Tech Idiocy

Techies, "engineers" and others deep into the tech stack often are myopic. Sometimes you need to call them out explicitly.

Every once in a while, I have to just shake my head when I read something one of my tech brethren utters. Today, browsing Slashdot, I found the idiot of the day.

The setup: The article was posted from the NY Times, and it was how many tech people were choosing to quit versus return to the office. Several of them were people hired during the Covid shutdown, and their original employment agreement was fine with remote working¹.

The thread on Slashdot produced this brain donor:

Agree - it can be a mixed bag.

I report directly to my CTO, who also works from home most of the time (in another country). He works damn hard - just as I do. I do know there are sales people and project managers who are a drain upon the company - offering very little value, knowing nothing about what the company does, and clueless about what our software does or how to write a requirement or even raise a bug.

Some just merely forward emails (delegation), which I find particularly galling as they are worthless and have so little experience or desire to grow. [emphasis mine]

This is a common trope from engineers. They believe because someone doesn’t code, or work deep in the tech stack, they are dead weight.

I have to say that if you truly believe that “sales” is a “drain” on the company, you probably should be fired.

If there are no sales, and thus no customers, you can build the perfect product, that solves big problems, your company will go out of business.

If you come across an engineer (software, hardware or otherwise) that has this belief, call them out.

1. many of them have already found new remote work.

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