It's not just people "with a modicum of status or power," it's almost everywhere in tech. Just look at all the software engineers that contemptuously look down on other fields (except maybe hard science and economics), or talk like they're experts because they read a couple of papers.
IIRC there was a recent blog post or article (I wish I could find it) that had a nice section just running through a series of software-engineer ideas (like Effective Altruism), and pointing out they're basically re-inventing wheels that were already better explored by Philosophy. And the people who do that think they're brilliant innovators.
And most philosophers aren't exactly immune to the quasi-Gell-Mann-Dunning-Kruger effect that plagues engineers.
I have a BA in Economics though I am a 20-year software veteran and I can honestly say that this degree has probably helped my career more than any CS knowledge I have. My family was also heavily into the humanities in general, plus a number of my parents were in leadership positions (both corporate and military). All the stories I heard growing up had to do with people and social relations, literally never anything technical. (For context, one of my parents has an electrical engineering background and was a hardware startup founder.)
Human factors dominate all other factors and most engineers/devs/whatever tend to learn this way too late in their career. There's a sincere but ultimately naive hope that if the tech could just be really excellent then all that messy human stuff just wouldn't be a problem.
Strong agree that everyone would benefit from having a shitty service job or two when they're young to learn what life is really like for most people. I worked a bunch of different service jobs in high school and college, it's shocking how poorly most people treat someone just because they're standing behind the counter.
In the corporate world I find it's usually very obvious who has real life experience and who doesn't.
You can find these easily on YouTube, there's a channel securitylectures which hosts them, and there are also official resources from the US Naval Postgraduate Academy in Monterey.
Four years is a long time, you’re not just focused on business and engineering every waking second.
I’ve talked to a lot of journalists over the years and they almost always make this point if the conversation drifts to education. After a few years I started replying with, “Yes, I’ve studied X, maybe not as in depth as you have, but I did spend a semester on it. Have you ever taken a calculus class? Physics? Computer Science? What about economics? Statistics? Industrial and organizational psychology?”
The answer is almost always no. You get tech writers who’ve never touched a compiler and business reporters that have never studied economics. Don’t even get me started on “entertainment journalists.” It’s why almost every article, no matter the topic, feels like it was written through someone viewing the world through a very particular lens.
Engineers and business people should absolutely study the humanities. And, humanities people should absolutely study science, engineering, and economics. Specialization is for insects.
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
―Heinlein
It's easy to conflate recognition with achievement when that's all you know in life.
Most of them with law degrees and education in domains far removed from CS/math.
CS/math has nothing to do with this. It's just boring biological self selection. Why would I listen to you of all people?
Your existential dread is for you and your therapist. Not on others to coddle your ego.
The problem is Americans believe(d) all the televised to the spec of network censors propaganda about their exceptionalism. Tens of millions of 50+ year olds really came to believe they are the center of the universe. Nope, just more randos who never had a say in their existence because the messy and irrational aspects of reality don't care you exist.
To my mind, the key is that it's leaders who never learn. The sad thing is that the system gives them no incentives to do so. If you look into the work of Bob Emiliani, this seems to be the tragic conclusion he's come to in recent years. We "know" all the right things to do, but time and time again, management dehumanizes the floor staff and refuses to listen. It's often not even out of malice but because that leader simply has no reason whatsoever to change.
There's another possibility that the people who gravitate to "leadership" have certain personality problems that cause those behaviors, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/opinion/office-work-wfh-b....
> Over the past six years, we’ve studied why some leaders continue to support remote work, while others resist it. We surveyed thousands of executives, middle managers and frontline supervisors on a host of personality traits. When we later asked them about their stances on hybrid and remote work, their answers didn’t correlate with how much they trusted their employees or how much they loved being around people. The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism — the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status — and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to figure out how to weed those types out before they get to leadership positions. The trouble is how.
Software engineers and especially architecture folks tend to have very healthy egos themselves that get in the way of the right thing happening. The worst-case scenario is when someone has a big ego and is technically correct. That can be a very tough nut to crack, and even worse if you pile on emotional and historical baggage.
I don't think we can ever eliminate the problem of bad leaders. I am not even convinced that it is desirable to do so. Everybody has to have room to grow and sometimes a person who later becomes a great leader has to learn what that means by royally fucking up early in their career. People need room to fail and that's true for leaders as well. It's problematic obviously because leaders have outsize impact relative to the general population.
Ultimately I think the real problem is much deeper than work or industry. If you go back in history, bad leaders have always been a problem. Pharaoh blamed the builders for his bad pyramid (or at least didn't think he was part of the issue). The Vasa sank because no-one could contradict or push back on the king -- when people rule by divine right, pushing back on the king is equivalent to pushing back on God. The cathedral collapsed because the bishop insisted it be the tallest one around, then later the roof collapsed, killing many people.
Challenger, Columbia, Chernobyl, the Quebec Bridge, Deepwater Horizon, etc. all these disasters, it's basically an infinite list. We humans have these problems with each other because we have issues with power and authority and control.
We learn, but that's not what The Machine optimizes for, so when you realize it you leave. Other bodies throw themselves on the gears, the cycle repeats.
- Attributed to Nasrudin
There is a simple trick for that, its called ageism. Good luck finding job in some youngish teams when you are over 50, you need to show extraordinary talent, experience and flexibility to be considered.
I agree with others - people often think they are smarter than others, and smart folks tend to fall into that trap easily, triple that with young age. It works sometimes for some folks and thats it.
I guess all the "rock stars" are dead at 27 so the point stands.
because they're smarter than everyone else and
there is nothing of value to be learned from others
Especially since everybody in the industry tends to be pretty smart.
When two people with intelligence within a single standard deviation of each other, each of them is going to have competencies and expertise the other does not. There are going to be specific skills where one truly is 10x or even 100x the other, but not too many efforts boil down to one specific narrow skill.