The Entitled Programmer
Who are they? How do you recognize them?
Apparently money motivates people only up to a certain point. After crossing some arbitrary income threshold, a person simply stops caring about cash. Their brain is no longer able to grasp its real value. A thousand more or less makes no difference anymore, and perks like fruit Thursdays or a gym membership provoke at most a contemptuous grunt. In economics this phenomenon is called satiation (the satiation point).
Copyright: Rawpixel pic
For some people that amount will be the mythical 20k, for others 40k. Still others will remain unsatisfied regardless of their income. You can throw Dubai chocolate at their feet and it still won’t be enough. Some will complain about employment contracts because they hit the second tax bracket already in May. Others running a sole proprietorship will lease a new BMW and expense toilet paper or sanitary pads just to optimize costs. And they will still complain about the difficult life of entrepreneurs and the always-too-high health insurance contribution (“I don’t even go to public healthcare anyway”).
Regardless of which group you belong to, you all share one thing: you managed to catch the famous IT Eldorado. You already have that specific state of mind that can easily turn into the brain rot that characterizes the entitled employee.
A Rotten Industry
Today every company is technological to some extent. Even if its core business is not technology or software development but, say, agriculture or librarianship, it simply cannot function without software. Every company or institution has an IT department, big or small. And inside it are people who write code—also known as programmers. What kind of tribe is that?
To someone without basic technological knowledge, a coding developer does not differ much from a sorcerer writing an esoteric grimoire. The darkness of an open terminal, the black theme of the IDE, and those incantations: compilation, mongo, commit, terraform, kubernetes… And a peculiar hierarchy marking levels of initiation: junior, mid, senior, principal. Freemasonry 2.0. They must be so smart—better cover them in gold.
I admit I once fell for this illusion myself. When I entered the industry years ago, I treated it with great reverence. It seemed to me like an elite club accessible only to the greatest minds. It took me several years to verify that stereotype.
Why do I think it’s a stereotype that has little to do with reality? Because I often observe serious competency gaps among programmers I work with. Often does not mean always—but truly not everyone is as brilliant as pop culture suggests. Some are actually rather slow, unable to connect the dots in the architecture of the systems they work with, and showing no desire to improve their knowledge. Sometimes they are also unpleasant to interact with.
Managers find it difficult to question their actual expertise because only a few are able to verify the competencies of programmers in their teams. Fortunately this is slowly changing, but many managers still swallow the convoluted explanations of developers in their teams and continue the tradition of gilding these computer magicians—after all, they write the code on which the business relies. It doesn’t matter what kind of code, as long as new features are delivered in subsequent sprints. With a permanent shortage of programmers—especially the more experienced ones (mid+) and those with knowledge in whatever topic is fashionable at the moment—the company wallet opens wide. The sky is the limit.
But not all programmers are equal. The industry has plenty of average code grinders (which is fine) who, through seniority or clever job-hopping, have eventually reached senior status. There are also true rock stars. From an employer’s perspective, the difference between an average programmer and a good programmer is enormous. Unfortunately, the permanent shortage of the good ones and management’s inability to distinguish between the two means that salaries for both types are often inflated to absurd levels, depending on which tech stack is currently hyped. At the time of writing this text it is genAI and a slightly less fluffy cloud; previously it was Big Data.
I write this with the awareness that IT is a very heterogeneous industry. Every organization needs a different technology stack, and sometimes the requirements for programmers are extremely high. Of course I mean technical specializations, not managerial or auxiliary roles like Scrum, where the entry barrier lies somewhere else 🙂
Who Is the Entitled One?
Alright, let’s get to the point. Who exactly is this famous entitled programmer?
For some people, an excess of easy money and the belief that the IT Eldorado is still going strong clearly does harm—it even changes the way their brain functions. Nice guys transform into entitled monsters. The employer’s worst nightmare, especially when the employer cannot center a banner on a webpage without a developer’s help.
I’ll lean into stereotypes a bit, but you will definitely recognize some of these traits in your coworkers. I intentionally combine entitlement with certain behaviors and attitudes, because they usually go hand in hand.
For me, the entitled programmer is a guy with an inflated ego. Constantly dissatisfied, convinced that they are wasting their talents in their current workplace. Overpaid, demotivated, cultivating a sense of grievance. Like a Samaritan, they remain in your team for years—even though they claim everyone else would hire them with open arms because they are drowning in job offers on LinkedIn. They mention it often.
Every potential problem irritates them because it implies work. And work, as we all know, is humiliating. Every question gives them chills, and any request to share knowledge triggers a gag reflex.
In many ways the entitled employee resembles a spoiled child. Nothing pleases them, yet they constantly seek attention and admiration for their ego. They make demands, exert pressure, and threaten:
- I won’t work on Windows. I can only work on a Mac.
- I can join the call today only between 11:42 and 12:00.
- This doesn’t work for me. Fix it. I won’t work until [insert your demand].
- I have so many offers. I’m thinking about quitting.
The entitled developer likes to create an aura of unavailability around themselves. Suspiciously often they go on sick leave—but only if they are employed on a standard contract. They value their private time greatly, unlike work time, which they do not value at all. They do not read emails, and they reply to messages on chat like a cron job—usually once an hour. Unless they find a funny meme while sitting on the toilet; then they immediately repost it to the team chat.
The entitled one usually feels responsible for nothing—especially not for their own work. The causes of bugs and delays are always vaguely defined OTHERS. Usually people who cannot defend themselves, such as employees who no longer work in the company, architects, or coders from other teams. They also claim their work is blocked by OTHERS, but they will not lift a finger to change the situation or clarify it. They thrive in conflicted teams and happily stir the pot as a hobby. This conveniently shifts the manager’s focus away from them.
The entitled developer will not take the initiative to solve a problem on their own, even if they know it would take only a moment. Sometimes they know the solution but will not reveal it to anyone. They will address the issue if and only if explicitly asked to do so, with the reminder that they will later be held accountable. They “forget” many tasks, hoping the manager will forget as well. When they do something, they do the absolute minimum necessary—just enough to mention it as a catchphrase during the daily meeting. They dislike sharing knowledge, especially tribal knowledge, and if they must, they do so in the most unreadable and condescending way possible. They like to ostentatiously complain about being “poor” while mocking “losers” outside the IT industry. They envy company directors who earn more than them—even though, in their opinion, the company’s entire revenue should flow into their account. That is why they ask for a raise every quarter, heavily embellishing their recent achievements.
Disclaimer: yes, this is a stereotype of an entitled employee. An amalgam of attitudes and behaviors that can be found not only among programmers and not only in IT.
Escalation of Entitlement
Maybe this sounds like some kind of socialism from a century ago, but deep inside I still believe that everyone should earn a decent living—decent enough to cover basic needs. Pay for housing, food for yourself and your children (or pets), and still be able to save something for a rainy day. Whether you are a programmer, a cashier, or a janitor.
What annoys me are neoliberal clichés claiming that programmers earn a lot because they generate revenue for companies. They deserve high salaries because someone has to write the code, someone has to design the system, someone has to maintain and support it. And of course, as we all know, only a wizard paid a huge salary can do that.
But this narrative only reinforces the entitled ones in their belief in their superiority over the rest of the population. “You should have become a programmer” is their typical response when someone comments on their privileged position in the job market. Reality is not quite that simple, but I don’t want to dive here into the theory of distinction or—heaven forbid—social sensitivity.
Of course companies decide whom they pay and for what. In the case of true rock stars, it is easier to see exactly what they are being paid for—and it irritates people much less. In the case of entitled mediocrities… well. Their behavior becomes annoying and demotivating for other team members. On top of that, the type is contagious like Ebola, because others often follow their example.
So what can be done about the entitled one? Fire them? Try to tame them? Motivate them?
The best strategy is to avoid tribal knowledge within the team in the first place. Take interest in what programmers actually do and try to understand at least the basics of their work. Usually it’s not black magic—there is a massive amount of documentation and materials online, and it is possible to grasp it. It is worth cultivating knowledge sharing within the team and encouraging documentation. Reward such behaviors with money—this is a good reason to throw gold around. Give juniors opportunities to learn from more experienced developers. Pay 10x programmers well, but within reasonable limits—common sense can be your best ally here.
And finally there is the job market itself, which has already become somewhat saturated with entitled programmers. Especially those who do not have strong, hard, and unique competencies that cannot (yet) be replaced by AI.
Whether we like it or not, the verification of salaries may become an unpleasant lesson in humility for those who remain in companies by sheer inertia, convinced that the IT Eldorado will last forever. Something tells me this Titanic ball is coming to an end. Who knows—maybe the time will return when we once again get excited about job offers with fruit Thursdays.