[Ipg-smz] RU an imposter?

[Tom Henderson]

Not all engineers are on the spectrum. Not all people on the spectrum 
are engineers.

Let's say a healthy number, higher than in other professions, may show 
traits.

Generalizations are onerous. I know a few extroverted engineers, but if 
you want to use generalized Myer-Briggs, many are around the center of 
the famous squares. Like venn diagrams, it's not perfect.

This said, many that have found themselves in computing have manifested 
many diverse backgrounds. Writing is similar.

When I was young, it would be tough to put yourself into a 
career/vocation as a computerist, because there really wasn't such a 
thing in 1968. It was then, as it is now, many different disciplines 
coming together to re-invent how we process data. I was lucky to choose 
electronics, knowing something about computing from a young age. English 
teachers in my ancestry helped.

The very term "data processing" is an antique. Next year, I'll 
officially be an antique as well.

Because of the diffuse nature of interdisciplinary convergence applied 
to computing, it seems easy to feel like a duck out of water, because 
both the duck and the water have been re-defined. Both are fowl, pun 
intended.

A cop is now a public safety officer, a sociologist, crowd flow expert, 
detective, negotiator, and perhaps a peace officer. Because police have 
such an enormous burnout rate, they've also banded very tightly together 
as a self-protection mechanism. Some of the disciplines of computing 
have done the same thing.

Coders are an army, as are sysadmins, software engineers, analysts, 
UI/UX designers, webadmins, and so forth. There's a fraction of each of 
these that unlikely were schooled and credentialized in their assumed 
positions, and I believe that this fact is most prominent in the 
Imposter Syndrome. It also makes, if you read the book long ago, an 
imposter-sentimented individual more actively seeking conservative, 
rather than diffuse decision making within that discipline as they 
perceive the discipline. Altruists. People want to be a member.

This doesn't change my opinion that there are sincerely dedicated 
individuals that don't know shit from shinola, and to that extent, have 
brought acres of misery in systems foibles, ranging from rotten security 
thinking through to stuff that just doesn't work and was a bad idea in 
the first place.

Let those among you that haven't had to do tech support for your family 
and friends, battle Comcast/ATT/Verizon etc., reboot infinite amounts of 
stuff, or just show someone the hidden selection on what should be an 
obvious app throw the first stone. No, we're not perfect, but Darwinism 
plays too great a role in our computing lives, IMHO.

Tom



On 09/10/2018 01:48 PM, Logan Harbaugh wrote:
>
> It is interesting, though that Silicon Valley has about six times the 
> number of engineers as the population as a whole, and also has about 
> six times the number of people on the autism spectrum…
>
> Thanks,
>
> Logan G. Harbaugh
> logan at lharba.com <mailto:logan at lharba.com>
> 530-243-1346
> 1547 Magnolia Ave.
> Redding, CA 96001
> www.lharba.com <http://www.lharba.com/>
>
> *From:*Ipg-smz [mailto:ipg-smz-bounces at netpress.org] *On Behalf Of *sjvn
> *Sent:* Monday, September 10, 2018 9:28 AM
> *To:* ipg-smz at netpress.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Ipg-smz] RU an imposter?
>
> On Sun, 2018-09-09 at 13:20 -0400, Perlow, Jason wrote:
>
>     that are by nature introverted and anxious, to begin with, because
>     they are ADHD and have other neurological traits.
>
> I agree about the introverted and anxious part, but I'm not sold on 
> ADHD having a heavy crossover with writing and programming. We may 
> think that because many of us do jump from subject to subject, but we 
> tend to do well at each subject, which has not been what I've seen 
> with people with ADHD.
>
> Steven
>
> -- 
> Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
> CBS/ZDNet, Contributing Editor: http://goo.gl/FkYasd
> ComputerWorld, Columnist: http://goo.gl/c02Km0
> QOTD: "I will buckle down to work as soon as I finish reading the
> Internet."--Stewart Brand
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
>   
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>
>

-- 
Tom Henderson
ExtremeLabs, Inc.
+1 317 250 4646
Twitter: @extremelabs
Skype: extremelabsinc

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