[AerieC]

But this is true of any "producing" profession. Any time you're creating something and "putting it out there", there's going to be a huge stream of criticism from every direction. Artists, writers, musicians, engineers, carpenters, etc.--all of their work is constantly under scrutiny by "the customer" and/or "the boss".

Even non-producing professions have to deal with constant scrutiny of their performance and negativity. Salespeople might make one sale out of 20 attempts. Anyone in a medical profession is under extreme pressure to not make a mistake (and sometimes things go wrong even when you do everything right).

There are very few professions who don't have to deal with the whole "focusing on the negative" thing (I can't actually think of any). It's pretty much a fact of life that if you want quality, you have to systematically eliminate your weak spots.

[jerf]

Salespeople make the sale sometimes. A doctor sees someone walk back in for their checkup who couldn't walk a week ago. A technical support person often says goodbye to a cheerful happy customer. Musicians may have to deal with criticism in the papers, but if they delist their phone number it's because of the fans, generally, not the critics. Actually that goes for almost all the creative industries.

Developers have very little positive to go off of, and few professions have customers as discerning and grumpy as compilers.

I wouldn't claim it's utterly unique, and everybody's got their own problems. But I don't think it's healthy or a good idea to ignore the problems we face because some people sometimes in some particular way have things even worse.

[bradleyland]

This is one of those cases where I wish we could all walk a mile in each other's shoes.

I can program. I am not "a" programmer. I've written a Ruby Gem or two, and I've even had some (very) small contributions accepted to widely used gems. I am really a project manager, but I recongize the value of understanding the tools that are used to build the projects I oversee.

I can sell. I am not "a" salesman. I'm a good listener. I'm able to establish positive relationships relatively quickly. After meetings, I receive positive feedback from customers We're a small company, so I often end up sitting in on sales meetings. I find it's valuable to have a first-hand view in what customer objections are.

I've walked a mile in both sets of shoes. I can tell you, unquestionably, that both careers can be equally frustrating. It's easy to center your world view around your own challenges, but to believe that yours are unique and more important than others crosses the line to narcissism.

Sales people have it plenty rough. Not only are they constantly hammered by objections from customers, but any time they take those items back to the development team, they're met with similar apprehension about adding to the backlog.

> But I don't think it's healthy or a good idea to ignore the problems we face because some people sometimes in some particular way have things even worse.

Who suggested that we ignore the problems? The important part about recognizing someone else's challenges is that we should seek to support each other in both directions.

[steve8918]

And if you're a programmer, sometimes you fix the big bug that a huge sale depends on, and sometimes you create a feature that your customers love.

And, I take it you've never ever been in sales.

What many companies do is put everyone's name on a board, and everyone's sales are complete public knowledge. Every time you make a sale, you walk up the board and add another tick to your column. It's a way to shame people into not being the worst salesperson in the company. And at the end of the month/quarter, you start all over again. My closest friend as well as my cousin went through this process, and quit after a couple of years of having their self-esteem completely trampled upon.

[lachyg]

> Developers have very little positive to go off of

I don't know that I agree. Red, Green, Refactor. That continuous moment of hitting green. Every time you solve that problem. Every time you strike a bug off the list. There are so many measurable accomplishments programmers make.

[andyzweb]

>that feel when you go from red to green.

that is such a good feel

[dasil003]

I couldn't disagree with you more, it seems to come from a pervasive cynicism that is day in day out grind of defect-finding in the programming industry.

How you can you casually claim technical support person has a more positive work environment than a programmer because sometimes a customer is happy when their problem is solved? What about all the customers who are irrationally angry even when you do your best to solve their problem? What about the problems you have no power to solve but have to take the heat for? What about the general prevailing attitude of frustration and discontent that characterizes the average person reaching out to support?

I don't understand how anyone could for one second say this is preferable to seeing a compiler error. There's no negative emotion inherent in a bug you discover. The fact that you are looking for flaws and fixing them is "negative" in a technical sense, but I find it bizarre to compare it so unfavorably to real negative human emotion directed at you. Even when other people are critiquing your work or sending you bug reports, there tends to be less emotion and more constructive feedback than you get in a service industry.

And what of citing "creative industries" and then drawing a sharp contrast to developers. Software engineering is extremely creative. The positive feedback from development is primarily the joy of creating working software. I've been doing this 20 years and it's still a thrill. Furthermore, I get plenty of positive feedback for my work. Obviously it's not on the scale of the insane hours I've spent in the trenches obsessing over minute details, but that's fine, I can take a compliment and find it gratifying even if it's shallow and uninformed of the true scope of my work.

I think there is definitely something about programming that leads to a pedantic mindset that could be offputting to others, but I think it's nonsense that it leads you to be inherently negative. Programming for me is empowering, attention to detail is just how I hone that power.

[efuquen]

You think this: "Developers have very little positive to go off of, and few professions have customers as discerning and grumpy as compilers."

Yet you mentioned this example: "A doctor sees someone walk back in for their checkup who couldn't walk a week ago."

Is not seeing a product in action, one that possibly effects millions of lives (to be more realistic lets say 1000s, hell even a few dozen should be satisfying) in a positive way not very satisfying? I doctor helping a patient might not be as personal, but when I think about software I right the people who are using it and enjoying it are not far from my mind.

[greenyoda]

Unfortunately, many developers don't get a lot of opportunities to see their product in action. If you work on some public-facing service like Google or Facebook, you'll get to see your code being used. But if you work on a product that big companies deploy on their internal networks to improve their productivity, you won't see much of it.

[dasil003]

You can walk over to someone else's cubicle can't you?

[krenel]

Not really. I have been developer of VoIP application for about one an a half year and our clients only call us when they have a problem. Conectivity problems, delays in the audio when doing calls (due codec errors), problems with NAT, problems with the voice mails, etc... If everything is fine you just see no errors on logs and a beautiful graph expressing the increase of number of calls every month. Anything else.

Same when I was working generating telephonic bills for the clients. You will only have feedback if something went wrong.

Is that satisfaying? For my its enough; if the work have been done fine and the clients are reporting (almost) any error, I'm happy with that.

[Evbn]

VOIP is the best! When your clients have a problem, they can't call you!

[timwiseman]

You make great points, and I agree with everything except: systematically eliminate your weak spots.

Sometimes that is what you need to do. But sometimes you are better off further enhancing your strengths to real excellence rather than bringing up your weaknesses to an acceptable level.

Sometimes you can really sell your strengths, the things that make you stand out, and then work around the weaknesses by focusing on projects where they don't matter or by hiring an assistant/partner that can handle the areas you are weak in.

[wreckimnaked]

> Artists, writers, musicians, engineers, carpenters

You should draw a clear line between those professions. All of them are "producing" professions, but the first group (artists, writers, musicians) do not have to maintain the technical responsibility that the latter (engineers, carpenters, programmers) has to.

This _technical responsibility_ brings a lot of the "negative" said on the article; actually, that's not "negative" it is "not good enough".

[irishcoffee]

There is not a discrete "brokenness" to things like art or music. What you ship works or it doesn't work. Nobody knows or cares about the mountains you moved to produce what you did, they only care about the parts that don't work.

Some industries are absolutely comparable, but a much smaller number than I think you're implying.

[Evbn]

Ahem. http://www.psdisasters.com/

[irishcoffee]

That would be the definition of 'doesn't work' I think.