The Bad Guys want you to feel insecure about your work, your position, your relative standing, and everything else because their worst nightmare is that software engineers and scientists and thinkers wake up and realize how much leverage they would actually have if they were organized and capable of looking out for their own interests. We'd reshape the entire business landscape, and the power relationships between us and them would be inverted.
They prey on the insecurity of the smartest people. It makes us easy to take advantage of, and compromises almost all of our leverage.
Every time you let them sit in your head and natter about how your work isn't good enough because it doesn't isn't in accord with what they see as "professional", you're letting them win. The problem with assholes is that their imprints live on even years after you get away from them. It takes conscious effort to get that lingering cognitive load out of your mind.
We need to step back and simplify: solve problems, and do it well. (This includes documentation and testing, when appropriate.) Make stuff, make it good, make what's good better. We need to get back to that, rather than slugging it out over "agile" and TDD and nonsense. Zed Shaw got it right: http://programming-motherfucker.com/
They prey on the insecurity of the smartest people. It makes us easy to take advantage of, and compromises almost all of our leverage.
Every time you let them sit in your head and natter about how your work isn't good enough because it doesn't isn't in accord with what they see as "professional", you're letting them win. The problem with assholes is that their imprints live on even years after you get away from them. It takes conscious effort to get that lingering cognitive load out of your mind.
We need to step back and simplify: solve problems, and do it well. (This includes documentation and testing, when appropriate.) Make stuff, make it good, make what's good better. We need to get back to that, rather than slugging it out over "agile" and TDD and nonsense. Zed Shaw got it right: http://programming-motherfucker.com/