If over the years you started feeling like working in software development has become a bit of a mine-field of elitism and dogmatic religiousness, you're neither alone, nor wrong. To top it all off, it appears to be also very noticeable from the outside, as my friend Raluca LICĂU — a fantastic marketer — pointed out to me in a Covid-bubble couch-side conversation. And this is bad. Because, while to some extent one gets desensitised to the inside world of software development, whether one likes it or not, when the outside world takes note of it… well, it means it's unprofessional, alienating and exclusivist — all the things the world does not need; not to mention in an industry that's desperately trying to get more people involved, of all genders and backgrounds.

It's like The Office, only worse

I've had this recurring feeling for years. It comes and goes, but one sure way to get it to resurface, is to join a tech forum. Any tech forum that involves programming or dominating software trends will be chock-full of derogatory comments directed towards "the dinosaurs", "the newbies", "the anyone who doesn't like what I like". Apparently being a PHP developer is something one should not advertise too much, liking Angular is kind of frowned upon in pretty much any JS community that's not established by Angular fanboys, who themselves will shun anyone daring to mention React, Vue or whatever else the flavour of the month is in JS frameworks and libraries.

Then of course you'll have the purists who will go out of their way to make you feel downright stupid, and incapable of stringing together a simple sentence, just because you happen not to write everything from scratch in the "vanillaest" of vanilla JavaScript. Let's not even mention jQuery. There's about as many jQuery answers on StackOverflow as there are rude patronising "gurus" telling you off for not attempting to write the same thing in at least ES6. You'll also find the occasional UnderscoreJS knight acting all high and mighty, as if they invented the Spanish wax, but at least they're a dying breed, thank God.

Are you an Apple developer by any chance? Oh, God forbid you mention anything about your walled garden. All the Androids will put your name on a ledger, they're gonna share with their equally Android friends, and you'll never be seen as anything more than a sheeple. In fairness though, they are being looked down upon by the former, as the folks who couldn't afford to write code for elite machines, so had no choice but to flock at dirty uncle Google's gates of "garbage" apps.

But it doesn't stop at the details…

Ultimately, your choice of programming language, library or platform is semantics compared to titles. One could argue of course that software development is a career like any other, and caring about titles is natural. And you know what? It is. It should be, as long as you're comparing yourself with your yesterday's self. Moving from intern to associate, engineer, senior engineer, staff, principal, VP, CTO — these are excellent goals to have, as they can reflect your growth as a professional.

It does however become a problem when the comparison goes beyond your yesterday's self. You don't get to feel like a better person, because you're a software engineer and not a web developer. You don't get a medal for writing any kind of code, just like you don't get one for packing shelves at a super-market. Just because you get paid to write gobbledygook on a screen, eight hours a day, doesn't mean you are some demigod everyone should swipe right on Tinder, or faint in the presence of your highness at the high-school reunion.

I understand as little about marketing as my marketer friend Raluca understands about code, yet somehow she lives in a world where everyone loves each other and sings Kumbaya, and after many years in the industry, she claims that to be the norm, whereas I find myself increasingly in one where difference in opinion is less and less encouraged or heck — even accepted.

I find myself witnessing online conversations where anyone who isn't already part of the coding bubble, gets dismissed. It's not the inability to explain concepts in simpler terms to the uninitiated, but sheer unwillingness to do so, as if somehow by "dumbing it down" for the sake of inspiration or conversation, takes away from the aura, and completely fabricated opaqueness of what it means to build software.

What makes software engineers feel so darn special, myself included of course? It's not what we do, but rather the perceived value of what we do. And sure, in an increasingly digital world, the value aspect makes sense, but in reality often the things we build are exponentially more ephemeral than a day-labouring brick-layer's work. The worst of houses lasts a few decades. Apps? Websites? A couple years, maybe five. Looking through my app store downloads history, half the app names and what their purpose was, I couldn't even remember. A good number of those I couldn't even find any more, because they're either unmaintained or have completely disappeared.

We're really not that special…

Oh, but we solve complex problems, right? Aaahhumm… we do, but have you tried building a house? Trust me, a lot more complex. You also don't get to "fail fast". If the house you built, crumbles, you're on the hook or on the literal street! You can't try seven different ways of building the roof, nor can you rebuild the house, just because you saw some new types of bricks out there.

With software, we get to do all that, and while it's not entirely risk-free, people's health and life is rarely on the line. Try being a nurse for a week, a bus driver, a chef or even a receptionist at a hotel. But … I just said, we solve problems! Well, so do they! The fact of the matter is, there are fewer and fewer jobs out there that don't solve a problem. Yet somehow, the dudes and dudettes in hoodies are somehow the elite of the middle-class because … software developers get paid more. Don't get me wrong, I'm wearing the hoodie, speaking mostly the same lingo, and get paid, like many. This is not against getting paid well. What I'm against, is drawing a parallel between pay and value of a person.

The sad truth is, software development isn't overpaid, if anything, there's still space to raise wages, but people who take on a lot more risk and are often looked down on by society, are getting painfully and inhumanely low salaries. And just because of that, they get shoved into the "layman" class.

Educate and elevate

Between ourselves, developers, coders, software engineers and hackers, we need to start changing the tone of our conversations. Bringing radicalism into the conversation must stop if we want to build truly great software that doesn't only enable the world, but improves the lives of everyone. Software that doesn't only produce products, but inspires the brick-layer, the nurse, the window-washer and the burger-flipper to join the conversation and perhaps join the fun. Because it is! It is fun.

We need to bring back the teenage enthusiasm and remind ourselves that many of us got into software because we were instatiably curious, not because it was an alternative to joining a cult.

Anyone from the outside needs to see that those "newbies" get support and nurturing from the so-called "dinosaurs", and good software practices trump personal preference. There's no need for elitism and unjustified feelings of superiority. It's disruptive, abrasive and counterproductive.

On that note, go forth and write some good code. And be nice.

Did you know that whenever you subscribe to become a Medium Member, us writers, get a cut? You get a ton of great articles, we get a coffee. Sounds like a fair deal to me…

Attila Vago — Sr. Software Engineer building amazing ed-tech software. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, Lego fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer!