Programmers tend to have stable personal lives

It’s been said that the two best ways to get to know someone are to play poker with them or go on a business trip with them.

I’m not much of a poker player, but I have gone on business trips with many different people from many different professions: programmers, sales people, managers, even attorneys.

Overwhelmingly, the most boring people to travel with are the programmers. (Although I will admit that my somewhat limited experience traveling with attorneys would make them a possible contender for that title.) What’s wrong with traveling with programmers? They seem to always want to talk about their families. It’s sort of like the old cliché of visiting a family for dinner and ending up watching a slide show of their last vacation trip.

While I may not be impressed with the story of the programmer’s son who struck out the side in a Little League baseball game, I am impressed by the sincerity of the programmer’s enthusiasm for sharing that story.

Shortly after I graduated from college, I distinctly recall someone saying, “Engineers make good husbands”. (Note that this was at a time that 99% of all engineers were male.) In this era, you could also say that, “Programmers make good spouses” and be fundamentally correct.

Most programmers that I’ve worked with are married. Even those who are unmarried tend to be a bit boring – which can probably be interpreted as a sign of stability as well.

Implications:

This all means that they show up for work when needed. And they are also dependable in all of the other ways that professionalism is important.