What a silly argument. So money is the only valid reason to guard a gate? Many people guard gates for the simple reason that they believe they should be guarded.

Gatekeeping itself does fuel some of the toxicity, but much of that toxicity also just comes from internet comments being more like performing for an audience than talking to a person.

> “We should start using this new tool in our pipeline.”

> “We should never use that new tool in our pipeline.”

I don’t get what’s “wrong” with those two. There’s no justification (self- or otherwise) whatsoever in any of those statements, not even a hint of an attempt. Justification, as I understand it, requires a “why” (possibly, only suggestively implied, but nonetheless present in some form) and I see absolutely none, just a call to action.

If someone sees it, can you please explain?

This is a difficult thing to talk about, and I’m glad you did.

I wish could say we age out of this through experience, but I feel like it goes this way: either people respect your experience or they don’t and either you respect your own ignorance or you don’t.

As I’ve gotten older, I forget shit all of the time, and don’t keep up with all of the latest. Then I do things and others do things that are terrible, and I don’t do or say anything about it. I can’t convince anyone anymore that what they’re doing is terrible, and I can’t stop the terrible behavior in myself as I get worse, because I can’t keep up.

What experience did the author have, for example, to link his various examples to both gatekeeping and calling people "wizards and towers with their dusty books and potions"? I imagine there's something behind that.

The risk, or challenge, is that you take your own ego-driven experiences and try to make them generic, maybe redefining a few terms along the way for convenience. Someone who has had a run-in with someone more experienced, for example, and miscalculated it as ego or gatekeeping. There's nothing wrong with that as a lived experience but of course, empathy goes both ways and that includes understanding why exactly someone may be 'gatekeeping', which is what this post seems to be about, really.

Your Oh So Humble Ego has you thinking there's some ulterior motive to me typing 3 letters instead of 20.

> That’s the way we’ve always done it.

That's not ego, that's laziness. At least based on experience, engineers are reluctant to change simply because they feel comfortable enough with their codebases.

> Assign it to me. Nobody else will be able to fix it.

Yep, that looks like ego.

> This feature is too important to assign to the junior dev.

Bad communication style perhaps? There are features that require a senior to drive them. What's wrong with that? Sure thing, I wouldn't phrase it as the author, but I don't see the ego anywhere. I see transparency and being upfront.

> We should start using this new tool in our pipeline

Again, perhaps it's just bad communication style. An engineer that says this is someone who cares enough to suggest things, even when nobody is asking. I know engineers who never suggest (or gatekeep) anything, they simply don't care

That concerns cleaners too. Ego is a universal currency and a strong element of the human nature.

Kind of funny because it shows a complete lack of empathy. Comes after the author claims:

> In our daily lives empathy and humility are obvious virtues we aspire to

If this was the case why are so few people humble and empathetic?

The Most DISTURBING Pilot I've Ever Investigated! https://youtu.be/DyY4AtpQLy8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlink_Flight_5719

PSA: Please don't be like Marvin.