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Comment by edw519 | Hacker News Reader

If you want to be famous, go be an entertainer, athlete, or politician.

If you want to be a programmer, check your ego at the door. The two biggest roadblocks to success in programming are incompetence and attitude. BigEgo = BadAttitude.

I measure my success not in fame, but in the value gained by those who use my software, and the value gained by those they serve, and so on, and so on. I don't know them and they don't know me, but I'd like to think the world's a better place because of all the ones and zeroes I've arranged. They are the stars and that's good enough for me.

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Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the door? I think students of Buddhism have been trying to figure out how to do this for centuries. I don't think it's as simple as checking it at the door.

Checking your ego (against reality) and getting rid of it completely are 2 different things.

"Reality" is the key word here. The more programming you do, the more you'll know your limitations.

"Doesn't everyone have an ego? Isn't it really hard to check it at the door?"

My thoughts exactly. The parent comment is the sort of "advice" that is easy to dispense and makes everyone feel good, but is fundamentally useless. These platitudes are the honeypot comments of online forums -- everyone votes for them because they "agree", but they might as well be voting up a picture of a kitten hanging from a tree branch. It's comforting to think that we're somehow above the base human need for recognition, but not very close to the truth.

For example, why is it okay for entertainers, actors and politicians to pursue fame, while programmers must toil in selfless obscurity? Are we supposed to be martyrs?

Also, not for nothing, but when the guy with the top comment score on HN -- the guy who wore a t-shirt bearing his HN login name at Startup School -- tells you to abandon your ego, well...I'm no english major, but there's a certain situational irony there.

The parent comment is the sort of "advice" that is easy to dispense and makes everyone feel good, but is fundamentally useless.

Thanks for the feedback, timr. As the author of the parent comment, let me see if I got this right...

1. In response to OP's post about fame and programming, I shared some of my innermost feelings about my vocation. I absolutely believe that it's the software, not me, who is the star. No matter how long I do this, I am still in awe of the entire process and thank my lucky stars that I was born when I was. Energy comes to me from some unknown place, goes through my brain and finger tips, and results in this untouchable thing that affects so many lives. What can be cooler than that? I have never desired fame for this and only want to get paid properly and see my work put to good use. (OK, an occasional pat on the back would be nice.) I am perfectly content, and in fact function best, when the code is the star. I shared these feelings, fully understanding that others may not feel the same. Nothing I said was intended as "advice".

2. Others voted this comment up. I can only hope that some of those people have shared my experience and feelings.

3. You presume to know what others were thinking when they voted, which is not what I hope they were thinking.

4. The purpose of the tshirt was identification. It was my first trip ever to SV and it worked beautifully in a crowd of 700 programmers. I met 27 people who I already knew online, but none of us had any idea what each other looked like. I have stayed in touch with most of them even though I try to maintain my anonymity online. The only question is why didn't I meet you?

Sorry you feel this way. I don't need fame, but I do need to build cool stuff and I do need to see that it's going to good use. I think that other programmers feel that way too. The best thing I can wish for you is that you feel that way too someday.

I think my original comment was pretty clear, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time responding, except to say that I think you're trivializing the conversation.

Ego is a complicated subject, and the driver of many of the things we do. Perhaps you've attained an elite level of ego-free, techno-monastic selflessness, but it's unlikely that the rest of our society will do the same. Until they do, "abandon your ego" is a rather trivial bit of advice -- far easier said than done.

Most importantly, however, it's not clear that it's actually good advice: most people are more effective in life with a bit of recognition, and geeks, in particular, are famously limited by their lack of talent for self-promotion. Is it any surprise that they'd like the inference that self-promotion is an evil to be avoided? (Personally, I like to be told that women love, pale, gangly guys who are good with computers. Alas.)

Finally, while I'm quite sure that your t-shirt was effective for making yourself known, I (like everyone in attendance) had a name tag, and found that it worked equally beautifully for identifying myself to others. Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best.

I think my original comment was pretty clear, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time responding...

Good. Especially from someone who remembered an event from 26 months ago to launch a personal attack today. I hope you find something a little more constructive to do with your time.

I didn't accuse you of anything bad or call you names -- I just pointed out the irony in the situation. It was intended as an illustration of the difficulty of following your own advice, not as an insult.

He was looking for gratification and external approval. The comment was designed for that, and his defensiveness and unwillingness to engage in a deeper discussion of the issues only proves it, because anyone who meant what they said would own up - "Yeah, I guess that's true, I can't get it right either. Like this one time I..." and instead we get "ho ho, no, you have it all wrong, grasshopper. The code is everything, I am nothing. armfold"

Yes, that makes it ironic.

I wish more people would have identified themselves with their HN usernames somehow at last year's startup school.

It sucks to find out that there were a bunch of people from HN there and I missed out on the chance to talk to them in person because I couldn't make the connection based on their name.

Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens to be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is you're accusing edw519 of.

"Although to be fair, I put my twitter address on my name tag which happens to be my username here... So I suppose I'm guilty of doing whatever it is you're accusing edw519 of."

Not really. Fortunately, the world is not binary, and there's a fairly large, practical gap between "writing your ID on a nametag" and having a t-shirt custom made.

That said, I'm not accusing him of anything bad -- it was a clever self-promotional ploy. I'm just pointing out the irony.

For example, why is it okay for entertainers, actors and politicians to pursue fame, while programmers must toil in selfless obscurity? Are we supposed to be martyrs?

I think it is because we all realize programming will never be sexy enough to gain any recognition from the public, so acting like we don't care about recognition is the next best thing in terms of preserving our egos.

As an alternative you can go into game programming or the demoscene for a small chance of fame.

I read Zed's post as being about recognition which can be a positive force. It is a smart move for a company or a language community to reward individuals who have made a positive contribution. This is an issue related to ego but is not exactly ego.

However, it is also true that often the contributions of certain people are not commensurate with their recognition. Sometimes they deserve more recognition and sometimes less. This is often a function of PR. I posit that Zed gets less recognition than he deserves in part because of mismanaged PR. This doesn't make him deserve the recognition any less. It also points to a way he might get some of the recognition he deserves.

Until I read this comment, I didn't realize it was a Zed Shaw post. I must have skimmed right past the byline. I read the whole article without even knowing it was written by a famous programmer.

Probably because the headline of his blog is no longer "Zed's So Fucking Awesome", with the attendant imagery that complimented it so well.

He's remarkably relaxed these days. :)

I was just pissed that I got tricked into reading Yet Another Angry Zed rant. Changing domains lets him get around my brain's douche blocker.

I posit that Zed gets far more recognition than he deserves because he puts himself out there and actually does manage his PR pretty well.

There are people at the Googleplex that have done amazing work - filesystems, webservers, machine-learning algorithms, core changes to the ranking algorithm, all significantly higher performance & quality than what Zed has written, stuff that gets millions of queries per day and is crucial to folks' everyday existence. If you Google their names, you might come up with a lone blog post on the Googleblog giving a 5-minute soundbite on what they do, or an academic paper from 1994 detailing some obscure technical contribution to a programming language that nobody knows.

I remember that when I was working for startups and small companies, I thought that most software development happens "out there", in the open-source cloud, and really looked up to the prominent figures in the open-source world. Then I got to Google, and realized that what I knew from the public papers was barely the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Now I have to assume that other large corporations - other tech companies, Wall St. - have similarly impressive secrets locked up behind their confidentiality walls, stuff that we'll never know about but that is far better than the best open-source alternatives around.

> Now I have to assume that other large corporations - other tech companies, Wall St. - have similarly impressive secrets locked up behind their confidentiality walls, stuff that we'll never know about but that is far better than the best open-source alternatives around.

Which also shows the power of open source, as a tool for enhancing your reputation.

No need to assume. I know such awesome stuff exists.

Agreed. When you have a really hard programming task, you need to be in problem-solving mode, and a lot of times you have to find errors in your own thinking. A big ego will only limit your capabilities to find misconceptions you hold true.

A big ego might help to project an image of how cool you are, but computers couldn't care less.

It also explains -in my opinion- why geeks are not the aggressive type. It's just a waste of energy when you're dealing with a computer.

"If you want to do good, work on the technology, not on getting power."

- John McCarthy, inventor of Lisp (and the term AI)

Did you mean: discoverer

This is such a bunch of crap. I know people here won't appreciate this - but I had to say it.

Just because you can string up words that sound good doesnt mean they make any sense.

Being famous is not vocation or job, it's a side effect. Or are you suggesting that all entertainers, athletes and politicians are only doing what they do because they want to get famous?

PS: How do you measure the value gained by those who use your software and so on, and so on? Seriously!

Note: plinkplonk who actually had something to say is way down on the comments.

Many of them are primarily motivated by status, yes.

To be fair, the author wasn't talking about people who seek fame. He pointed out nobody gets fame from just programming. Maybe we need a Nobel prize for it.

Well, it's not exactly a "Nobel Prize" but there is the Turing Award:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_Award

How about just recognition from users? I think users of a good piece of software would be wise to encourage more of the same.

some ego is healthy. it's one of the characteristics that allows you to stick to your beliefs in the face of opposition.

To know you are right when you are right doesn't require ego.

Usually, when people go with the opposition even when they think they are right, it is so to protect their egos by placing the responsibility for being right or wrong with their opposer. They became followers.

It's not about ego. It's about getting your fair share. I think he's saying he doesn't get his fair share.

I don't think the quality of your code has anything to do with your ego. You can be a total jerk and yet a brilliant programmer. Not even correlated based on my personal experience.

I respectfully disagree. Many of the programmers I respect have ego, some larger than others. That does not detract from their value.

I remember the movement for "egoless programming", an effort along the lines of your suggestion. I am still waiting for the "Egoless management" movement, but there doesn't seem to be much traction.

>I measure my success not in fame, but in...

money, primarily I measure it in money right now.

Excellent programmers always recognize each other, "regular" people don't get it any more than we get artists.

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