Quick Aside: I said this in the piece but this isn’t intended to be mean or disparaging, it’s just me sharing my observations over time of attending a lot of meet ups. Please see this as entertainment only.
For some reason in my adult life I have made it a habit to try new things and putting myself through a social crucible of heat and pain. Yes I’m talking about ‘Meet Ups,’ mostly of the coding variety. I go to new, unfamiliar places and surroundings, mostly in office parks or nice coffee houses, and I meet new, and unfamiliar people. Sometimes I have fun and sometimes I don’t. Like anything it depends on circumstance.
Most of the time I leave exhausted because in new places with new people you have to talk a lot. Explain who you are, what you do, where you have been. Unfortunately I do that weird ‘data dump’ on people when I have 2 beers and no dinner, and explain like 18 years of adulthood to people I’ve just met, bless their terrified hearts. Massive personal anxiety aside, these Meet Ups are great for many because they learn a lot, and getting to know and networking with people is fun too in the right circumstances.
In the Army you do a version of new places and new faces too, at least in 2004 when I was in Fort Benning, GA, you did. Before you went into actual Basic Training you went into a military version of Purgatory called Indoc, short for ‘Indoctrination.’ Indoc is where you went through your medical evaluation, received glasses, got your shots, went through a physical training test to make sure you wouldn’t die in Basic I guess, learned how to get your food and eat when you went to Basic, and occasionally you got razzed by Drill Sargents who were at the end of their Drill Sargent service, and were waiting to go to their next assignment, hopefully as far away from Fort Benning as they could get. Your main job, however, was to just patiently wait to go ‘down range’ to real Basic Training. You talked a lot with people, got to know them, and tried to get along with about 1000 strangers, as you waited to begin your Army career.
An interesting phenomenon took place during this time though, and that was when you were in the barracks when you start to see an almost Lord of the Flies scenario take place and people begin to define themselves in groups or as archetypes. You see the ‘Captain America’ type emerge. An alpha male who walks around with his shirt off all the time, who talks about how ‘his dad was a Captain in the Marine Corps and don’t fuck with him because he will kill you I swear he will, and if somebody messes with him in Iraq he won’t even waste a bullet he’ll just charge up to him with his knife…’ You get the idea.
You see the ‘Kickboxing Champion’ who is always picking ‘sparring’ fights in the barracks because he ‘wants to stay sharp.’ Occasionally he will be a Captain America/Kickboxing Champion amalgam and he will be so fun to watch and so annoying to talk too.
The coding world is no different, to be honest. I started a programming about 3 years ago, and I’ve attended many coding meet ups and have met a lot of people. You get to know many different personalities, dispositions, backgrounds, even political opinions, and if you’re like me, try to make sense of what your observing. I wanted to share some of the personalities I’ve run into and see if my experience is different or the same as others. This list isn’t comprehensive, and isn’t intended to be mean or disparaging, it’s just me sharing my observations over time having attended a lot of meet ups.
The Know it All: The Know It All is sometimes kind but most of the time is just a silent judge, jury, and executioner of your career thus far. They give you really weird looks that seem to say ‘Mmmm hm.’ Like they know something about what you’re saying is completely wrong. For an anxious person like me, well let’s just say I start to sweat a lot with KIA’s.
Conversation with the KIA might go like this, “I’ve been coding since 1994 when Windows NT 3.1 was a thing, and I had to do all the shading in my games with C and, oh, do you even know C? Probably not. Anyway, what do you do? Oh, that’s cool I guess. I was doing that in 2001 but that’s good for you. How much do you make? Oh you’re a new programmer? (‘mmmm hmm’ look) How much do you think a new programmer should make now? THAT much? Wow, you sure do think highly of yourself. Anyway I have this boat…’
The KIA will ask questions not to make the meet up speaker or the person they’re engaging one on one look better but to make themselves look smart. The vaguer and more technical question the better. Most of the time ‘cache’ or ‘RPC Encoded Protocol’ is muttered in there somewhere. Know It All’s are fine, you’re going to find them anywhere, it’s just best to be nice if you engage and move on. (Yes these are my least favorite people at meet ups).
Famous Know It All Examples: Young Bill Gates, William Shockley
The Humble Master: The Humble Master has been coding maybe even longer than The Know it All, but you wouldn’t know it. They have seen every problem that could occur within their expertise, but they are happy to share it, if you ask. They typically are observing and don’t say much, but if they ask a question, it will be a very good question and if the receiver of that question doesn’t understand, the Humble Master will make it easier to understand or circle back in a one on one setting.
In short, The Humber Master is someone I want to be when I get good at being a programmer. They can ease through the waters of most programming languages and are genuinely inquisitive of frameworks they don’t understand or people that they meet. They’re quiet but in a good way. In short, they are the best.
Famous Humble Master Examples: Steve Wozniack
The Wannabe: I am personally guilty of this, especially early in my programming journey. The Wannabe is super enthusiastic. They know some jargon like API, and use the word ‘hacking’ a lot, even when they probably shouldn’t. They grab stickers for frameworks like Vue.js and put it on their laptop even though they’ve never even built anything resembling anything with that framework. They have severe ADD and have no frame of reference where to start. In short, they’re all over the place. They might even just show up once to your meet up and never come back because ‘the work’ of programming was too hard.
Here’s the thing with Wannabe’s, you gotta grab ‘em and mold them, if you choose. If you have some time and you think they might be able to buckle down if you given the right chance, have a cup of coffee and program something simple. You might just do a lot of good with their career. If you don’t do this, that’s perfectly understandable, but I personally was a Wannabe and had a friend do this for me and it went a long way.
Famous Wannabe Examples: Closest I got here is Young Ben Affleck actually saying he contributed to Good Will Hunting as a writer. No way that bro had any part of that project. Nope. Maybe current Affleck but not 1996-1997 Affleck, nope, nuh uh.
The Overworked Intermediate: This guy is just happy to be out of work. He is working out of a shop that he’s been working at for about 6 months and is doing the work of the business development guy, the designer, the dev ops guy and the software engineer. You can recognize the Overworked Intermediate because they have a weird smile, a thousand yard stare, and shaky hands that have written loop after loop, function after function. The Overworked Intermediate needs a beer. Seriously, go get them a fucking beer, stat.
You can learn a lot from an OI, but they don’t have the time. They are going through the development crucible, where everything rides on them. They are becoming the Humble Master. But for now, being gas lit at a development shop that overworks them is the best they are going to get. Newbies take note, this will be you in about 5 years. Welcome to the show.
Famous Overworked Intermediate Examples: I guess go watch Real Genius and find the scene where that guy stands up during a study session for finals and starts screaming over and over and runs out of the room. Or just click this paragraph. That’s about right I think.
The Sales Guy: Seriously who let this guy in? You could substitute ‘The Sales Guy’ with ‘The Creepy Recruiter.’ They hang around, asking questions like “Are you happy in where you’re at now? I could get you a meeting…..” The Sales guys wants to know who your cloud provider is. The Sales Guy wants to know if you have life insurance. <Sigh> The Sales Guy is trying to make a living, I know. They might even be able to help you or the company you work for, but most of the time ‘I’m just a programmer, man. I don’t make those decisions,’ is the best thing to say to them.
Hear them out, be nice, take their card but DON’T GIVE THEM NAMES. DON’T DO IT!! IT’S LIKE A TIMESHARE PITCH AND IT’S THE WORST THING TO DO TO A FRIEND…ok…ok, I’ve calmed down. I was in sales for 16 years, so sometimes I remember doing pitches and meetings to people who felt obligated and it’s no fun. If something the Sales Guy is selling can help you, take the meeting, if not, be kind and take the card.
Anyway, they mean well. Try to get them to become a programmer. You’re doing them a favor.
Famous The Sales Guy Examples: Steve Balmer
You: Then there is you. You might be the Humble Master. You might be the new guy who is a mix of a Wannabe and Sales Guy and wants to get into programming. You might be fascinated by The Know It All. Who knows? The best thing to do is be yourself. Know what you don’t know and figure it out. That’s why we go to these Meet Ups is to interact with people who get what we do or to learn new things.
In the end, grab a beer, try to help the organizers out as much as you can, and have a great time. I hope you’ve enjoyed my limited observations.
Famous Examples of You: Anyone who didn’t know something before but now knows it because of hard work, time, coaching by smart people, and a dash of determination.
