigotry of low expectations. Its the root of all misanthropic belief systems in tech that makes a career requiring lifelong learning unbearable. Your only option to have some sanity is to become arrogant, work your way to leadership roles and be in a position where proving yourself usually means pointing out your more junior coworkers lack of context or knowledge.

Yeah, sure if they make the face on the thumbnail, that's a good plan to repulse anyone from helping them.

y'all need to get good.

In my experience the tech industry is also overrun by a lot of misogyny and queerphobia that goes largely unchecked.

This is perhaps a cultural difference between the US and Europe but “toxicity” in this setting is unheard of the loud minority of left wing ideologues in entry level jobs aside. SWEs and IT professionals are usually very humble and eager to help junior talent in my experience.

Eh, everyone thinks their way of doing things is the only correct answer. It's not just software engineering, but life in general. Of course software engineering is breeding ground for such a behavior tho considering how many different ways there are to do the same thing.

The younger you are, the more gatekeepers. The more there is a tendency to want to treat you as junior even if you have senior-level competency. For me, I found that the best I can upgrade my net worth is maybe 5+%. So I jumped into crypto... this WILL be the exit route s.t. I know many of these leaders are busy 1.5Xing their bag & will 10-100X. Gave me a bit more peace & rest. Sounds like toxic positive mindset but if you can't level up vertically, go horizontal & scale then upward.

Comment: People need hobbies, and a passion for life. People need the church because people are full of Envy. 2023

Wow ... welcome to the real world. You sound like you expect senior employees to lay down the red carpet for you. Of course there are no excuses for rudeness and being an ass but I've seen so many juniors wanting it all to be easy and to ask really basic questions all the time... to a point where you wonder if they put any effort in it at all. It works both ways and I think that juniors that actually want to learn and put in the effort pay for the slackers and more senior employees don't have any patience anymore for no one. My final comment, life is too short to put up with toxic people and a toxic workplace. If you go in IT and expect a 9 to 5 job, don't, when you are not working you are learning and perfecting yourself on your own time and it will be like that all your career unless you want to become useless, that is the nature of the field.

People aren't toxic, you're too soft. Full stop. Get it done, or get out of the way. If you do it wrong, f-off until you can do it correctly. If you need help, seek help in the *correct* place. If you can't handle the workload, quit; let someone more qualified step in. Stop whining. Not going to coddle whiners.

Dude, just leave software engineering, its BS job

tc or gtfo

You misunderstood what gate keeping is. It is NOT: “if i had to go throguh the pain, so must you“. But what it IS is limiting the amount of people on the field, preventing competition and protecting their salaries and social status. And this is a GOOD THING. If only software engineers gatekeeped a bit more, rather than helping train their own competition using their own free time (answering questions on reddit or stackoverflow)

There are 2 types of people in the world. All have suffered. The 1st will attempt to make others suffer as they have. The 2nd will attempt to make sure others never do.

These gen z be so soft

same here, all i want from a junior developer is "shut up and go fire yourself today" junior devs are a waste of time... you help them, you teach them, you hang out with them and then they leave you alone right when somebody offers them 100$ more, no birthday present, no happy new year, you are just a balding dude they want to get experience from you think they gonna help - NO, they gonna rob you of your time and energy and leave you finishing the project alone

What a cry baby. You should work in restaurants as waiter. You will see what "toxic" people means.