Go Dig A Ditch

People keep on telling me that I shouldn't get upset about others in my industry who simply couldn't care less what they produce.

Apparently, people have different priorities.

The thing with priorities is that you are choosing to order the importance of several things. That does not automatically imply that there is only one thing that is important to you. People with children who work a day as a software engineer and do a good job, do not implicitly hate or undervalue their children. Those of us without children don't just have lives full of work and nothing else.

In fact, people with diverse interests and hobbies are often very good at their jobs because their lives are more balanced.

You can have multiple things that are important. That is the whole point of context. When you switch contexts, the focus changes. There is nothing lost in other contexts. It is not as though you love the other less. You do not have to choose.

There is one guy in Darwin who sparked this rant. He goes to work. He goes home. He doesn't put in any extra effort. He always asks why he has to do something out of his usual routine. He doesn't see the point of collaboration, information sharing, reuse of anything, or exerting any more effort than it takes to not fire him.

Working with him was difficult because he would resist the whole way. It was passive resistance. I always came across as a French marine dragging a Green Peace supporter from a boat. It makes those of us who care look like zealots, when all we want is for people to make the effort they are paid for.

What we do is an important job. We are professionals. We get paid well .We have a responsibility to give a good service.

If you don't want to contribute then you should go dig ditches. Get the hell out of programming. You are lowering the standard.