Ask HN: Would you employ a developer who talks to himself during work?

22 points by mattjung 15 years ago | 44 comments

I know this question might sound bizarre. I have never met someone in my career talking to himself in front of his computer until recently and puzzled myself about the reasons and the impact on his work...

lee 15 years ago |

Is he doing some kind of rubber duck debugging? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

I don't talk to myself, but sometimes by simply talking aloud about my problems to my peers I can flesh out a solution to a hard problem.

I have seen other programmers talk to themselves to find a solution when they're stuck, and it seems to work quite well.

brandnewlow 15 years ago | |

What tends to happen with me is I'll hit a snag that I can't seem to figure out or debug myself. So I fire up gmail and write a note to one of the contractors who does odds and ends stuff for me.

I describe the problem in decent detail and ask when he/she is available to fix it. Send.

Then a few minutes later, the solution appears in my head, I go solve the problem myself, and send an apology note to my developer.

evilduck 15 years ago | | |

I do this too, but I've found that I don't usually need to hit send, I just save it as a draft then go take a walk. The answer usually comes to me when I come back, but if it doesn't I'll send it.

The act of explaining it in enough detail so another person could understand the problem usually increases my understanding of the problem.

asdfghjkjnmhb 15 years ago | |

>The process is to meticulously explain code to an inanimate object

Isn't that what students are for?

mattjung 15 years ago | |

Nice link!

marcusbooster 15 years ago |

At least I know he's focused on his work. As opposed to say writing an Ask HN about it.

mhd 15 years ago |

Probably not, if he's doing that all the time, the office is shared, he does it in different voices and/or uses the Black Speech of Mordor.

Other than that, why not? When I'm behind closed doors, I sometimes to this myself, too. Giving thoughts proper form often helps to order them, so both writing and monologue are perfectly fine. That's what some people get out of pair programming.

tzs 15 years ago |

We had an employee once who essentially narrated himself. For instance, if he was installing the latest build of our software to test the installer, he might say something like this:

    I'm putting the floppy in the drive. I see it on the
    desktop. I'm double clicking it. I see the new
    installer. Now I'm opening RegEdit. I'm finding the
    keys for $OurProduct, and deleting them to test a fresh
    install. Now I'm double clicking the installer. I see
    a dialog box. I'm typing in my product key, and hitting
    the install button...

If you had to do anything with him, he'd include you in the narration:

    OK, now I'm watching Bob make a new release for me to test.
    His compile finished, and he's copying to a floppy. He's
    giving me the floppy. I'm going to go test it...

This got real annoying real fast.

runjake 15 years ago | |

Wow, that's hilarious. Any chance he was taking voice notes to a device?

varjag 15 years ago |

I would, since I do it myself. Infrequently actually, but a lot of it is swearing.

jarek 15 years ago |

Do you accommodate other preferences of the developer? Do you let them adjust their chair or rearrange their desk? Do you let them come in at flex hours, as long as the work is done and they don't unduly inconvenience others (meetings, etc)? Do you let them wear headphones at work? Do you let them choose their preferred editor (again, as long as it doesn't inconvenience others) or perhaps even OS?

If so, why would you not accommodate someone who works slightly differently in this one way?

SanjayUttam 15 years ago |

It depends. If they are talking and it is barely audible, sure...I do this, and with the exceptional expletive, it's more or less silent. Most of the developers here, myself included, wear headphones for the day unless we're talking to one another. I don't think anyone even notices I'm mouthing things to myself or reading "out-loud" (e.g., moving my mouth).

Not totally related, but I'm also bobbing my head to music all day (usually groovesalad on some.fm)

All that said...how would you know if you're going to hire someone who talks to themselves anyway, or is this just hypothetical?

madhouse 15 years ago |

Yes, I would. Thinking out loud helps a lot in my experience - and that's what most people perceive as "talking to himself".

Manolis 15 years ago |

Since the question refers to a developer (a special category of employees) the answer is a strong "Yes".

ra 15 years ago | |

Absolutely. I'm a developer who has hired 15-20 other developers in my time. "talks to himself" isn't a reason not to hire a nice, talented developer.

jasonmcalacanis 15 years ago |

if they file clean code, solve problems, are positive in their nature and make the people around them great they can marry their their iPad.

some of the best people startup people, at least in my experience, are "unique."

Embrace the odd, create the future.

retroafroman 15 years ago |

I wouldn't. At one job, the desks were arranged so that I sat at my computer with my back to my coworker (who talked to himself/no-one-in-particular/me throughout the day) and I could never tell when he was trying to talk to me or just vocalizing something. Also, I found it annoying. A small annoyance, sure, but if it bothers your other developer's, it's not a good idea.

icefox 15 years ago | |

Well if you were doing the hiring I am guessing you can also set the seating.

retroafroman 15 years ago | | |

Good point, as long as it is possible to place the self-talker in a place where others aren't bothered, whether that's alone, or with people who aren't bothered, it wouldn't be too bad.

sofuture 15 years ago |

I wouldn't consider it a factor in an employment decision unless it was exceptional in some way (i.e. it was non-stop, extremely loud, disruptive).

mattjung 15 years ago | |

In fact, I was wondering if someone who needs to talk out loud has a different approach of solving problems or if he has even has some shortcomings given that he is not able to keep things in his mind. When children learn reading at school, the first step is to read loud, then to understand what they read out loud. It takes considerably more efforts until a child is able to understand a text she is reading silently.

DirtyAndy 15 years ago | | |

That is certainly an interesting way to look at people talking to themselves, definitely correct with children. Personally I talk to myself a lot when working at home, and never when in an office (it is rude and distracting for other people). I think I do much better work at home, especially when trying to solve problems. For some reason saying something out loud can often make it clearer, easy to see something stupid you've done etc.

In theory anything you can do in a meeting, talking with others, can be done in email, but IMHO well run meetings are a very good way of bringing ideas together, solving problems etc. Talking to yourself is like having a meeting with yourself :-)

jarek 15 years ago | | |

Do you also think someone who draws out diagrams on a whiteboard rather than visualizing everything in their head has a "shortcoming"?

Not everyone thinks the same way. This isn't a bug.

cobralibre 15 years ago | | |

Silent reading is a historically contingent practice, and did not become typical until the early middle ages, when reading aloud began to be banned in Christian scriptoriums. Whether this was done for pragmatic or religious reasons, I don't know.

smutticus 15 years ago |

Talking to yourself is fine. It's when you start responding to yourself that you should be worried.

abyssknight 15 years ago | |

This is funny, but I respond to my own questions all the time. Often out of sync with the timeline of events, too. I'll remember an answer and answer my question from 10 minutes ago all while discussing it with myself. ;)

asdfghjkjnmhb 15 years ago | | |

Self correcting - first you talk to yourself, then you start answering yourself, then you argue with yourself - then you sulk and stop talking to you.

basicxman 15 years ago |

There's a difference between delusional psychosis, being socially awkward, and talking to yourself to debug computer problems. However, some might believe it to be a very thin line between psychosis and debugging computer problems aloud.

niels_olson 15 years ago |

Depends. At the best, you're being paranoid. At the worst, he could be developing schizophrenia. Is he in his late teens or early twenties, does he sound agitated or paranoid? Is his thought process coherent? What is he talking about? A young, paranoid male talking gibberish to himself without regard for who's around would be concerning. If you want a great portrait of schizophrenia, watch "The Soloist": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0821642/

But if he's not acting like that, then maybe he's just helping you expand your definition of normal.

robgough 15 years ago |

If they were working from home, sure :P

I can't see it impacting on their work, but it might irritate others.

There is an obvious second question though, how would you know before you employed them. The question then becomes, would you fire an developer that talks to themselves at work.

In which case, No - I probably wouldn't. At least not without trying to find other ways of dealing with it, it is possible they don't even know they're doing it - and after making them aware you might find that they stop.

agotterer 15 years ago |

Sometimes people with dislexia or other reading problems will read aloud. Sometimes, the only way they can process the content is by hearing it.

jdietrich 15 years ago |

Will he get a private office?

klaut 15 years ago |

I talk to myself during work most of the time (but usually it happens in the privacy of my head only). Or better, I talk to the monitor in front of me as if it would help debug something faster :) ... well sometimes it does, actually. But when i become very frustrated with the piece of code i am debugging, I usually say something out loud as well.... swearing mostly :D

markbnine 15 years ago |

Sounds like the newest in agile techniques - pair programming for one. Write a book and start your consulting career now.

chrischen 15 years ago |

I talk to myself, even when not working. So yes. He's just special.

Sometimes if you're eager to say something to real people, you may talk to yourself (ADHD people do it). If you're standing right there and he's talking to himself, then he either doesn't know you're there, or it's just helping him think.

j_baker 15 years ago | |

Erm... I have ADHD and I don't do it.

chrischen 15 years ago | | |

Well there are different types of ADHD. It's related to the fact that ADHD people have bad working memory. So practicing how they would say stuff is a way to get it out before they forget it.

wccrawford 15 years ago |

No. I worked with a guy who did this. I didn't have to sit at the desk next to him, but the guy who did... Well, he absolutely hated it.

It's also quite a bit different than 2 people talking, or even someone talking on the phone.

I think a quiet workplace is very important for proper thinking.

runjake 15 years ago |

You know of good developers who don't?

I mean, as long as he isn't muttering about red staplers or burning the office down, what's the issue?

noodle 15 years ago |

this would be an incidental, to me. perhaps it would be annoying, but i don't feel like it would necessarily impact his actual work.

julius_geezer 15 years ago |

Sure.

zackattack 15 years ago |

Talking to yourself is a symptom of stress. Because your working memory is too populated by stressors in order to keep the entire "conversation" inside your head, you externalize it. Think of it as paging out. The only inconvenience is that it can bother people. Well, maybe there are other inconveniences, too, but I'm not aware of any studies that suggest externalized verbal problem solving creates worse results than internalized problem solving, though I suspect it actually might be the case.

jazzyb 15 years ago | |

> Talking to yourself is a symptom of stress.

Not always. I talk to myself all the time whether I'm happy, sad, stressed, relaxed, whatever. I just seem to solve problems better when I explain them to myself out loud -- see "rubber ducking": http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?RubberDucking

zackattack 15 years ago | | |

I agree that rubber ducking is a great technique. I also think that you can "have" both stress and the subjective affective state of happiness simultaneously.