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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> Only the previous week, he says, he returned from a 10-day trip to Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Before that, he boasts, he journeyed to a yoga retreat and juice cleanse in Bali, the perfect setting to unload the stress he absorbs working at a well-known tech company in Silicon Valley. After ending a five-year marriage and shedding 10 pounds of subcutaneous fat several years back — his sun-kissed body now carb- and toxin-free — Daniel has reemerged a new, seemingly younger man.

This must be fake. This does not describe any software developer I’ve ever met. (Maybe because I’m on the east coast but engineering culture can’t be that different, can it?)

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One theory is that good looking software engineers aren't software engineers for very long.

Why would you get paid shit wages when you can be a VP of telling people what to do?

Call it the "jock-ification" of the tech world. It was bad enough when they were in high school, now they've infiltrated the tech world.

> "Call it the "jock-ification" of the tech world. It was bad enough when they were in high school, now they've infiltrated the tech world."

The "jock/nerd dichotomy" is a dumb harmful stereotype used by lazy hollywood and television writers. Many of the smartest people I've ever known were also the most athletic. There is NO inverse relationship between physical fitness and intelligence. If anything, there is a positive correlation between the two, as being healthy and well nourished makes you more likely to realize both your physical and intellectual potential.

It was obvious to the ancient Greeks, we're still getting there today. The Hollywood stereotype perpetuates the split, which definitely exists today, but also the advantages of economic specialization kind of limits you to one or the other these days.

It exists only insofar as naive children internalize and ape what they see on TV. There is no reason whatsoever that a bright child shouldn't enjoy sports, except the Disney channel tells him he must choose between reading books or exercise, when there is plenty of time in the day for both. And insofar as it discourages smart kids from exercising, it's a clearly harmful stereotype which you should refrain from reinforcing.

Real life is not a 1980s teen comedy movie, no matter how comforting out of shape engineers may find the notion.

Hollywood is a reflection on culture, not the other way around. They just make what people want to see (it's a business, after all).

Anything else is mindless conspiracy theories. There is no secret cabal pushing culture to the masses.

It's so bizarre to observe normal humans and businesses (and how organizations completely fail at any meaningful scale), and then to turn around and assume there is a hyper-intelligent, hyper-powerful secret society running things.

Instead of blaming Satan, now we have boogeymen from conspiracy theories to fulfill his role.

Thank you. Athleticism and social skills are forms of intelligence.

I found the dichotomy basically real in high school, but once I came to San Francisco, the smartest and highest-achieving people around were also ripped, or at least slender. I was never self-conscious about it in high school or college, but here I felt a lot of pressure to start exercising, and I think it's been good for me.

The high-school-like dichotomy has more to do with affect. Everyone is athletic, but you can definitely tell the boisterous business bros from the soft-spoken engineers.

> Many of the smartest people I've ever known were also the most athletic.

Many of the prettiest/handsomest people I've met were the dumbest. The more likely they are to seek popularity (think "taste-makers") as a source of income, the less likely they are to have any sort of intellectual curiosity.

>Why would you get paid shit wages

I'm not sure we're working in the same industry / living in the same world.

The managers of those well paid engineers are even more well paid

Tech worker doesn't necessarily mean software engineer.

At 48, it seems highly likely that he's in leadership.

Yeah. It does sound like a number of product managers I know.

I'd guess this is a bit of a West coast thing. I've known quite a few health obsessed engineers here.

I myself was very fit and usually tan, at least in summer, until I found myself a lot more other serious life responsibilities.

Children?

Thats the case with me at least ... not much time for sport anymore.

Lol, yup plus a few other things.

Some people manage to do it all but I have no idea how.

Well, I manage to do some sports with the baby. Since he is 12 kg now, running or just walking with him is sport.

But for really working out, I just lack the energy. But this is ok, other things are indeed more important. Still, I try not to forget my body.

I work on the East coast, and I've had multiple managers complain about having to work with developers on the West coast. They said it's like working with divas because they frequently refuse to attend customer meetings or keep anyone in the loop with what they're doing because they think it's beneath them.

This sounds less like a developer and more like an Adam Neumann type. So, not the worker drones who do the unsexy job of putting stuff together and making it work, but the charismatic Don Draper type who goes to pitch billionaires on the "vision".

What do you mean? Which part of it does not concur with your idea of a software developer?

I’ve worked both on the east coast and in Cali and California is a very different place.

> in Cali and California

What's this?

I don’t think he means Colombia, just wants to avoid reduplication.

>east coast and in Cali, and California

(or maybe a semicolon. I'm never sure)

Typing too fast on my phone.

I meant to say that I’ve worked both on the East Coast and in California, and California has a very different culture. So different that it may sound a bit strange or even ridiculous to East Coast residents.

It's California... A friend of mine who is quite attractive and _maybe_ had an extra 10 pounds moved to Southern California for grad school, and immediately felt like she was fat and started going to the gym, whereas I had never her mention her weight before. The social environment is just that different.

But that's SoCal, which is a bit different in that respect.

I'm not sure how exactly... maybe in NorCal she'd go rock climbing or something.

East coast journalism has a fetish for hating and describing SV engineers in the worst possible ways.

journalists compete with tech organizations for advertising dollars, so it isn't surprising they demonize their competitors.

Yes, it can.

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