zlacker

> Early on, Valerie realized that she unconsciously thought of literally every single job other than software engineer as “for people who weren’t good enough to be a software engineer” – and that she thought this because other software engineers had been telling her that for her entire career.

This spoke to me for two reasons.

1) Plenty of professions are like this. Lawyers, consultants, doctors, bankers, stock brokers etc. Everyone thinks that their profession is the 'best' one.

2) As someone in tech, but not a Software Developer, the number of times I've gone into technical conferences (yes, even the 'inclusive' ones) and got the feeling of being lesser just because I don't write code for a living bothers me. In particular, the stigma associated with being in customer facing roles (particularly sales) is strong.

>>fphhot+(OP)
As a software developer who goes to infosec conferences, i frequently feel "lesser" because everyone seems to be working on cooler stuff than me. Then I go to their meetups and they tell me how much they hate their jobs and I feel better. The truth is ultimately you do what you do because you can't get out of bed in the morning and do anything else -- if you don't feel that way, switch to what motivates you. If you do feel that way though, lean into it hard! I switched from a non-dev tech career to development and it has transformed my life in a very positive way.

That said though, the developer-oriented tech conferences definitely skew towards "rockstar" in terms of who is popular and I mean that word in the most negative sense possible. I have found this especially true of the "inclusive" ones. I feel sick around personality cults and avoid more and more of these.

As someone who develops for a non-technical industry, I've gotten a lot of sneers from other developers when I explain my company and role. At the end of the day though, I have 10x as much responsibility and appreciation at my job than they do in theirs. I'm leaving my job in ~2 weeks and I've had half a dozen exit interviews with people in different roles here and even a C-level (a real C-level, not a startup C-level) from another office across the country flying in just to have a meeting and say goodbye to me. How many "average developers" (because that's all I am) get to have that level of impact?

>>fphhot+(OP)
Not just for dev. I went to NIPS last year (and am in DS at startups in SF) and about 80% of the time as you introduce yourself the other person just stares at your affiliation on your tag. I went to a company (nameless) afterparty where the host DS literally stared at my tag for 2 seconds with a look of some serious disgust of how did I happen to get in without Google/FB/Apple/etc. or MIT/Stanford affiliation.

>>eanzen+66
similar experience here, I'm actually glad that the schools don't coach their students to tone down the arrogance as it makes interviewing them a lot easier