Culture/Politics within Software Engineering

DISCLAIMER: The following paper has been converted from LaTeX to HTML via htxelatex. This paper was written for my school as such there is a lot of filler I added to meet the requirements. This paper could have a lot more content and likely has some corrections to be made but it is what was handed in to my teacher.

Culture/Politics within Software Engineering

Samson Smith

August 25, 2022

Abstract

Politics within Software Engineering has become apart of the normal culture within it. However what most do not realize is that it has drastically effected it negatively, causing it to be less about the actual software and more about the politics.

1 Introduction
2 The Problem
  2.1 What is it
   2.1.1 The Left
   2.1.2 The Right
   2.1.3 The Centrists
  2.2 Where is it, who has been affected, its significance, and where to go from here
3 Conclusion
Works Cited

1 Introduction

“The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”

Theodore John Kaczynski

The culture and politics within software engineering is a very interesting and polarizing environment. However almost all of it fits into one stereotype in some way or another. These stereotypes usually can fall within 3 different groups: people trying to “fix” problems, people trying to cause problems, and people who just want to be left alone. For the purpose of this piece I feel the need to indicate any possible bias and views I might already have on this subject so that way any reader can make an educated conclusion of their own. That disclaimer being said, I myself fall into the group who just want to be left alone. The reasoning for this shall be explained in further detail later. It also should be worth noting that most people within this space of whom I regularly communicate with usually fall into that same group as well.

The problems explained and showcased by me throughout this paper will most likely maintain this bias no matter how hard I try to avoid it. I have done my best to cite any and all sources I can but getting sources for a paper on such a vague, abstract, and vast paper can be very tricky, especially when attempting to detail communications between individuals. My own political views are very libertarian and will also likely have an effect on this paper.

Overall however I hope that it can be agreed that politics and its consequences have been a disaster for the software engineering culture and those who reside within it or even just the field.

2 The Problem

Problems are subjective, and this one is no different than any other. The problem itself however is extremely subjective in this case. Every group of the main 3 I have decided to focus on seems to have their own view on what exactly the “problem” is. This makes the matter extremely confusing and I apologize but please try your best to follow along. In order to make things easier to follow I have organized the followings sections to go over what each group usually thinks, I will also be referring to the group of people who want to “fix” things as the left, people trying to cause problems as the right, and people who just want to be left alone as the centrists. The reasoning for this naming is that the political views each group have tend to be forced on the others.

2.1 What is it

2.1.1 The Left

“Almost everyone will agree that we live in a deeply troubled society. One of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world is leftism, so a discussion of the psychology of leftism can serve as an introduction to the discussion of the problems of modern society in general.”

Kaczynski

Every of those 3 groups has their own view on what the problem is. The people who want to “fix” everything believe that everyone else is some racist, homophobic, politically incorrect, plain out menace to society. They believe that this is a major problem within the industry and they will do everything it takes to “fix” it. They believe that the tech industry must be more inclusive, more politically correct, more supportive of typically left wing associated political views. The reason they think this way is a matter that has been discussed greatly and at length by many, I feel it is redundant to repeat this information. However the psychology of modern leftism plays a huge part in why they do this and the way they go about it, as a result it is still important to discuss it. I believe that Kaczynski explained it well in Industrial Society and its Future. “Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals) or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not mean to suggest that women, Indians, etc. ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology.)” The left tends to see things that they think are “problems” within the technology field as whole, things that include but are not limited to: lack of inclusivity of minorities and/or other groups, terminology that can be found offensive, the “toxicity” of traditional software culture, and the overall public facing political views of tech companies and their employees. Now at first these may seem like harmless quality changes however when you take a look on the affects it has on the culture and the software itself you start to realize just how bad it is.

Starting off with the first on that list, the lack of inclusivity. This on the surface is a very valid point. The majority of people within the software industry are ether white or asian. However the purposed solution to this problem rather then encouraging people to enter these fields on their own is to require employees meet a quota of diversity hires. Now this is nothing new and companies have been doing it for ages, however the problem remains. These people aren’t as good at their jobs. They are only there because they are required to be there and/or they are cheap so they can hit 2 birds with one stone. The company does not care who is hired. They do not even care about quality of the product half the time anymore. They will hire anyone and everyone who causes them to look better to the majority of people. Since the majority of people are typically on the left side of the political spectrum as that is what is currently trending, they have no problems meeting the demands of whoever goes crying to them about inequality. Now this effects the consumers and the industry as a whole. The people who are capable of writing quality code are outnumbered by those who typically cannot. This leads to a lower quality product overall, lower performance and the like. Not only that but the flood of all of these diversity hires is made worse by the fact their political alignment also meets the same as those who had them hired in the first place. This creates a snowball effect where there is more people who are hired in because of people who think this way, and worse it gets, the worse the code gets, the worse the product gets, the worse it is for the consumer. Things have gotten so bad that as a matter of fact big companies such as Google have started paying likely millions of dollars to hire on well known good programmers to create them programming languages that can take such horrible code and create something that is good enough they can ship it downstream to the customer. One of these such languages is GO, written by Rob Pike and Ken Thompson both former employees at Bell Labs alongside Dennis Richie and many others. These people are basically the forefathers of modern computing, they have pioneered almost every aspect of modern computing and a lot of the things they came up with and made are still used to this day. The fact that such respected and well known individuals must be hired on to create a language for complete idiots all so big companies like Google can keep their pay rates down and the left happy should be concerning.

All of this ties into the next two being that they want everyone to be more “politically correct” and supportive of their political ideas. The reason it ties in is due to the aforementioned bringing in and hiring of more people of this ideology within the industry. It causes it to be entirely polarized towards their side of the political spectrum. This causes their arbitrary demands to be much easier to gain when just about everyone is already in support of them from the start. For example they have almost entirely managed to get rid of some terminology like master and slave, whitelist and blacklist, and many other innocent terms that have been used not just in computing since its beginning but also the English language as a whole.

2.1.2 The Right

“The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.”

Kaczynski

On the utter other end of the spectrum you have the people who tend to cause the problems just to freak out the people on the left mentioned above. This usually consists of spewing racist slurs and the like, the typical modern 4chan culture that is actually a mix of the far left and the far right at this point of time when writing. /g/ has got so bad no one I even speak to wants to use it any more. I myself was active on /g/ at one point in time however now it just consists of Indians and Redditors who have nothing of any actual content to contribute. However that itself is a discussion of its own. The original culture had used a fair amount of certain words that would now be frowned upon and I would say still does. It should be noted a lot of these terms are used in a satire and some new common use terminology used by this group and the centrists have stemmed from it. The difference between the usage of such frowned upon words compared to the centrists who use them is these people tend to actually push such ideas and are just trying to cause problems. The origin the these terms can be traced back to is great programmers such as Terrence Andrew Davis, a schizophrenic catholic programmer who is best known for his work on his own operating system, TempleOS. Terry was well known for using racial slurs on the regular to fight CIA psychological warfare. He said a lot of things that became common usage terms to refer to different groups of people and the like. Terry and his OS have very deep roots in the culture of people on the right and in the centre for his impact on computing as a whole. However despite this group and their very clear communicational flaws they all tend to be much better at programming than the left. The reasoning for this is most likely that they are doing it because they like it or are good at it rather than just doing it for the sake of doing it and “sticking it to the man.”

My problem with this group is usually the over usage of such terminology to an unhealthy amount. Doing it solely for the shock factor of annoying others. Another issue I have with them is a good few of them are genuine racists, homophobes and the like. On a professional level I have no issue with this as unlike the people on the left they usually can put their politics aside to actually get work finished and done well. However the point still stands that they often do involve their politics into their projects. Examples of this are things like +[REDACTED] License. These exist solely to try force others to use these terminologies as well. They usually argue some valid points such as censorship and fighting the left but I still don’t think the ends justify the means. They understand that things have gone too far but don’t understand that things wont change if they cant actually manage to convince anyone else and just do what the people they hate, dislike them doing.

2.1.3 The Centrists

“Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity.”

Dennis Richie

The centrists are probably the best of all the groups. They don’t see the political ideas as the threat but the politics themselves. These people just want to program and enjoy their software. They want to further the development of technology without constant harassment from both sides about how they are doing it. Nothing matters as long as everything gets done well in the end. The old saying of the truth lies in the middle is extremely true in this case. Adding politics to everything just makes it much more complex, a trend that has been ruining the quality of all software for ages now. Things were better when they were simpler when we didn’t have to worry about impressing anyone or company politics in order to do the simple job of typing lines of code into a text editor. Centrists might often use some of the same terminology of the right but not in a harmful sense but mainly out of habit or its the vocab they are used to. Again I don’t have any problem with this unless it is incorporated into their work itself, and in the case of the centrists it almost never is as the very idea of incorporating politics into the work is hated.

2.2 Where is it, who has been affected, its significance, and where to go from here

“The CIA encourages code obfuscation. They make it more complicated than necessary. An idiot admires complexity, a genius admired simplicity, a physicist tries to make it simple, for an idiot anything the more complicated it is the more he will admire it, if you make something so clusterfucked he can’t understand it he’s gonna think you’re a god cause you made it so complicated nobody can understand it. That’s how they write journals in Academics, they try to make it so complicated people think you’re a genius.”

Terrence Andrew Davis

Where these problems reside is all over the entire software engineering culture. These problems have become a very core part of the culture and have effected it like a leach that will not go. Sucking away almost all of any actual discussion of the subject matter itself and replacing it with discussion of politics. At this point in time they are one and the same. It is no longer possible to discuss tech without politics taking over the subject of the conversation. It has embedded itself so deep it might not even be possible to remove it at this point in time. It is important to remember that the large corporations don’t care about much of this. As long as they can keep people happy and make money they will make up any story and appeal to any political agenda.

Everyone has been affected by this, from the people in the culture to the end consumers. No one has been spared by the pure chaos and disaster that has been introducing politics into the field. It has affected just about everyone including those who called for it to happen in the first place as they have to suffer the backlash of that. However it does not and will not change the fact that it has been horrible for everyone involved and not involved. These people are getting paid to deal with politics instead of doing their actual job.

The significance of this is extreme and no one should have to point out why. However I repeat the main reason why. It is destroying the tech industry and especially its culture from the inside out. It does not only affect those in it but anyone who even uses a computer as they have to deal with all of it as well. It has been utterly horrible. Politics and its consequences have been a disaster for the software engineering culture and those who reside within it or even just the field.

How can we fix this issue or at least improve it? The truth is that it will be an extremely difficult and almost near impossible thing to do. However it might still be possible. The problem is extremely complex likely intentionally so it would be harder to understand and thus fix. However some steps that can be taken is to raise more awareness for this issue, entirely reconstruct and evaluate the culture and its priorities within not only work places but the culture as a whole, and the possible removal of many idiotic policies that have been introduced due to this issue. All of this will only help lessen the issue but if done enough and often enough the issue may eventually go away. This issue was started by politics and frankly the only real way of ending it if it is even possible is through politics. Hopefully we can make a short term impact and in the long term possibly get rid of the issue entirely.

3 Conclusion

“I get nothing but headaches saving the poor.”

Terrence Andrew Davis

In conclusion I hope you now understand just how badly politics have been for the culture of software engineering and how it has ruined everything. Its removal is the only way anything will ever be better again. You can spend all the time you wish trying to help those who insist we have to force politics into everything but you will gain nothing but headaches.

Works Cited

: +[REDACTED] License. plusnigger.autism.exposed/.
: Kaczynski, Theodore John. Industrial Society and its Future. Washington Post, Sept. 1995, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto. text.htm.

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