This is a huge reason why I support WFH policies and personally take advantage of them. I don't personally feel the need to "fix" myself; doing so would involve putting on an artifice in order to placate people whose impression of me is founded on incorrect assumptions. It would make me feel like I was walking on eggshells, and it would take up precious mental bandwidth which would be better spent on the work problem at hand.

WFH means management of my facial expression is one less thing I have to worry about, since people can only see my Zoom avatar at best, and usually only see the section of the laptop screen that I'm sharing. Counter to what anti-WFH advocates say, it actually makes me more likely to form close bonds with my coworkers, since they're less likely to jump to conclusions about my demeanor and personality if they aren't privy to my facial expression.

A lot of times it can be all over somebody's face and body language.

Self awareness is hard. I used to take selfies to help neutrally assess my own mood. A lot of the time I was feeling something and unaware, but I could tell from the photo.

I think that's what makes it so frustrating. Especially when you know the person well, facial expression can be a really good indicator. The main problem IMHO comes in when people try to read into facial expressions of people they don't know and draw wide conclusions from it. If people mainly saw strangers looking unhappy and thought, "oh wow that person must be having a bad day" it would probably be a net positive in society. But I have no idea how to convince people to think that way.

What were you feeling that you could only identify by your outward appearance ? You don't have to look happy and smiling all the time, in many cultures ( Germany, France ) people actively distrust people who do this.

But as I recall, one of the biggest things I would notice is if I hadn't gotten very restful sleep.

Nevertheless, your point still stands- it is indeed incredibly unfortunate, for the reasons you mentioned.

Though the laughing hyena found a way to game the system...

While I am waiting, I often retreat into my own thoughts, mentally processing some difficult problem or trying to plan out a project in my head. When I am thinking hard I adopt a "focus" face with a slight frown with lips pressed together.

The servers must be reading my face as annoyance or anger.

I always say thanks and smile when I collect my order so they know I wasn't unhappy, especially with them.

I guess most people are more "in the moment" and maintain a neutral or friendly face.

I dont know if i can even work in an office anymore without scaring people. I developed a habit of cursing or mumbling under my breath. haha

I've since improved the faces that I make, and I think it helps my mood. It's similar to the effect of how if you smile and nod while eating something gross you acquire the taste faster :)

It's very confronting at times!

Something I wonder about is how much of an effect movies and TV have had on what we generally consider to be mean-looking or friendly-looking traits.

I don’t know which way the cause-and-effect goes though. Do we instinctively as humans think that people who look a certain way give off an “evil” vibe, and that’s why Hollywood chooses actors with those faces? Or have they trained us that certain faces are “evil” because they’re always typecast as bad guys?

One random example: when I first saw Kylo Ren in the recent Star Wars trilogy, my first thought was… I bet he’s gonna turn good. His face is too friendly. If he were bad to the core they would’ve picked an evil-looking guy.

The other goes the super focused borderline angry looking face when she focuses. We actually know she’s giving it her all when she’s giving that face.

If she’s goofing off and just having fun then she smiles.

Unfortunately judges don’t like it so much.

We’re going on 10 years of trying to get her to smile during a routine with no success.

She also can’t smile on command for photos. It’s quite cringe worthy.

So maybe you don't want to "fix" yourself for others, but you might consider it for yourself.

But it is a weak argument for WFH by itself, don't you think?

I actually recognize that line of reasoning myself. But since losing weight and working on myself (e.g. going to a therapist) I feel much better.

My point is: There was bigger issues at play for me when I didn't want to work from an office...

Mentioned in my Quantified Self talk here at 1m 15s: https://vimeo.com/42239564#t=1m15s

This led to the development of LifeSlice, which lets anyone do the same, and I now have s as decade of 30-min periodic selfies. Not sure what I’ll do with them all but it’s interesting to see myself age. :)

I don’t look angry, but can confirm that I’m at best expressionless when concentrating at the computer.

http://wanderingstan.github.io/Lifeslice/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21665102/#:~:text=Pandiculat....

And makes me wonder whether a simple computer vision algorithm could classify frequency of pandiculation in the work and we could begin making correlations between pandiculation and perception of mood valence.

For others curious, this page gave a better ELI5 definition for me: https://somaticmovementcenter.com/pandiculation-what-is-pand...

Guess I’ll ship that lisp tutorial then.

It's just a URL anchor syntax for when there's no applicable id attribute, you could recognize the syntax in Javascript and implement a "polyfill" on-page.

nowadays I'm very often a flaming angry coder but that's real anger. It feels the same as when you get angry to press the fire button really fast in a video game, kind of thing. It's been a major issue for decades now as if there are any other people around, I have to really watch my mannerisms and mumblings because there have been negative outcomes from it.

I've also sprinted with other devs who do the same thing. Plus I think it occurs in other fields, like my old drum teacher when I watch him in videos, when he's going for some dramatic drum thing, his face turns to total anger and it is definitely some kind of visceral animal thing you tap into when trying to succeed in a tight space.

I'm the same, I completely control my mannerisms and usual expletives when coding near people because... It can get fire-y for no reason, I know that it's just work and code but my inner monologue needs to vent out each frustration I find. I learned that it can appear quite toxic for an outsider, they don't live in my head to know that saying "this fucking bullshit shouldn't have been done this way" is not a judgment on anyone's character or technical abilities, I'm very aware that crappy code was done under constraints (skill level, time crunch, so on and so forth) but somehow I do need to be angry about it to push myself around to fix stuff that doesn't seem right.

It can look aggressive and whiny at the same time and I definitely want to avoid people having this impression of me because I truly don't care so much, it's just work and I kinda gotta do it this way when alone to keep myself in it.

Guitarists facials abound - (and anything you can watch with Steve Vai playing will show even more) - https://youtu.be/CqdL36VKbMQ

I don’t care how I look while focusing on my computer screen, maybe that’s a feature. But I do mind how I look when I’m just existing in the world.

I now hold my face consciously in an ever so light smile and it has made a big difference. Especially when entering social situations like a bar or party. Damn you, Resting bitch face!

That sort of ignorance is death on a bun for software innovation in MBA heavy organizations where non-technical project/product managers rule the roost.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Resting%20Mu...

My daughter asked me what I do at work all day last night, and I told her I push a lot of buttons, which (predictably) led to 1000 questions about what buttons, what order, why, etc. From now on I'm just going to say this. :)

Beyond perception management there's the issue of avoiding unnecessary interruptions. It can be hard to define what's necesary and what isn't. Rarely does it have anything to do with what someone is interrupting you for but instead, it is (once again) it's perception management.

There is a context-switching contest that comes from being interrupted and it can be hard to get back in the zone. So you want to avoid people interrupting you to ask something that would quite literally be the first link on a trivial Google search.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kafq7yrKAOQ

I would love to be able to say “do something about it” when they goes on their rants but american culture is too polite. Most of their contributions to team meetings is “docked has this new thing that could be helpful” and various other name-drops. Idk if the rest of the ppl are fooled or its just a thing we put up with.

It wasn't my team so I didn't cause a fuss but from that point onwards I made sure that he wasn't on the critical path for anything I cared about.

In hindsight the mismanagement on that team probably led to the exit 5 years later being $100-200 million lower than it could have been. But the company was super stingy with shares so I'm not sure it would have been worth my time rocking the boat.

In other hindsight I might have realised why I look angry while I'm at work.

I think americans are just high trust society so they’re not usually skeptical of people. Im skeptical of myself much less other ppl :D

I always thought this was just some sort of trope and not a real thing, but then one time my monitor went blank suddenly and I saw myself.

I guess the words I looking for to describe how I appear are "vaguely creepy".

Sticking out your tongue reduces the need for your brain to manage it, freeing up resources for what you’re concentrating on.

I fear that some of my C code would get me up against The Hague for war crimes …

But I also think that I look angry because I _am_ angry.

Anger allows us to increase arousal and helps us focus on an 'obstacle' and programming presents many obstacles.

It's self defeating however, because working in this way is exhausting.

In working with a close friend, who programs much more patiently and methodically, I'm slowly learning to let go of my 'ADD' (Anger Driven Development).

I think I used to consider the slow and steady approach to be plodding, and using my intense approach I really could get a lot of great work done very fast, but after a few burnouts, I had to find another way.

But coding while angry also has another major downside. Anger narrows your focus of attention on what you consider to be the 'threat' or 'obstacle', and anyone who's done technical work knows that the solution is often found by divergent thinking.

Edit: Many people are saying that they only look angry, and that they actually aren't angry. This may be 100% true, but the facial feedback hypothesis suggests that when you make an angry face, your internal state tends towards anger.

This is an interesting perspective. For me, anger sometimes helps me break out of a patient grind on a poor approach to a problem so I can consider more radical, divergent approaches.

For example, week before last, I did a refactoring that affected a few dozen lines of production code, felt good about the change, then ran the complete test suite and discovered hundreds of lines of test code that I had to fix, across dozens of files, because of fixture code that was copy-pasted between files instead of shared as well as rampant use of unnecessary mocks. My patient, responsible side started making the fixes one by one and scolding myself for feeling angry about it, telling myself we're all learning, etc., and this is part of working with less experienced programmers. I guess I'm at a point in my programming journey where for a while now I've been suppressing my elitist tendencies and conditioning myself to accept that it will be my teammates' level, not mine, that dictates the quality of code that we produce, and internally chiding myself for even thinking of it as "shitty code." But this time I snapped. I was too disgusted by what I was doing. I had such a strong "fuck this" reaction that I stopped making the fixes and left my office fuming. I came back an hour later and started consolidating fixtures and rewriting tests. It took me almost a week of unplanned work, but it made me so happy to just fucking kill that shitty code instead of making myself patiently, dutifully deal with it.

I think it was the right thing to do from a team leadership perspective as well. My teammates were surprised at what I was able to do, and now they can see a better way to write tests. We probably won't get that full 4-5 days of effort back in the specific part of the code I was working on, but I am optimistic that future code my team produces will look more like the cleaned up version than the original mess, and the effort will be paid back that way.

I used to know someone like that; even when she smiled, her eyes seemed to have a pained crinkle around the edges. She insisted that she felt fine, that it was just a trick of her facial features - but she tended to get aggravated by other people so easily that it was hard to believe her. I suspect that she was simply accustomed to a baseline feeling of irritation and didn't really notice its presence.

(Validating the facial-feedback hypothesis further, I knew someone else who got botox treatment for her forehead, so she could no longer scowl; this notably improved her mood.)

The more enthused I am about things the more scary I am to other mammals, apparently. Don't have any real advice to offer: I deal with it by working alone.

Story time: Shortly after I was hired at SiemensVDO, my group leader came by just to say "Hi" and looking at him with my "concentrated" face I asked in a husky voice "What do you want?". Totally caught him by surprise, so he barely mumbled "I only wanted to say Hi" and walked away. The floor was open office, with at least 50 people in the room. He was known as a very severe manager, which demanded a lot from the programmers (also he was a former Uni teacher hired by Siemens 10 years earlier), and whenever he was entering our big room, everybody rushed to look busy and kept their head down, not wanting to be caught in his gaze.

Funny thing about the situation is that I was unaware it was him when I said that, and only after he left I fully understood what just happened. In any case, he was severe but also a just manager and recognized hard workers. After that little incident he treated me differently than any other person in that floor. When talking with me he started using a "sweet" voice, reserved only for his bosses while continuing to use his "rough" voice with everybody else. I became "de facto" person to tell him unpleasant stuff for that room, and funny enough this led to an even better relation between us. One of the best managers I had in my 10 years tenure throughout different corporations before I became freelancer.

(usually thinking: stop asking me things, I'm THINKING! haha)

However, I did pick up some light morning yoga since my schedule was so packed I couldn't go to a class but I needed some additional stress relief.

I noticed that after I started doing that (part of the yoga video involved actively relaxing your face), I tended to adopt that relaxed face a lot more. It was serene, welcoming - compared to my very intense normal visage given the stress levels.

Suddenly people not only reacted to me in a much more honest and direct way which made things easier. I then decided to ramp it up and use that face explicitly on calls and meetings - where I was received very very well (even conference calls without video). I gained visibility with the client higher-ups. In fact, I could probably still be working for them if I wanted to (ended contract as my first kid was on the way - too much travel).

It's not a lot of time investment and a great learning lesson.

I do it when I play guitar or piano, too. I've had people ask me why I'm angry when I'm playing. My mom did it, too, when she played play piano.

I just figure it's because I'm focusing so hard on what I'm doing that I stop concentrating on my expression.

Common lines:

"What the actual fuck!?" "Are you serious!?" slams both hands on keyboard "Uuummmmmmmmm..." "Whyyyyyyyy"

Then you lean into the monitor and continue searching.

Personally, I sigh loudly. Not out of annoyance or fatigue, I just sigh.

[0] https://youtu.be/rOQmxNPTJwc

I've also been routinely mistaken for somebody with military service history. I guess something to do with how I glare

Skeptical it's about how I dress, it hasn't significantly changed since I was a teenager. Purely focused on comfort. I can't be bothered to buy clothes!

I've also been told I have a smile that lights up a room; people can't make up their minds... or maybe it really melts this angry image

Being angry while coding means you're using the wrong tech stack i think. Fix that.

I noticed this in high school once. I was reading at a table and someone across from me wanted my attention. I glanced up at them without moving my head, and they were like, "geez, sorry to bother you, we'll talk later." But I wasn't annoyed, I'd miscommunication with my body language.

So, I have trained myself turn around suddenly with a big smile and cheerfully say "How are you doing :-) :-) :-)

It seems ridiculous, but better that the alternative.

I can't control it though, it's just that naturally I get a frown with squinting eyes when I'm deep in thoughts, or looking sideways while I left my mind wander around the problem I'm thinking about.

From what I observe with colleagues and friends it seems to be pretty natural as well. My housemates doing their PhDs usually look super-pissed when studying or analysing data at home.

On top of that the general disconnect from the normal world when you are deep entrenched in your thoughts probably doesn't look inviting either, haha. I just think it's quite normal in my experience.

I have to consciously turn up my mouth corners ever so slightly, relax my facial expression. It's not about turning into a fake smile. It can be a subtle change, but you immediately will spot change in your facial expression. And others (including strangers) will spot it too.

Look in the mirror at your natural expression and try the tiniest change to your expression. You'll immediately spot the change to you expression.

That's just my normal face. When I focus, my eyebrows bunch up and I am told I scare people.

A meek scowl is more than enough to keep water cooler longer-ongers away.

I compensate that with dazzling and addicting presentations at meetings coupled with colorful proses.

In ny gut I think there is a relationship between his happy nature and not knowing how to be angry. It's kind of like he doesn't have a middle ground of being angry.It's his happy face 90% of the time, then super angry face when annoyed. An angry face which is not really representative of who he is.

ok I made it up.

Also mandatory Seinfeld reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kafq7yrKAOQ

Are you sure?

And like many others, I can also look like I'm experiencing other emotions because I am. But I have a resting angry face, and it gets more extreme the more deeply I am thinking.

My wife works in a company with programmers, and they keep their webcams off during virtual meetings because, "We don't want people to see our thinking faces." Yes, that is an exact quote.

IMO, our current lifestyle is certainly not making this any better.

100 years earlier, people communicated/worked with people face to face most of the time. Knowledge work (i.e in your head) was way less frequent. Screens, totally absent.

Apparently if I’m very focused, in the zone, on a problem; I look totally pissed off.

If anything all my emotions are turned off when I’m like that.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been highly disoriented after someone grabs my attention to find out what’s wrong.

Many other people have reported that I appear "unapproachable" when I am working, although the opposite is true. I am one of the most friendly, helpful, and jolly person that I know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kafq7yrKAOQ

"When you look annoyed all the time, people think that you're busy!"

I look angry to the point some people may find discomforting to work with me. It is their biggest flaw not to know how to handle coworkers who look angry like me.

I have this expression when focused on work, playing sports, and at music concerts.

edit: misplaced modifier

My face tends to tense up toward a frown when I’m focused and the smile helps a lot.

Also, my 9-year-old daughter makes the same face when she is focusing.

My father, who is not a software developer but a white-collar worker as well, is the same way.

I guess a 6"2 dude glaring angrily at his screen all day is a bit scary

*edit. ha.. now I'm self-conscious I just noticed that my internal monologue leaks out sometimes.. and my internal monologue can use some fairly blue words at times...

May be apocryphal.

Solution: relax the masseter every now and then.

I had to get glasses.

- Built with Rage

With a smiley

And then don't care anymore :)

But right now I'm smiling! :)

I didn't want to get deep wrinkles (female vanity) or hold angry look (stress headaches/blood flow) because i think that posture towards work is damaging and subconsciously enforces notions from culture/childhood that doing/learning is "hard" "battle" "tough" etc, and

this starts the cascade of physical effects that those states would, like "bracing myself", changing breathing patterns to shallow and stiff, rigid muscles etc, leaning head forward a stupid degree, adrenaline/ anxiety chemicals, harming eyesight with needless strain etc.

Also increases procrastination because you've decided everything is difficult and risky and dangerous, which your ego wants to avoid at all costs.

I reprogrammed myself with thoughts about "childs mind" "how would a kid savant see this puzzle" and "what if this is super easy???" regardless of evidence haha...just mimicking the face and mannerisms and sounds like some form of method acting. Face muscles are like a curious zen baby buddha now lol, open and relaxed but wide eyed, and I have a set of funny/curious gestures too lighten my own mood during long sessions, exaggerated hmmmmmmmmm????, "curiouser and curiouser!!!" type stuff I stole from movies and happy memes

(and the muscle movements I remapped to ones that aid vanity (girls know this as facial yoga lol, work cheekbone muscles etc instead of furrowing brow)

beware of differences between home/office tho,

I literally gave myself 'Tourette's' when i reprogrammed myself to say a certain thing (OUT! and related easy to say exclamations) when upsetting negative/thoughts/memories intruded on my mind during a difficult time, and it worked wonderfully to dispel thought immediately and stay on task/positive when I'm working on work/hobbies at home.

Bad thing is I realized I kept doing it on outside on walks I was using to think thru problems, and a few times someone actually turned their head when I was talking to myself. Just pretended to be on a phone call/blue tooth haha... So I re-mapped the more common ones to deep breath exhalation and more subtle "tics" that have no social cost in public.

I also use the "talking to self out loud" for heavy stuff that only comes up sometimes. If you're working thru mental baggage, you can literally say stuff like "get out of my head ghost of shitty father" when you catch yourself ruminating on the past or feeling criticized or becoming like a bad parent etc. This "externalizing" is really effective for me. I also renamed certain recurrent baggage, such as calling father issues "Iago" as short hand (evil Shakespeare ref), or memories of harmless yet cringey stuff I map as dopey cartoon characters that fail in same ways. This really helps me create emotional distance and feel more in control, I guess that ultimately depends on how imaginative you are.

(I don't have any family history of schizophrenia and never use drugs, so I guess I'm not worried about this getting out of hand, shrug. And in the privacy of your own home, who cares?)

All these are ways to just keeping your mental landscape clear, maybe ten years of meditation would do the same but this suits me just fine for now.

I prevent doom scrolling sometimes by saying out loud "nice try culture war ya almost got me!" when I feel outrage. Catching your own mental reactions becomes easier as you practice the muscle.

In the kingdom of your skull you can think anything you want and create your own tools. Life is a state of mind.

I don't know if this helps most or if you need a certain temperament. My mindset is somehow both extremely open AND extremely judgmental at the same time, so I'm very friendly to all woo that may help yet feel zero loyalty to the media source/guru that developed it, just steal what works and dip haha

More 'rational' folks I've tried to share with are allergic to this mental-DIY stuff, yet casually harp on about potentials of nootropics or amphetamines or shrooms, eyeroll...

I require no evidence to try anything that has essentially no harms / costs / cults and just take the good, cut out the bad, and tailor it to myself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯