Arrogance has very little to do with thinking you know a lot, or disagreeing with others, and everything to do with failing to follow social protocol. If you let other people speak, pause long enough that they feel like you are giving their words a fair evaluation, and then don't use words that they must interpret as telling them they are wrong you will not be seen as arrogant. This is true even if you rarely or never agree with anyone.

- let people finish their statement: If you don't let someone finish and you interrupt, they will decide that you are just refusing to hear them out rather than disagreeing. It doesn't matter if you can prove mathematically with extensive sources and footnotes, most of the time they won't be able to accept that you understood their point and showed it to be flawed.

- pause long enough after they speak: Again, if you instantly explain why they are wrong, most of the time other people will not be able to handle this. They will decide you didn't actually consider what they said. It doesn't matter what is actually true, and if you somehow do convince them that you are right they will be doubly resistant since you are making them feel stupid on top of everything else. A huge benefit of this and the previous bullet is that you will often find that at first you misinterpreted what the person was saying, so you were about to disagree for no reason.

- don't force them to admit to themselves that they were wrong: if you let people 'save face' they can just get on board and agree with you. If you force them to grapple with being wrong they will be difficult and will hate your guts. It may seem silly, but replying 'I don't think that will work because ...' is going to be the source of turmoil, when saying 'Interesting. Previously we did something similar to that but we had a problem where ...' is going to win the other person over instantly most of the time. Later they will see that they were wrong, but you didn't rub their nose in it and force them to grapple with it in a social setting where they are going to have to feel shame.

Failure to do these things is just what people mean whenever they say someone is arrogant.

It has taken me a few years and I still fail sometimes, but I have learned to let people finish and then ask questions instead of telling them they're wrong, even when it's totally obvious to me. "What if that fails in this way?" instead of "that will fail in this way!". It makes the discussion collaborative instead of assuming that it's my job to point out everyone's failures. The punch line in one of my favorite comic stips is "It's not healthy to keep your problems bottled up inside me." It took me a long time to see how that applied to my own interactions.

The thing that gets me is the same thing I hate about politics. You build an elaborate plan on a bad supposition, and people hear the whole plan and forget it’s based on nonsense.

If the ground premise is wrong, and you see where they are going with this silliness, it’s challenging on multiple levels to “let them finish”.

It's mostly about letting them finish the sentence, rather than the plan.

Point 3 though. At some point how can you be so demure? Sometimes people are just stupid and wrong and need to get checked. Some guy working for a year getting nothing done and pretending like its some other problem than what it actually is needs to be forcefully briefed on their ignorance not 'hrmm well you see we tried it this way'.

> needs to be forcefully briefed

This will let you feel superior and get the pleasure of making the dumb person feel terrible, but it really won't accomplish anything productive. What do you hope to gain by doing this? Will they start being smarter? Will they be better at their job?

I'm sorry, doing what you describe is just being a bully. If management isn't dealing with the problem person you should privately make them aware of the issues (in writing if possible). If management is aware of the issues and won't do anything about it, well you did your part and you aren't allowed to fix the problem. Unless it is a life and death or national security situation, either accept that the dummy is going to be around or resign.

If they haven't done any work for a year their manager is useless. You work at a place where managers don't do their job. If you take it upon yourself to set this person straight, you are basically propping up this useless manager. Useless managers hire useless people and chase away good people. Fixing this problem treats the symptom and may let the bad manager last longer than they would have otherwise, which means you are going to have to go set two additional people straight about how useless they are next year.

I agree it's a management problem. However, I've encountered the case where a developer abruptly teleports from "plateau of sustainability" (high confidence, knowledge and experience) instantly to "Mt. Stupid". And every time it was a case of users becoming confused with UI and doing something that caused injury (including data loss). In that case the developer consistently blamed both the user and user advocate.

I do not think it's bullying to give a bully a taste of their own medicine. It may not solve the problem, to be sure, but pushing back on bullies is not wrong. Pointing out their cognitive dissonance, and drawing a line from their stubbornness to being a bad developer is not wrong either. In particular where the manager doesn't care because 90% of the time that developer is delivering the goods, and just doesn't properly assess the ensuing (UI/UX) hostility.

Bad UI will piss off users. It's I completely expect they should express that frustration directly to the responsible developer. If that developer can't handle it, both accepting the criticism and making appropriate design adjustments, get out of the UI/UX development business.

This is good advice.

I find situations where I feel someone else "needs to be forcefully briefed on their ignorance" are situations where I likely don't have the rank, influence, or audience to improve the situation anyway.

I don't really subscribe to Kant-style categorical imperative thinking or defeatist attitudes, but in this case I've always made better progress changing an existing bad thing by being "demure" and accommodating. I might have agency to change things, but if an group of others have have agency to keep it the same, failing to cooperate is counterproductive unless I entirely opt-out or leave.

If it's actually that bad, you should just fire them or do your best to not work with them because they will drag you down with them.

For milder/more moderate cases, giving someone a way to concede without publicly admitting they're wrong is a often a useful tactic to get said person to do things the right way while building trust in your relationship with them.

> Some guy working for a year getting nothing done and pretending like its some other problem than what it actually is

This is a management issue. In a rational engineering organization this guy's manager would be like "okay, so we know there's a problem with this tool. Now how do we work around the tool so we can move on to another problem?" And if the conversation becomes "workarounds are stupid we need to make them fix their tool" then the manager needs to be all like "I agree with you in a perfect world that's how things would work, but we're engineers being paid to solve people's problems and not to build the perfect software system. So build the workaround so we can solve the problem and we'll circle around and fix the tool when we have time."

Sounds like they have a bad manager. Yes some people are bad at their job, and that includes developers, but in every case I've encountered it, their manager enabled it. It could be an equally arrogant bad manager, or a milquetoast bad manager. Servility in a manager is a bad attribute. They should be someone who seeks out the demure contrarian and acts as their advocate, should the manager find their position compelling. Not everyone is confrontational, that isn't the problem though. If the manager isn't seeking out contrary opinions, and only acts obsequious to their developers? That's a stool pigeon of a manager. Bad manager and bad developer? Good luck with that combination.

I kind of miss the point where you think about what people said, react to that actual argument and wonder for brief time whether they actually might have a point.

It is failure of this one way more then just lack of pause - especially in long term relationships.

That take might be overly cynical. People who have a jack-of-all-trades skill set might not necessarily build the best components themselves, but might be able to bring some big-picture insight that more specialized developers don't have the awareness for, leading the team in the right direction.

I'm not suggesting you transition into becoming a PM or Architect or anything like that, just saying that developers like you count, too. If you have a decent work ethic, then you and your unique brand of knowledge-seeking have something to bring to the table.

> "usually leads to components nobody can understand let alone maintain"

As you advance up the mountain, you will learn to see complexity simply. When you make this realization, your components will simplify dramatically. You must learn to see simply before you can design simply. It just takes time. There's nothing wrong with this, humility doesn't mean giving up your belief that you're capable of anything.

We were all born without any knowledge. We all learned everything we needed to know to get where we are today. We've put men on the moon. We've sent probes to escape our solar system. We've sent submarines to the bottom of the ocean. Humans have the capability to do anything we put our minds to. You can too. Everything you understand today, you've learned in the short lifespan you've had. Today you will learn more, and tomorrow and the next. Just because you find humility in your place, doesn't mean you're not capable of anything.

As individuals, there's damn little we can achieve.

Nobody said you must do it alone.

> doesn't mean giving up your belief that you're capable of anything.

> Humans have the capability to do anything we put our minds to. You can too.

> doesn't mean you're not capable of anything.

That does sound like you're talking to individuals. Turn down the hyperbole a notch and I might even agree

I have been concerned about occupying a similar space myself. The great secret that we all do well to remember is that being humble is simply a matter of practicing being humble. In particular, when I treat other team members as experts in what they do, and trust that they'll value me for whatever it is that I do, I become much more efficient, and feel more relaxed too. Yes, there are still times that I notice myself acting vain, but these days a few slow, grounding breaths goes a long way toward resetting me.

In fact, I wonder if the narcissism you speak of might have more to do with insecurity, deep down. In my experience, when I see myself taking a behavior that I consciously am against, the cause tends to be emotional and the solution tends to be to gently, curiously observe those situations and start questioning how I feel. When I love and take care of my emotional world, it becomes way easier to interact in a way I feel is more optimal on the fly.

I just read the article and was like “I don’t think I suffer from these much at all” then read this comment. This is very insightful and also something I just realized that I greatly suffer from. Thanks.

I relate to this.

I think one of the symptoms is not picking up enough detailed understanding of anything because you keep moving around and don't believe in most external knowledge anyway (eg. don't want to learn [beyond a certain depth] SQL, it's so ugly on some inner level I'd much rather start with datalog and build my own up, don't want to learn economics I don't trust those science cargo-culters). But the other reason you don't want to specialize is that it would be to accept a limit on yourself (OK I'm going to get specialize on getting very good at c++, my upper salary cap is 500k and likely cap 200k, career is mapped out).

One of the things that's slowly curing me I think is running into examples of systems that are genuinely very heavy to understand/improve, and examples of people who are just unarguably higher ceiling in different ways than you.

eg. go watch a SGM play 30 second hyperbullet chess, I don't think I have either the memory or raw processing speed to do what they do, ever. If those guys exist a lot of other people have way higher ceilings. Also realize that chess (and by extension must be a lot of other activities) rely on both a crazy cpu, an amazing memory and an insanely built-out internal database of positions and ideas, and since my cpu is good but not unbelievable, my memory is nothing special and my time is limited there must be a lot of activities I'll never really be good at. Also just getting older and staying unsuccessful relative to your ego, you just start to compromise I think.

> SQL, it's so ugly on some inner level I'd much rather start with datalog and build my own up

SQL syntax may be ugly, but for once, it's an example of a widely used technology that is based on a very firm and well thought out theoretical framework.

As a developer, it is definitely worth investing time in understanding relational databases and the theory behind them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_calculus

Thanks, I've read arguments both ways and am trying to study logic/logic programming.

https://airbladesoftware.com/notes/relational-databases-are-...

Nobody’s mountain has a peak unless you either stop learning or die.

Everyone's mountain has a peak. We have a finite amount of compute power in our heads, and a finite amount of time on the earth. That means we have a fixed amount of complexity we can work through.

That said, fixing someone's shitty microservice code is probably not bottlenecked by our cognitive capacities. It's probably bottlenecked by financial constraints.

At the point where all your practicing is just maintaining your performance, you've reached your peak. You can stay there, or you can go higher if you practice more (or better). But there is a finite amount of practicing you can do each day. (Studies argue that 4 hours is plenty.) So there is an absolute limit per individual.

Are we talking about a physical skill or a personal capacity for knowledge? Because while your argument might have merit when applied to something like sports, it doesn't hold much water when talking about accumulated knowledge. Yes, I might forget how to do a math problem the way I could when studying for a test in college, but I'll never forget that knowledge exists and where to find it if I should need to relearn. The metaphorical peak I'm speaking of relates to a person's ability to index knowledge like a search engine for the internet.

>Yes, I might forget how to do a math problem the way I could when studying for a test in college, but I'll never forget that knowledge exists and where to find it if I should need to relearn. The metaphorical peak I'm speaking of relates to a person's ability to index knowledge like a search engine for the internet.

The answer to your problem is actually and always "the internet". There, you've peaked.

Well at least it was after high school

Mental performance needs practice just like physical performance. At some point you max out. And if you don't keep up practicing at level, your performance declines. Knowledge too is bound by those rules. We're constantly forgetting as we learn new stuff.

> I'll never forget that knowledge exists and where to find it if I should need to relearn.

Meaning you'd have to practice to again reach your former performance. Sure you may reach your peak level again and reach it quicker thanks to your old practice. But you do need to practice again. And then again, if you want to keep it.

True, but I just need to stop thinking I can climb every mountain faster than people focusing on a couple. To put it another way, I need to rely more on others' progress. Even better, help them progress.

Yes, but different people are climbing different slopes; everyone can keep climbing, but that doesn't mean they'll reach the same height.

Yes, but those slopes are indeterminate from an outside observer because success comes from within. For every person you think you might have pigeon-holed, I'll show you another that broke the mold. You see everyone starts off facing a metaphorical vertical cliff in anything they attempt. It's over time that you learn the passages and tools that make it easier to climb; that lessen the slope. Unless we're talking about physically dunking a basketball, anyone can be a savant in something with enough effort. But again that future effort is not knowable to a 3rd party, they can only base opinions on past observations. People can change and they can change in an instant.

Thank you for your admission. I too am naturally arrogant. People think I'm being weird if I'm not arrogant. I get weird people saying they don't believe me when I'm being humble. Probably because arrogant is who I am as a person. I feel people like me more when I'm being my arrogant self. Oddly, when I was my least arrogant and most humble I exhibited most of the traits in this article.

I was quite sour over the fact that I felt like during the interview process I was lied to about the position and what it would entail. Naturally, I was a bit salty about it and the fact that people were doing things that I would get criticized for. It ultimately hurt my confidence in myself. This made me exhibit most if not all of these traits during my stay at this company. I was trying to make lemons into lemonade. Ultimately I was able help us get on the right path and I was happy with my contributions to the team even if it did ruffle feathers and those people hated me afterwards. I took their criticism and I still try to use it to be a better person to work with.

This take can cause a pretty unproductive worldview. The trouble is, we've all met different people who fall into broad categories like "jack of all trades". A lot of morons will say this sort of thing. Sometimes it's because they think you think they are dumb, so they want to show you that they are good at other stuff so as to keep their ego happy.

However, generalists are a very useful component of a team. They tend to be able to have a higher level view of all the moving parts, and typically are great for, say, proposing integrations, or high level system design. Also, often specialists will solve a problem in their specialization, fit be damned. They need someone to derail them and say e.g. "this would be much, much easier if we leaned on MySQL to do this".

So, this feels like a baby and bathwater situation to me.

I'm sorry to read so deeply into your anecdote, but there's some interesting stuff to unpack.

> This can be nice in small teams, but usually leads to components nobody (not even the arrogant one) can understand

This describes nearly every company's MVP, so if you're thinking of a person in particular who had to cobble together some dynamic mess, chances are they have great regret for their design. But remember, tech debt is a luxury in these cases - often the alternative is no job or company, as the runway was exhausted, or investors were not impressed.

> A person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room.

I think there's no getting around this. In fact, TBH I hope my colleagues feel this way - I want them to advocate for things they think are better, and I don't want them to instead fall prey to their own insecurities.

It's actually kind of a little self-help bullshitty -- the "you can do anything" stuff -- but truly it's actually not awful advice. I guarantee there's someone you work with who has a better way of doing things, but isn't confident enough to endorse it.

Anyhow... thanks for the writing prompt? ;)

I'm the worst for this. I firmly believe that given a totally novel problem in any domain that neither of us are familiar with. I will always solve it before you.

I also believe that whatever domain you're currently in I can outperform you in 5 years MAX.

It's crazy the bullshit we believe that 'feels' right day by day

I see this in my step mother. My family isn't very high in social standing, but she has a nursing degree and a long well paying career, better than anyone else in my family. Now that I have a CS degree with similar pay, she pays me respect but still tangentially riffs on things she only half understands.

Just don't settle for being a 'jack', become an expert, and produce something you think is maintainable for yourself and your colleagues.

> Just don't settle for being a 'jack', become an expert

Expert in what? There will always be people "more expert" than me in any particular domain (specific tech, hobbies, whatever). At some point, there's diminishing returns in becoming 'expert' in things you don't need to be an expert in, when "competence" is enough.

In many offices, mere competency makes you the default expert.

Sure. Was just pushing back on the "don't settle for jack-of-all-trades - become the expert". Well... that's a never-ending goal. Perhaps I want to be an expert jack-of-all-trades?

I can't be the expert in all things, or even most things I want to be. There's simply not enough time - people with 10 years of experience on me will always be 10 years ahead - and usually that means there's more 'expert' than me on XYZ (not always, time != expertise exactly, but it's often an signal).

Enough to produce something maintainable, that you can be proud of

The problem with becoming an expert is that you greatly limit your marketability and pigeonhole yourself into a small niche. When that niche loses demand, or you want to move someplace where there's no jobs in that niche, you're screwed. A generalist has a much easier time changing jobs and therefore more job security.

The whole point of the arrogance / humility axis is the awareness that there is not a destination to be arrived at named "expert". The DK graph goes up and to the right, to infinity and beyond. We must merely try to do our best, and try again.

If you think it's a problem that you have this type of arrogance, what are you doing to improve and seek training about it?

I keep in mind that I tend toward arrogance and think twice whenever "oh, I can do that" pops in my head. Also, splitting tasks with a team means other people can grab what they do well and I won't overreach.