Computers Don't Lie

Can you imagine the psychological effect on a child of interacting with such an entity? The unconscious loyalty it can breed?

For all of their willful naivete when it comes to social strategy, Code Monkeys are difficult to manage through organizational and semi-organizational entities like Companies and Team Leaders not because they are "naturally disloyal," but because they have found something that will not behave erratically, will not be malicious, and will not lie.

Having never found such a thing in their lives, Monkey Handlers, Monkey Providers, and Visionaries can often fail to see why carrots and sticks work so poorly on them. Even Code Monkeys, by and large, fail to realize it.

The Abyss

Writing good code is intellectually, unavoidably hard. Writing good code for an ill-specified problem is mathematically, unavoidably impossible.

Code Monkeys live in terror of the day when Monkey Handlers will figure this out and fire them. They shouldn't be: both Monkey Handlers and the industry that backs them will stop at nothing to avoid knowing this. Too many billions of dollars ride on the shared consensual hallucination of mass quantities of sophisticated, reliable code being built fast and cheaply to fulfill badly specified functions.

The whole industry lives in terror of Godel's abyss; what defines a Code Monkey is his/her morbid need to gaze into it.

The Golden Branch

The underlying technologies of management are carrots and sticks, but computers can neither be threatened nor bribed.

Hence the Code Monkey's fundamentally untenable position: he/she's the priest of a greedless god, and when gold offers don't end the drought, kings always go for human sacrifice.