Ask HN: Why are programmers so cynical? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are programmers so cynical?

10 pointsmnjn14 comments

Obviously a generalization, but I think we can all agree that it's become a sort of meme now on HN. A startup will launch and there will be at least a few people determined to make known why they think the startup should not exist, often with a cynical tone.

The classic example is the Dropbox launch [0]. A more recent example might be the Mighty launch [1].

Why do we think this is? Is cynicism something that's actually more prevalent within the programmer community? Or perhaps it's just some kind of normal distribution in effect, where most people will be fairly neutral, and a few will be passionate on either side of the curve?

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[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26957215

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We get paid to find the corner cases and handle them before the rest of the world even knows they exist. We've self selected from the general population as a group that focuses on knowing how things work, and especially on knowing all the ways something can go wrong.

On top of that, as you get older, you've ridden, then watched, a few hype cycles and can recognize them at once.

Why wouldn't we be wary and skeptical as heck?

> and especially on knowing all the ways something can go wrong

This trait is pretty core to who I am. I have to fight against it sometimes just to enjoy life better.

Not only do we have to understand how things go wrong externally, we have to recognize that our own internal understanding maybe be incorrect. It's pretty hard to trust others when we can't even trust ourselves.

I think it's because despite the fact that programmers have to deal with complex problems, we fail to see complexity in a lot of things. So it's very easy to dismiss things or ideas as useless and apply cynicism to everything. For instance,when I started managing people, I thought that the journey from ' I don't know it' to ' I know it' is as simple as getting from A to B. So I was always very surprised when someone would come to me asking 'why is that?' or ' how do I do it?' or simply saying ' I wasn't trained on this' or ' nobody told me about it'. At first I was perplexed why people don't just read about the problem and they'll figure it out. But for a lot of people it's not from A to B. It's more like A to G to F to B to R to A and then to S. Or not even moving from A. Things like motivation, hunger for knowledge kicks in and so on. I often sit in meetings with people that have very different backgrounds, positions and usually approach things differently. It's fascinating to see how some subjects get discussed and I end up seeing way more angles than I initially thought about.

Ironically, the detractors of the Dropbox launch were ultimately right. Dropbox got their lunch eaten by less product-focused competitors, including folks like Microsoft and Apple who also knew that setting up managed NAS is a cheap-and-simple challenge. Dropbox as a company is barely on most people's radar these days.

I would be fine owning a company valued at 2.25B with 523M revenue[^1], even if it wasn't on most people's radar.

Dropbox is the prime example of what's wrong with engineers: We cannot assess a business idea to save our lives.

For us the solution is straight forward - we can setup an FTP server, who needs an app to sync files?!

[^1]: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DBX/dropbox/revenu....

Cynicism is one of the key indicators of burnout, according to the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Some people are tired, some are lazy, but it's not actually medical burnout until you hit the point of being demotivated and cynical.

A certain amount of cynicism is realistic, don't you think?

It's a proven fact that most startups don't make it. Based on statistics alone, Google's next big thing will probably be a dud --- just like Larry Page's electric air taxi.

I was cynical about Facebook and their business model. I tried to convince my friends and family not to buy into what they were selling --- with only moderate success. It only took a couple of decades but most now realize that I was right from the start. Everyone is now at least talking about how to ditch Facebook. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32959068

Call me cynical but I think that everyone making their own currency is a blast from the past --- not the wave of the future. It won't work any better now than it did back when. It's like the lottery --- if you haven't lost money yet, it can only be because you haven't played the game long enough.

Have you ever tried to help people who will not make the slightest effort to help themselves?

Well the ultimate drop box hater was Steve Jobs and he wasn't a programmer and turned out to be right.

But the biggest reason is that programmers don't know shit about markets, and startup value is about the market they're trying to position themselves in and not the technology they use to do it. The only thing that makes software startups so good for that is that there's low risk and quick iteration times because our actual work product is ephemeral and has close to zero cost to ship.

A lot of programmer criticism is focused on tech not realizing the tech is a means to an end, which is changing a market or creating a new one.

My guess is the true reason is that HN has many people who are scared of threats to their identity.

Take for example all the comments about how AI won't be good enough. My best guess at what is going on is HN people feel threatened by AI (they realize doing standard programming is nothing special), so they are forced to downplay it.

It's like the famous quote: "it is hard to convince a man of something when his job depends on not understanding it", or whatever the quote actually is.

Another example is when people bash (even technical) crypto posts with very generic crypto bad claims. I roughly expect someone who doesn't know anything about, e.g zkSNARKs, to comment generic crypto-bad claims. They don't have enough knowledge to actually engage with the article so they post unrelated criticism.

The last thing is Dunning-Kruger. The Dropbox story is a solid example of Dunning-Kruger at work.

Dunning-Kruger for geeks --- when technical knowledge in one very specific area leads someone to extrapolate and overestimate their own insight and ability in unrelated areas such as psychology, marketplace dynamics or finance/economics.

A solid example of Dunning-Kruger --- people who live and breathe crypto and blockchain technical minutia while being victimized by scammers who not only don't know anything about it but really couldn't care less.

Blursed intelligence.

Intelligence is a blessing and a curse.

Cynicism comes by an intellectual feedback loop.

Once intellectually invested reenforcement mechanisms set in, and dispositions contrary are scorned.

eMacs vs vi

Microsoft vs OSS

Python vs JavaScript

Stack A vs stack B

Worldview one way vs worldview The other way

Etc.

My most unpopular comment yet.

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