Sounds like Asperger’s syndrome more than microaggression.
Why is anyone taking it personally? What is wrong with people to insist on eye contact? There are sometimes cultural reasons to avoid eye contact, and some people do have significant issues with eye contact, especially if stressed.
" Unfortunately, there are many corners of the engineering/CS/tech world where “people skills” are not only not appreciated, but a sign someone is lacking techie cred.
That is so far off the mark its not worth responding to. "
I’m responding that it is true that people skills are looked at as suspect in some companies, and if jym626 doesn’t agree, well YMMV jym. I have friends at Fortune 50 companies who subscribe to exactly that; there are people who would not make it elsewhere who are kept despite horrific people skills, as a badge of some sort.
This thread smacks of serious discrimination from both sides. No one should be able to force good manners let alone eye contact. Work = work and friends & family = friends & family.
And it’s usually based on some person you knew, back when, long ago event/s, or distant connections. As in so many CC matters- admissions, ECs, college life, parenting, relationships, etc- somehow we all have to maintain conversations. And aim to stay on track.
“You’re confusing the opinions of the elitist doctors who happen to be cardiologists and neurosurgeons regarding “lower specializations”* like pediatrics or internal medicine with my own opinions. I am relaying their opinions, not mine to illustrate why many programmers and engineers hold themselves apart from and may even be strongly offended if they’re equated with folks in IT.”
No one believes for a minute that you know so many more cardiologists and neurosurgeons than the average person. No one believes for a minute, moreover, that they know you so well they have spontaneously told you about their alleged disdain for “lower” specializations such that you can draw overarching conclusions. I’m quite confident I know more cardiologists and neurosurgeons than you do, given that I’m married to a physician, and my personal conclusion is no one really gives a darn whether they think that there are “lower” specialties, because even if they have such opinions, they don’t affect anyone else. See, in the normal world, people don’t walk around sniffing at one another, “Oh, you’re so much lower than me because I’m a big mighty neurosurgeon and you’re merely a pediatrician.”
When some of you are saying that it is just an “eye contact” issue, wait till you have an encounter with someone you have a need to communicate with but no matter how hard you have tried (it is not one time only and I know exactly that he is doing at that time (just staring at a simple Bash file if you know what it is), all the response you get from him is: He even does not raise his head and just raise his hand briefly (I am lucky that at least he does not dare to raise his middle finger like some driver in a road rage situation might do to you) to signal that he does not want to communicate any info related to the job to you. The question is not a complicated one: It requires a yes/no answer mostly. It is just about whether he has read the brief report from the other coworker (it is still a part of his job to respond to that report) and if yes, whether he agrees with him or not. I still do not know whether he has read that report (just in a short email format) after more than one day. He also decided to either work home today or take the day off today (never bother to let anyone in the not so large group – likely with the exception of the boss, know when he all of a sudden does not want to show up.)
I think corbrat likely knows how people in the tech world call themselves. BTW, I used a more generic term programmer because I do not want to convey too much work-specific details.
Sigh. This guy is sending out multiple signals, mcat. He doesn’t want to deal with you.
You can continue to go ask him questions and get the same reluctance. Or you can find another way. One advantage to emails is they later form a paper trail. Make them brief and focused,no extras about how you stopped by and he waved you off.
If he doesn’t provide info you have to have for your own work, the trail supports you and you go to your boss. But also explore why this particular fellow thinks you interrupt his productivity. That’s pretty serious for a boss to share, unless you were laughing over beers.
Your boss, who seems fine with having him on the team.
It is the first time that I ever heard that someone would use the excuse that when someone infrequently (at most two times a day and each time less than 5 minutes) “interrupt” him, he would tell anyone including the boss that he could only be productive while working at home (and do not want to reply to an email within a decent amount of time.) A very talented programmer or individual contributor could sometimes claim this – this I could relate to. But not for someone who is closer to the technician level (the largest size of his code may be just 2-3 pages and without any data structure concept?) than the truly engineering level (even this manager told me that before he could consider him as an engineer, he has a lot of knowledge gaps that need be remedied first.)
Of course, in the tech world, where there are a few privileged ones who are really “hot shots” within a company, they could sometimes do this. He is definitely not an employee with such a caliber.
I will drop out of this thread from now on. Thanks for sharing your thoughts/insights on the office etiquette typically expected in today’s work place and well as other thought (like personality and culture aspects of this.)
Ha! Had a newly hired colleague at one early post-college job who did something similar while stopping by for a status check for my part of the project except he was staring at the Windows 2000 workstation desktop and moving the mouse pointer aimlessly.
Something which struck me and another colleague who noticed the same thing as odd considering he was hired as a supposed topflight Java guru who graduated from an IIT(India Institute of Technology). Once we mentioned this to our supervisor, it prompted an investigation which found he completely fabricated his resume and fooled HR/senior VP of our department and subsequently lead to his termination within 3 days.
This would never fly with most supervisors I’ve worked with.
In a workgroup setting, each member was expected to communicate any information needed for our respective parts of the project in a timely manner on an ongoing basis. If a colleague was as uncommunicative as what mcat2 is describing with that colleague, most supervisors I’ve had would have called him in to give him a warning about how this level of uncommunicativeness was unacceptable and continuation would result in sanctions up to and including termination.
Most IS/IT workgroups I’ve been in weren’t social butterflies who’d shoot the breeze or be excessively focused on social fit. However, we were expected to maintain ongoing communication with each other on a regular basis as failure to do so often meant delays for colleagues down the pipeline in our group and sometimes other groups working with us* who need the information to start, manage, and complete their respective parts of our team project. Delays which wouldn’t be tolerated by our supervisors and senior VP of our department and sometimes the higher ups in other departments.