I was trying to convince another team to take a different approach to a problem. I tried to make my arguments with code, prototyping alternatives to prove my point. My suggestions fell on deaf ears. But that’s because I was doing it wrong. I should have taken the time to build relationships with that team so we understood each other’s perspectives. Without that we were talking past each other. I remained unswayed by their arguments, they ignored mine.
– Brett Slatkin, Programming is primarily a social endeavor
This is a good general rule, definitely not limited to just programming. It reminds me of the saying “people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care”.
Just because programming is a strongly technology driven arena doesn’t prevent it from having the same human interaction issues that every other human endeavor has had.
2 replies on “Persuading Programmers”
Yup. Brett is very right… however, as I said in the comments there it also means that “meritocracy” is not how the tech industry works. The singlemost important factor for a web project to succeed is to be not too far from San Francisco, carried by someone who is in their twenties (or early thirties) and who worked with the right people in the past… a bit depressing.
No sector works purely along one line. I think there is potential for tech to have a larger component of meritocracy that other sectors, but in some respects it has been oversold.