[jarsj]

Autocomplete for "why steve jobs was a" gives "Jerk" as first result. Doesn't matter what the world perceives us. There is too little time to keep up with all the shit in the world. If one line email replies, coming to the point in a hour long meeting and ending it in 5 minutes is perceived by the rest as grumpiness, then let's be grumpy. And who says great developers don't have fun. They just don't mix it with work, so you don't get to know.

[Tyrannosaurs]

This isn't about perception or having fun, it's about behaviour having a genuine negative impact on things.

Developers have a tendency to optimise for themselves or for what they perceive as important. Sure curt replies and cutting meetings short may be the right thing to do and often is, but in many instances they're the right thing for the developer rather than for everyone involved.

If these actions result in developers being seen as unapproachable then there are genuine consequences of that - developers will be consulted less (which long term will have a negative impact both on the organisation and on the developer who will ultimately have less influence than they might have), clarifications won't be sought or offered uninvited (which always comes back on developers) and so on.

In of itself any individual action is potentially defensible, but if the overall effect is to deter useful lines of communication within a team, that's going to work out worse for everyone.

[CodeMage]

Autocomplete for "why steve jobs was a" gives "Jerk" as first result.

That was kind. My first impulse was to see what autocomplete has to offer about blogs and bloggers. Autocomplete for "why bloggers are" gives "not journalists" as first result, whereas "why blog authors" comes up with "ask rhetorical questions". Not to mention the first result for "why blog writers are".

Seriously, let's not use Google autocomplete as an excuse to jump on a meme bandwagon.

There was a post and a discussion not so long ago (can't find it now, no matter how much I try) about how people in our line of work focus on the negative by nature of our work and how we receive negative feedback all the time. At least that discussion was interesting, whereas this post is a typical "don't be such a jerk" post. Not that I necessarily disagree with the content, but this has crossed beyond the "beating the dead horse" territory into that "inflict Peter Jackson gore films on the poor dead horse" place that, ironically, makes me even grumpier.

EDIT: Thanks to @mrdazm for providing the link to the "Be nice to developers" discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631607