AC@10:36
Hmm. I seem to have struck a raw nerve.
While software development has a *reputation* for being a solitary process conducted in near silence by people who communicate in monosyllables *my* experience in development shops in commercial companies (software to get a job *done* not for sale) is that social interaction is a fairly key part of the job both internally and externally.
That starts from your interview. Guess what, management types tend to hire people who are (sort of ) like themselves. Yes it's unfair and yes they probably waste *huge* amounts of time and effort when they would have gotten a *much* better result from someone who was a bit less socially adept. Amateur managers tend to make amateur management decisions.
*Real* managers can build such awkward personalities into a strength of a team rather than a problem to be dealt with.
Perhaps it's different at a site whose purpose is software development rather than a support activity. I've never worked in a software house. The one time I met such a developer I discovered he'd got an excellent CS degree but was earning substantially less than me with substantially more experience.
An intense lack of communication is also actually *scary* to some managers. One of the *great* unspoken IT *management* fears is the developer who
1) Doesn't speak.
2) Writes critical core functions of the system very well.
3) Documents and comments very badly.
Not because they can't be replaced (although that would be *very* difficult) but because they have the *potential* to render the manager powerless.
Unless you work *entirely* from home and interact through email and talk through a speech synthesiser you'll going to have confront the whole talking-to-people-on-the-job thing.
What I'm trying to say in my inarticulate, introverted way is that managers (some times aided and abetted by recruiters) can ask for some *very* stupid requirements and (in the UK at least) seem to have *very* low tolerance for people who have a different view of the world, even in fields which tend to attract different viewing people.
Personally I couldn't care less what any one's problems are.
The leader of the pack on my computer language training was a young women with some fairly serious issues who had to withdraw before graduation. Any employer would have been lucky to have her skills *if* they could deal with her character.
If someone can deliver the work at the rate needed to the documentation standard needed I can live with the odd bit of drama in an office. It's only serious when they try to set fire to you.
However I'm sure there are plenty of shops where *phenomenal* and *extraordinary* developers are merely synonyms for quick ("It's amazing. He wrote that whole package in 3 days." Great. No comments, 1 character variable names and f&*k all clue *anywhere* how it works. A real *pleasure* for the various programmers over the years who will have to support his "amazing" code).
In an ideal world professional managers would fairly assess *any* candidates total skills and work out a way to fit them into the the team they are trying to build *regardless* of their issues.
But this is not an ideal world.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
