The care and feeding of software engineers (or, why engineers are grumpy)
www.nczonline.net/blog/2012/06/12/the-care-and-feeding-of-software-engineers-or-why-engineers-are-grumpy
From the page
Saved with the link. Notes from 2007 to 2016 are mostly the page's own words, so this is probably an excerpt.
One of her points for engineers was not to say “no” so quickly. That one stuck with me for a while and swam around in my head. My first reaction was, “but you don’t understand why we say no!” And a million other defensive thoughts soon joined in the party. She is right, of course. We do say “no” very quickly, not just to designs, but to everything. That led me into thinking about the psychology of software engineers and what makes us the way we are.