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The Romantic Lie of Software Developers
Developers have less control of their careers than they think
Individualism is a formidable lie. Rene Girard
Software developers believe their careers are self-directed and the choices they make influence their careers. The success and direction of their career come from their decisions and actions.
The reality for the most developer is their career is directed by the software projects they work on, which they don’t decide. This is what Rene Girard refers to as the romantic lie, that we control our fate and career direction.
Desire
Mimetic desire — we don’t want, we want to be — Rene Girard
Girard created the concept of mimetic desire. WE learn desires by wanting to want other people to want. Not only do we want what other people want, but we also want to be like the people we admire.
In schools, this turns out to be wanting to make it to the next year, wanting to get good grades and wanting to go to university. We aren’t sure why we these but because the people we admire/influenced by wanting this, we want it too.
Peter Thiel tells the story of graduating from Stanford, getting a good job in the law firm as expected but then leaving after 7 months.
When I left — after seven months and three days — one of the lawyers down the hall from me said, “You know, I had no idea it was possible to escape from Alcatraz.” — Peter Thiel
Thiel realised he had been following the career path that was successful but not what he wanted to do.
It’s worth considering where our career desires come from as developers.
Companies we work for have a set progression of junior dev, developer, senior developer, solution architect and people manager. We get our desire to follow this path by senior people that we unconsciously want to imitate and follow. The desire to follow their career and become like them comes from working with them.
