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Is good programming associated with ego? Should we expect all or most smart developers to be arrogant?

I tend to find that it is a common and accepted concept in some workplaces, they expect developers to be egotistic and hard to deal with as they are allegedly smarter than everyone else. I'd love to know what programmers think about this

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    FWIW, my manager(s) have never asked me to "improve my arrogance" or told me that I have "potential to be more arrogant".
    – Masked Man
    Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 14:25
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    There is no real question or goal here, so it will probably not be considered as on-topic in its current form.
    – Brandin
    Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 14:49
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    My experience has been that arrogant programmers are bad programmers - they refuse to acknowledge they may be wrong and/or need to learn new things. Confident programmers are good programmers - they know what they can do, and what they need to learn.
    – HorusKol
    Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 21:29
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    "Should we expect all or most smart developers to be arrogant?" - Absolutely not. In fact, you should expect the particularly arrogant ones to be useless. Not only do they typically grossly overestimate their ability, but they're difficult to work with, generally bringing everyone else down as well. This is exactly one of the main reasons why I find working with other developers to be irritating.
    – pay
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 16:42
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    6 arrogant developers downvoted my post :P
    – Nickolozo
    Commented Dec 21, 2017 at 3:18

2 Answers 2

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No, there is no stereotypical 'good developer' in terms of their attitude. You can have arrogant developers who are useless, just as you can have arrogant labourers who are useless, and everything in between.

However don't confuse self-confidence with arrogance, a good, competent professional is confident in their abilities and that may come across as arrogance sometimes.

Social skills are important in a workplace. I actually find the best developers to be pretty easy to work with in terms of their ego's, just like any other professional. and the ones with the outrageous ego's to be often cowboys (although possibly they could do a great job if they buckled down and did it). Over here anyway.

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There's no such thing as good skills leading to arrogance. A person who is good at something generally has a broader vision and to a novice programmer they might appear to be arrogant. As the negligence of novice one's could be irritating to some.

Consider My example

I started using stackoverflow for some very basic question which already had answers (and I continued that for a long time) and they got me a lot of negative repos. I considered the other users arrogant as I was getting negative repos all the time. Then after few month I've realized that I've been wrong for not realizing the norms and the way I should be using it.

And if not so then it could be the nature of the person which has nothing to do with programming.

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  • That's a very good example Ishan, however, there are people who make things look harder than they are to boast in how they are good at such a hard thing and there are people who make it look easier than it is to boost the confidence of that novice programmer. How do you think a programmer should approach a novice question without coming off as arrogant?
    – Nickolozo
    Commented Nov 20, 2016 at 22:44
  • According to me knowledge is supreme power.The more you have the lesser mistakes you'll commit.
    – Black Mamba
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 17:18

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