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Comment by euske | Hacker News Reader

I think this applies to not just software, but engineering in general. See, science is mostly about observing the natural phenomena. On the other hand, there are jobs that are mostly about taking care of people's needs. Engineering sits in the middle. It's a mediator. We have to understand the circumstance of both sides - nature (this could be something like hardware capacity in our case) AND people. Just taking care of one side makes you a bad engineer. You need to be technical and sympathetic at the same time.

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It applies to every job not just engineering. I thought this was considered obvious.

For many people it definitely is not - some folks get into software engineering because they have the mistaken (albeit not as mistaken as if they were going into another career like medicine!) belief they can avoid people and just deal with machines.

To clarify, you're saying that you vire that that being technical and observing natural/physical phenomena are important parts of selling clothing at retail, being a novelist and working as a receptionist?

I think those are important jobs, and completely disagree with you. I'm trying to understand if those are jobs you weren't considering, or if we view each the responsibilities of those jobs very differently.

No. I'm saying that retail, much like being a novelist or a receptionist or a software programmer or indeed any job is, as the OP puts it, a "social service".

That being one of the defining charactetistics of a job.

You're saying you're agreeing with OP, but your statements contradict.

OP calls out 3 categories of jobs. Mainly natural/technical, mainly social, and those which sit in the middle and require both. Finally OP says engineering sits in the middle and requires both.

You said it's not just engineering (that requires both), but all jobs.

Both I and OP disagree with that statement.

So, which jobs are not providing a "social service"?

Car mechanics? Sure, in the end it's "social" in that another human being benefits from it, but the actual "social" aspects of the actual work are handled by someone other than the mechanic.

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