Don't be a cynic
No one admires the cynic's work
Cynicism is a natural reaction to disappointment.
When I got neglected during a promotion cycle, when the feature I poured my soul into got scrapped without warning, when I had to clean up a mess I didn’t cause.
That’s when cynicism got hold of me.
The details I thought so much about amounted to nothing. The code will rot anyway. The effort is not worth it.
Companies are factories for cynicism.
Through ignored feedback and managers who say that care matters but do not reward it. There’s a structural dimension to this feeling that puts every builder to the test at some point in their career.
You can succumb to cynicism, collect your paycheck, and do the bare minimum.
But you know what beat the cynicism out of me?
No one admires the cynic’s work.
We admire those who continued to build and hope while the cynics in Greece walked around naked and slept on the streets.
Think about the most popular open source libraries in the ecosystem you’re working in. Do you think they were built by cynics?
“Cynicism is the intellectual cripple’s substitute for intelligence.” — Russell Lynes
I can’t allow myself to be negative about my work even on my worst days because that mindset spreads like wildfire. All it takes is for one builder to start, and the trend of carelessness continues.
The Broken Windows Theory in criminology states that unmaintained neighborhoods attract more criminal activity.
Lack of care when building software works the same way.
It’s even harder to resist cynicism in the age of slop.
You put care and effort into your work.
Then someone does a drive-by PR solely authored by an LLM without as much as looking at the final result, and they’re praised for their speed and token utilization.
How do I avoid becoming a cynic?
I go back to that same sentence.
No one admires the cynic’s work.
I realized this a long time ago, and to be honest, I'm fighting it now. Because of my cynicism, I've lost interest in software itself—something I was once incredibly proud of.