Programming Forums - View Single Post - People and Social skills of programmers/IT professionals

csrocker101 · Sep 5th, 2007, 3:25 AM

Hey everybody. I'd just like to start a discussion about the people and social skills of most programmers and other IT professionals. I know that its an old stereotype that people who study computer science and people that become IT professionals are generally nerdy and are generally considered to be "weird" people but having studied computer science for almost 3 years I am beginning to understand why. Even from the beginning of my major, I noticed that about 75-85% of the people in my courses are just very different than your average student. I know that an "average student" is objective but it seems like these guys in my courses just have no life except to go home, program, play world of war craft, and talk about just generally weird stuff. I have respect for that since those are their interests but it seems they just have no life. What particularly amazes me about the vast majority of people in my courses is their inability to simply communicate effectively. Their lack of people skills is frightening. I remember being in a group project and being the team leader and it was immensely difficult to simply coordinate who should do what task. I would attempt to ascertain each persons skills and particular interests so I could better allocate each task to certain individuals and it was hard to explain, but their explanations where very unclear and complicated. On occasion I'll try to chat with a few other fellow students in the labs but the conservations are just odd and the sense of humor some of my fellow students have is just bizarre. I am currently interning at a software company and I find the same problem with a few of my other co-workers. They simply just don't want to coordinate which I find very frustrating. They seem to want to do everything by themselves. For instance I am attempting to upgrade a few things on an ASP.net website one of the programmers made, but he has left no comments in his code. I will ask the programmer for help on certain functions and he gives me loose and unclear answers and is reluctant to even help. I asked him to please comment his code since its something everyone should do, but he just gave me new code and there were no comments. We went out to lunch the other day with a few other co-workers who were more business oriented and I found myself having great conservations. The programmer came and he just felt so alien in the group. We almost had to include him in the conversation because he just wouldn't say anything and when he did it was just odd talking points. I hope I am not offending anyone and that was not my intention but I was just wondering if anyone is experiencing the same problems as I am.

Sep 5th, 2007, 3:25 AM	#1
csrocker101 Programmer Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 49 Rep Power: 0	People and Social skills of programmers/IT professionals Hey everybody. I'd just like to start a discussion about the people and social skills of most programmers and other IT professionals. I know that its an old stereotype that people who study computer science and people that become IT professionals are generally nerdy and are generally considered to be "weird" people but having studied computer science for almost 3 years I am beginning to understand why. Even from the beginning of my major, I noticed that about 75-85% of the people in my courses are just very different than your average student. I know that an "average student" is objective but it seems like these guys in my courses just have no life except to go home, program, play world of war craft, and talk about just generally weird stuff. I have respect for that since those are their interests but it seems they just have no life. What particularly amazes me about the vast majority of people in my courses is their inability to simply communicate effectively. Their lack of people skills is frightening. I remember being in a group project and being the team leader and it was immensely difficult to simply coordinate who should do what task. I would attempt to ascertain each persons skills and particular interests so I could better allocate each task to certain individuals and it was hard to explain, but their explanations where very unclear and complicated. On occasion I'll try to chat with a few other fellow students in the labs but the conservations are just odd and the sense of humor some of my fellow students have is just bizarre. I am currently interning at a software company and I find the same problem with a few of my other co-workers. They simply just don't want to coordinate which I find very frustrating. They seem to want to do everything by themselves. For instance I am attempting to upgrade a few things on an ASP.net website one of the programmers made, but he has left no comments in his code. I will ask the programmer for help on certain functions and he gives me loose and unclear answers and is reluctant to even help. I asked him to please comment his code since its something everyone should do, but he just gave me new code and there were no comments. We went out to lunch the other day with a few other co-workers who were more business oriented and I found myself having great conservations. The programmer came and he just felt so alien in the group. We almost had to include him in the conversation because he just wouldn't say anything and when he did it was just odd talking points. I hope I am not offending anyone and that was not my intention but I was just wondering if anyone is experiencing the same problems as I am.