Show me “code nerd” in the job requirements

And eventually he hits her with, by the way, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm just providing guidance.

Oh, I mean, since he just said that, it's not insulting now.

Everything's fine now.

Everything's fine. Oh, why don't you just start with that? Yeah, just say a bunch of insulting things and then just say LOL. Yeah, yeah, I don't mean to insult you. Yeah, right. And now it's over. Like, what?

You're listening to Off the VPN, the show where two work besties get real about working in tech. Jasmine told me I look like I live on a cul-de-sac with this.

Yes, I did. It's a compliment. It's like you just— you're giving like— it's giving—

it's giving like golf club. Like, I go to—

yeah, it's just— yeah, it's just— it's giving put together. It's giving you go for a run in the morning or you're like, have weights while you do your walk. It's giving like— Yeah, it's a compliment.

Thank you.

I clock the fit. I like it. I like the vibe. I'm into it.

It's a very comfy fit. And I like to— I was going to say I like to look like I'm put together, but that's not true because I was just putting on makeup like 1 minute before we jumped on.

Listen, as long as you get it together. But yeah, I love a monochromatic earth tone fit.

You are also giving earth tones today and sporty. Like, you look like you were lifting weights. Look at us.

I look like I— like I'm waiting to be called for my Olympic medal. Yeah, you do.

Gold, obviously. Okay, but we're not talking about the Olympics today.

We're not? Oh my gosh.

Although that'd be amazing.

All these notes I had ready for talking about the Olympics just—

That would be amazing if we could tie that in somehow. But I— we can't. We can't right now.

We should commentate the next Olympics. Next Olympics. If we're still— we're still doing this podcast by the time the Olympics are showing again, we will do live coverage. All right, maybe not live coverage, but we will cover the Olympics. Yeah, yeah.

Live coverage, they would be like— they would shut it down like mid— they'd rather have nothing, no commentary, than have us.

Probably half of it would be me asking ChatGPT like, what the rules are.

Yeah, like, oh, is this good? Is this bad? I don't know, people are cheering, but I'm not sure. Okay, well, speaking of being bots, I have a question for you to kick things off today.

Okay.

Do you think you have to be passionate to be good at your job?

No, because I think people could be passionate and be really bad at their jobs.

Yeah, it's like flip it around.

Therefore, yeah, yeah, yeah. But No, I think you can be effective and get your job done, but yeah, I don't think— I think you need to. I do think that there are people believe that though.

Ah, okay, perfect. Great segue. Let us begin. I have a story for you. This story touches on that very topic, and not only passion but the perception of passion in the workplace. So our story today is going to revolve around a woman named Grace.

Grace.

Grace. Yes, little G. Little G. I feel like we've already had a little G on this.

Oh, uh, give me a minute, I'll come back. Okay, I'll come up with something.

Okay, okay, work through it. Why don't I tell you a little bit more about Grace?

Gracion, like a, like a Pokémon. Yeah, Gracion.

Okay, as usual, I will not be saying that, but let's continue. Okay, so, uh, Grace is in a 2-year apprenticeship program in tech And it's kind of like a hybrid program between school and work. Uh, so 4 days a week she's interning and she's contributing to a development team that, you know, has full-stack developers, front-end, back-end, and this team primarily builds new features. So they're not like in maintenance mode or anything like that. They're innovating and they're constantly creating new stuff. On top of that, like I mentioned, she's also a full-time student, and so she's working towards a degree. The whole idea behind the specific program that she's in is to help people who do not have a traditional tech background. So think high schools or school districts that don't have computers or don't have as much access to those things as some other districts might have. And so this whole program that she's in is really meant to like help people who don't have that access or traditional background to like get their foot in the door, which I love. It's amazing. 7 months into this apprenticeship program, Grace meets with her manager to discuss her progress. But one thing to know is that this is not the first time they've met to discuss progress. That kind of makes sense, right? Like 7 months in, you hope that you're not just finally hearing from your manager. But Grace is going into this second check-in with a few key memories from last time. Okay, last time she was told a few things. The first, she's not passionate enough about coding. Oh, and the second, she doesn't seem like a code nerd.

Okay, so what do you want me to do about that?

It's a great question.

Like, oh, what do you want me to do? Like, what, make sure I have a clacky keyboard and I don't know, not like— what, what does that have to do with performance, right?

It's a phenomenal question. And these comments were obviously super upsetting to Grace, but despite that, she tried to take it as feedback and think about how she could improve. So for example, even though she has an extremely hectic and busy schedule between work and school, she started to do a bit more self-study to learn about different you know, aspects of tech and just like new topics. So then she could like come to work and talk about, hey, I was learning about this specific thing, and try and engage with her coworkers in a way that's less like, this is just— let's talk about the work that we have on our plate. Okay, so yeah, the comments upset her, but she tried to do something about it is the point.

So she's trying to show initiative in not just doing the work in front of her, but showing that she's done some exploratory stuff and bring that into her day-to-day to show that she's interested in other stuff and provide value other than just like execution.

Exactly, exactly. Okay, but okay, so Grace joins this second progress meeting and her manager asks her a very reasonable question like, what do you think about your career going forward? What do you envision? And Grace starts to mention how much she's enjoyed the backend work that she's been contributing to on her team and how exciting she's found it compared to front-end development, which is sort of where she's had most of her experience. And so she tells her manager, becoming a full-stack developer is very appealing to me. Reasonable. It's at this point that things in this meeting start to go downhill. Oh, manager starts to speak in metaphors. Do you like when people speak in metaphors?

Ah, that I hate.

You know I hate that.

You don't even need to ask that. You know I hate that.

Yeah.

I'm like, what are we talking about right now? What are you talking about? Can we just say what we mean? Like, this metaphor is broke down like 3 metaphors ago. Like, can we— oh my God, here we go. Especially if you're giving feedback as a manager. Yes. Like, what are you— like, you sound like some like old wise sage from the top of the mountain telling me like, you must— I don't know, the, the trees and more documentation. Yes, the trees go off into the code base and seek meaning. Like, yeah.

Okay. No, that was it by itself.

What did this guy say? What did this guy say to Gracian, Lil Grace?

Gracian, Lil Grace, Lil Jeep. He started to describe someone being a good musician in one instrument. So like piano, guitar, whatever, pick your instrument, but not another. Cutting through all the bullshit, he's basically saying even though she's doing good at her job, he doesn't think she's actually a right fit for the team. And then he tells her, you are more procedural in your work than you are creative. Imagine being told that first by talking about like guitars and pianos. I would literally be like, just stop, just stop. Like what, what is it that you're trying to say? Eventually though, that is where he gets to.

Oh my God, this guy sounds terrible.

Yeah, not great, not great. Grace is like, okay, this isn't inherently bad feedback, like being procedural versus trying to approach work in a maybe more open-minded way. Like, she's like, all right, like, I hear that, but I also disagree with it. And then he hits her with—

we're talking about coding, right? Like, I get creativity, but like, usually people who are in this are systematic. Like, they're thinking in procedures. That's actually a bonus, is to think about those things. Yeah, like, some people can be a little bit more on like the more rulebook type versus like more like dish out code and like not test it and just get something out there. Like, there's people across that spectrum, but yeah, that is not— that's just an archetype. That's not a failure mode. I mean, it can be a failure warning. Like, you gotta like be aware of things, but how— I feel like you need to talk about what the impact of that is for the team than describing— like, that's not inherently wrong.

I agree with her. I agree with you and I agree with her where it's like, I tell them, maybe you need to wear some more colors.

You keep wearing that same jacket every day. Right. So I say, yeah, I wouldn't say it, but I'd be thinking it. And what does that have to do with your job, the fact that you wear the same t-shirt to work. You don't think I didn't notice?

You didn't think I didn't notice you wore that every day this week?

This is what describing things about our personalities— you wanna talk about me?

He gives her that feedback, she disagrees with it, but then he keeps going and he hits her with, I've never seen you excited about trying something new at work.

But didn't she just talk about the things she tried new?

Yeah. He then goes on to bring up one of Grace's male co-workers.

Okay, how do you feel about an—

at a— about a comparison in a, in a progress review like this?

Just like off the bat, I think you've got to be really careful, and I think you gotta avoid it at all costs to compare to others. I think it can be useful to provide examples if a behavior that you expect, but I think considering we're not talking about like outcomes or output or impact, something downstream, he's just describing personality, that feels— feel like this is going down a line of inappropriate, but that's my feelings. I feel like comparing people that you got to be really conscious of what— not even comparing them, but you got to compare what they do, not the people themselves.

You're exactly right. Everything so far that he's described is really about her personality and not anything, like, concrete about her work. And so when he brings up her male coworker, what he says is basically like, so this person graduated from the same exact program that you did just a year earlier. And, like, he basically goes on to imply that Grace is not going to be at that guy's skill level a year and a half from now. Okay. And so Grace sticks up for herself a bit. She tells him she disagrees with him and tries to provide evidence of why he's wrong, right? Like, these are the things that I've been doing. Here's why I actually think I am on that path to have skills X, Y, and Z that this other person has. Like, it's just like we're now involving this other person who has no idea they're being talked about. But as she's talking, she realizes, oh, This conversation is going absolutely nowhere. I have not changed this man's mind, and he keeps reiterating the same opinion that he has of me, which is that I am not passionate and that I don't seem excited about my work. And eventually he hits her with, by the way, I'm not trying to insult you, I'm just providing guidance.

Oh, I mean, since he just said that, it's not insulting now.

Everything's fine now.

Everything's fine. Oh, why don't you just start with that? Yeah, just say a bunch of insulting things and then just say LOL. Yeah, yeah, I don't mean to insult you.

Yeah, right.

And now it's over. Like, what?

I don't know much beyond this, but I do think we can review some, like, just facts that we know about Grace. The first being that Grace is voluntarily participating in this internship where she works 20 hours a week for literal shit pay. And on top of that goes to school full-time in this field to further her career and her skill sets, which by the way, she is paying for. And then beyond that, Grace has actually received a ton of really good encouraging feedback from the senior engineers on her team. I'm hearing like good collaborator, contributing in a way that is such that her senior counterparts are telling her so and are giving her that feedback. Is pursuing the— a degree in tech and programming and is voluntarily participating in this internship.

This—

she's literally putting in 50, 60 hours a week on this thing, on just—

on just this field. Yeah.

And is— and then is being told—

I don't know, I think if she wore the shirt, then maybe. I have thoughts on this. I'm gonna make some assumptions, but as I feel like they're gonna be fairer in substance to someone who's been in the industry for some time. I feel like there's, there's even an article somewhere about the fall of the passion engineer. That is a thing with like hiring where it's like you're looking for this specific type of thing, but then there's like this idea that a programmer needs to look a certain way and they need to act a certain way. There are people out there that coding is their entire personality. We have met them. I can name them off the top. I won't, I won't name names, but you know who you are. Coding is their entire personality. And you know what? A lot of the times they're excellent. They can crush code. That's amazing. They get paid well for that. Not every engineer's gonna be that. And I think that as the market has demanded more engineers, it's been great because you open up the doors for more people to enter. Not everybody needs to be an ultra nerd. Like my entire life on my, I code during my real hours, on my off hours I'm doing side projects, on my extra off hours, like I'm doing it when I wake up in the morning and I'm not even sleeping.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like I'm just crushing Red Bull in my basement. That's like an archetype and that's fine. Those people should exist. I love that for them that they love that. Yes. But that doesn't mean that you're not effective. And actually I think if the entire industry is filled with those people, which that was at a same point, is like, you miss so much diversity of thought and just different experience points people are bringing in. Like you having like an extra, like, I don't know, you're in sports or you're in another thing, like you're bringing that strategic mindset, those skills that you've learned from that, the people skills often are really needed. You know what I mean? If you're just slinging code, that's not, the full expanse of being an engineer. Right. But also I think it's just, if you don't look like that, people can make those assumptions, which is my assumption about this is like, you're dedicating all of these hours, but you don't look like a certain thing, or you're not doing the exact same stuff. You're talking about other things. Mm-hmm. And not like what weirdo side project you decided to do, and then you, oh, you have all these commits on like a public repository that everybody's like, oh, I'm, you know, doing this stuff. Like, who cares? Yeah, God forbid I want to like take a salsa class.

Like, I was just gonna say, God forbid I showed up with stand-up and everyone's like, how was your weekend? And I'm like, I went on a hike. And then other people are like, yeah, I was coding my side project, you want to see it? I'll show you a demo.

Like, I love that for you, but I want to do other stuff.

Yeah, exactly. And the fact that her manager doesn't seem to like I guess, value what she brings to the team, which is apparently good stuff because she's getting good feedback, and is hyper-focused on this. Well, you don't seem like you're passionate, you don't seem like a code nerd. That was a direct quote.

So, ew, what an ick. Like, that's such an ick.

Yeah, no, I hope Grace gets out of this place and finds a different manager who understands that this is not This is like borderline inappropriate.

No, I'd say it's outright inappropriate. My God, they're terrible. Yeah, I, I, I hate that. And I feel like that person needs to— if you know what, if that person went outside and touched grass, they would learn that it was inappropriate. So that's why we need people to do that. So I—

everyone go touch grass, you'll be a better person for it.

I feel like the source of a lot of imposter syndrome when people show up into technical spaces actually has to do with this archetype where, I don't know, we're at lunch and everybody's talking about like esoteric details about C++ and like reversing the Unix handbook and, oh, I made a kernel and I wrote one in my spare time, all in Rust. Okay. I enjoy those people. Those people are good. You learn things, but I think it's like, if you don't fit that archetype, you feel like you don't belong or it, these things are over your head. But I think as you grow in your career and you meet others, you realize that like, that's not everybody in the career. But some people are literally here just to come for a paycheck. And that actually I think is interesting where they might not make it through interviews because they're not showcasing a quote unquote passion. And it's like, no, I did all of this work so I can make money. So just put me in there, I will get my 9 to 5 done and, and that's it. And I actually feel like those people get filtered out often as well. Like, it's like you're looking for a specific type of passion in a certain way. Just because someone isn't like obsessed with coding, which I used to be very passionate, I would say I still am sometimes, like that passion will revitalize, but, but it's allowed to come and go just like, right.

Every other thing in life. Yeah. And the other thing that this makes me wonder is how AI tools are just sort of changing this perception of passion across the board anyway, right? Because I mean, one thing notably is that maybe you're just going to have more vibe coders. So people who aren't like quote code nerds who really understand like the depths of what is actually happening in a terminal or when you're like writing a specific line of code and you just have people who are interested in creating things through code, but they don't like nerd out over the specifics of all of that, right? Actually, in some ways that could be really good for sort of removing this like requirement for passion or like this perception of like, well, you can't be good at your job if you're not super passionate about coding or like a specific technology or an IDE or sort of the historical stuff that has come up. As a result of this. And now it's just more like, well, lots of people have access to these tools. Lots of people can build now. And that spectrum of passion is going to vary even more widely, I would say. I'm curious, like, what you think.

No, I, I think you're right. I think, and I think there's a place, like, tech is where we're talking trillions and trillions of dollars are in just the industry, right? And it, there are so many weirdo roles, and now that, like, And to your point, like, we have quote unquote vibe coders, or not even just vibe coders, just people who are in, you know, non-technical roles starting to shift their abilities and learning how to do things. Like, they're not gonna dive in and know the esoteric details of the syntactic sugar that is in this third line and how that's like special in some way. Who cares? Actually, a lot of code might be absolute trash to us. Like, that's, that's very much gonna happen, right? Where it's like, actually you wrote this whole thing, or AI wrote this whole thing, and it actually could have been 2 lines. Like, who cares? Because again, we need to talk about outcomes, output. Like, what is the thing that we're trying to accomplish? And those people are still gonna be needed. The code nerds are, they are important. They are important in this whole tech ecosystem, but they are not everything. They are, there are people who bring all sorts of things to create those things. I'll tell you what, I have like, you know, you work with someone like that, they don't know much about business outcomes and what needs to happen. You gotta still point them in the right direction, or they fight with every other engineer because they're complaining about something. So like everyone has like their little spider chart. The thing when I have my like happy hat on with AI is like exactly what you're saying. Like it is going to end— be such an easier entry point into tech. From so many different perspectives, not even just creating code, but having something to help you understand more quickly. Like, I just feel like it's going to allow more voices, more opinions, more people into developing software. And I think that's gonna be really incredible. There's gonna be a lot of friction and annoyances for us.

Yeah.

'Cause we'll be like, what is this? What did you just make? But I think, yeah, we have to be open-minded and kind of let those people in. So. Yeah, love it. Just like the code nerds accept me, I will accept vibe coders.

Wow, changing the world one day at a time.

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