
Why Being an Honest Computer Programmer Should Be Classified as a Disability
In the modern tech market, honesty is not a virtue.
It is a functional impairment.
An honest computer programmer:
explains edge cases instead of hiding them,
estimates conservatively instead of optimistically,
documents failure modes instead of rebranding them as “roadmap items”,
refuses to ship lies wrapped in dashboards.
As a result, they suffer measurable disadvantages.
They lose to:
pitch decks that compile but don’t run,
systems that scale in slides but not in production,
architectures that are “AI-powered” in marketing and random in reality.
This is not a skills gap.
It is an incentive mismatch.
The market currently rewards:
confidence over correctness,
velocity over validity,
narratives over guarantees.
Honest programmers cannot simply “adapt” without ceasing to be honest, in the same way a wheelchair user cannot “adapt” by choosing to walk up the stairs.
The environment is hostile by design.
In any other industry, this would already qualify as a disability:
A condition that substantially limits one’s ability to participate in standard economic activity as currently structured.
Reasonable accommodations would include:
protected time to explain why something won’t work,
compensation for preventing disasters that never make the slide deck,
immunity from meetings where reality is treated as a blocker,
and income support during periods where refusing to lie renders one “uncompetitive”.
Instead, honest programmers are told to:
“be more commercial”,
“simplify the message”,
or “let the market decide”.
The market has decided. It prefers fiction.
Until that changes, honesty in software engineering is not a personality trait. It is a liability. And like all liabilities imposed by structural conditions, it deserves recognition, protection, and support.
This is satire, of course.
Unless you’ve tried to ship correct systems in a market optimized for appearances.
In which case, you may already qualify.
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