[lilsoso]

Software engineers aren't thugs, you're right that they're often soft-spoken and polite -- but they also do not have a history of respecting tradition and laws they view burdensome.

For example, look at the startups, Uber and AirBnb started by explicitly violating laws. Uber has even demonstrated, again and again, contempt for the law.

Then look at the founder-types: Thiel, Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Ellison, etc... They're often anti-social and on the asperger's spectrum. They disregard convention. Violate laws as need be. And can be ruthlessly individualistic/libertarian. Read Thiel's book "Zero to One" or watch the documentary "all watched over by machines of loving grace" for more on this topic.

Look at the stories and discussions posted on this site -- they're often against the grain. There seems to be a keen interest in drugs: psychedelics, MDMA, Ketamine ("as a treatment for depression"), and nootropics ("productivity!"). The libertarians here relish in cryptocurrencies. And there's a prevailing anti-union, anti-socialist, and even anti-SJW attitude: the population here seems to be bright, if isolated, individualistic and perhaps mildly autistic males.

Paul Graham's essays aren't conventional. And other leaders in this domain, such as Naval Ravikant, rail against the "overton window".

[watwut]

Uber etc is not so much software engineers breaking laws as enterpreneurs and managers doing that.

Also, people are too quick to see autism where mere arrogance would be sufficent to explain the same behavior.

Yet also, Zuckerberg did not worked as engineer for long. These are all primary managers with some engineering background rather then engineers earning money from being engineers.

[lilsoso]

I'm pointing out a curious trait of the tech industry as a whole -- the ethos of the community.

Whether or not the names listed currently work as software engineers, or whether or not they all have autism, is inconsequential.

[watwut]

You said: > Thiel, Gates, Zuckerberg, Jobs, Ellison, etc... They're often anti-social and on the asperger's spectrum.

So yes, it does matter whether they are autistic or not.

> Software engineers aren't thugs, you're right that they're often soft-spoken and polite -- but they also do not have a history of respecting tradition and laws they view burdensome.

You are talking about software engineers in general, so it does matter whether people you have in mind are software engeneers or good representants of average software engineer.

> I'm pointing out a curious trait of the tech industry as a whole -- the ethos of the community.

What community? HN and startup crowd represents very specific subset of the industry. Business and management represents business and management, not sofware engineers.

[lilsoso]

Written language works a little different than programming: the references can be a little looser, a little more imprecise -- particularly if the vehicle is a written comment on a message board.

I was attempting to quickly outline an attitude, and orientation, that affects the tech industry as a whole. This attitude is not limited to currently employed software engineers, founders of tech companies, or people with accounts on Hacker News. And no, this attitude is not so pervasive that it affects everyone in the tech industry. But yes, this attitude is probably more common amongst software engineers than say people in marketing within the same industry.

My observation isn't even novel: we can find echoes of it all over as I briefly tried to point out.

[watwut]

This has nothing to do with language vs programming. This is about your want to use loose definitions so that you can generalize non engineers behavior and combine them with engineers stereotypes so that you can blame engineers for actions of non engineers in same industry you dislike.

So you had used language to build image of autistic charismatic rule breaker. So I will add that you don't know what autism is and interacted with such person enough to know.

You still did not managed to cite a single engineer. You did not even demostrated knowledge of engineering culture beyond what is found on few cool sites frequented by ... enterpreneurs and many non engineers.

Afaik, if you claim that marketing is more orderly and more rules following and engineers, you should have used an example of typical marketing person action and typical engineer action. For some reason, you went with high management and enterpreneurs.