Software people tend to overestimate their knowledge of other disciplines, writing it off as "easy" or work beneath them. Being overpaid compared to your peers certainly doesn't help dispel this feeling. Some people have built entire careers around designing wire looms.
> Software people tend to overestimate their knowledge of other disciplines, writing it off as "easy" or work beneath them
You should see what happens when someone involved in the sciences, e.g. Chemistry, gets their hands on Claude Code.
What happens?
A professional scientist I know (tenured, professor) recruited me to set up a backtesting framework for a predictive finance model. When the results were not as they expected (this person does not work in finance and never has), they asked to see the code, then told me that claude had found a problem with the way some of the calculations were done (there was actually no problem), supplied the claude comments, and told me to change the code to match what they thought was correct. I did it anyway. Had they had more expertise in the domain (finance), they likely would have been able to leverage claude as a tool rather than inadvertently pursuing a very stupid mistake. Domain experts tend to doubt their ability to excel in other domains which is amplified by LLMs.
This sounds rather similar to the form of scientific fraud where you first create a conclusion, then invent/manipulate the data until it supports your conclusion.
I work with a bunch of PHD's and have been since before ai coding.
Their code is aways terrible, and they constantly think it's good.
The exercise is always the same: explain the math to me, like I'm 5, then we profile it and see what is faster.
Oddly Claude Code, integrated into their IDE's has made this situation happen much less.
I never want to work in a place again where the fun way to start the Monday meeting is a "math problem".
PS: Don't even get me started on their SQL.
Consider whether this is an uncharitable comment --- someone with little expertise in a discipline has made a rookie mistake and didn't realize that the wires weren't produced individually.
Professionals overestimating their knowledge is a very common thing!
Fair, but software engineers are especially known for this. There was an XKCD about it
https://xkcd.com/1831/
What a rancid comment. The first thing you can think of when seeing someone earnestly sharing their learning process, is to insult them of being vain.
Try working on a software project as a non-developer and see if you still respond so negatively to their sentiment. I can’t tell you how many times developers tried to arrogantly and dismissively explain design principles to me, as an experienced, degree-holding designer, because they skimmed a whole Tufte book at some point.
I was a developer for a decade before I went to school for design, so I’ve seen it from the other side. It’s not all bad: that overconfidence can lead people to tackle problems they’d abandon if they really understood the domain’s complexities. But often it presents like developers acting like their genius developer brain allows them to solve difficult problems in completely different fields with a few glib analogies and a few brief thought experiments.
He's right about the rest. We software people can definitely be annoying.
All people are annoying. It's still mean spirited in this instance. The author is likely reading all of these comments.
There's a reason that John Salvatier's 'Reality Has A Surprising Amount of Detail' blog entry is so evergreen on this forum.
It's called misplaced confidence and it isn't exclusive to software engineers. Doctors, engineers, presidents... The list goes on.
People tend to overestimate their knowledge of other disciplines.
I have worked with a LOT of PHD's in recent years. Their code leaves much to be desired.
I don't know, I've had more non-technical people and trades try and mansplain bullshit they don't understand than tech people have.