Do Programmers Have Girlfriends? (Super Cool Findings)

A small fraction of programmers that are autistic, introverted or socially inept often find it difficult to get into a relationship, but it will be stereotypical to think these traits are exclusive to all programmers.

Why Are Most Programmers Single?

1. Round-the-clock Coding

Most programmers do spend a lot of time coding.

Programmers and software engineers that work as employees generally work for 40 hours per week on a 9 – 5 job spanning Monday – Fridays.

No doubt they have the weekend to themselves and even a couple of hours to spare after the weekdays’ work.

But for many, this free time isn’t really per say. They head back home after work and continue working from where they left off at the office especially when they have uncompleted tasks.

Programmers are known for having light bulb ideas so it’s common to see them working on their side project after work and if you are around one, you can feel the thrill and excitement as they pounce on their project knowing fully well that they are about to push the next big thing to production.

Some are business inclined and with the passion to create extra income sources do venture into freelancing or have their own programming-related service agency like a marketing agency or a website/app design company.

Don’t be even surprised to see programmers juggle between three jobs: Their main work, their part-time hustle and their personal project.

Not really bad, because life is much simplified due to the hard work and curiosity of techies.

As a result, the weekend is already occupied with to-do tasks even before it arrives.

On Christmas day 2021, I once asked my colleague who happens to be a Christian why he wasn’t out celebrating and feasting with family and friends.

He replied: “I’m focused on writing more codes and nothing else matters”.

But be the judge here..

Don’t you expect programmers with such a tight work routine to be single?

You can say some programmers haven’t really found the work-life balance that suits their situation.

But the inner truth is,

They do understand the concept of work-life balance but the majority believes it’s better off talked about after they have achieved certain goals or career breakthrough.

For the main time, they want to do away with all distractions so they can quickly build up their dream project, which might be the reason they got into programming in the first place.

Some had a girlfriend in the past but currently, they wish to set up 2 -3 stable passive income means before jumping into another relationship just to avoid future financial issues.

Well, I guess this is my situation at the point of writing this very article but I think the story might be different by the time you get to read this piece.

2. Programmers are trained to be Metric-Driven

In the year 2000, Professor Robert Stickgold at Harvard ran an experiment where he paid students to play the computer game Tetris for three days and reported seeing these Tetris blocks falling in their dreams and in their daily lives after the experiment ended.

They would see boxes on shelves or cars on the street and feel the urge to arrange them into neat rows.

This is known as the “tetris effect”, a syndrome that occurs when people devote so much time and attention to an activity that it begins to pattern their thoughts, mental images, and dreams.

That’s the reason why lawyers try to find flaws in everything people say and software engineers take things that are ambiguous and subjective and then break them down into numbers and algorithms.

Programmers tend to follow a specific pattern. If this happens do this else; do this. 

This streamlined approach doesn’t really work well in dating.

Many programmers will refuse to argue with you because they already have rules for everything and that’s no fun because arguments make up 95% of the interactions in relationships.

There’s value in talking and seeing how both sides feel but it’s kind of pointless for programmers because they believe everything is meant to follow a particular sequence at different time intervals.

This makes it difficult for programmers to be flexible and social spontaneity is needed for dating and winning girls over.

3. Age Factor

On average, programmers are way younger than many other professionals as many get into coding at a very young age and in college.

 It’s not uncommon to see a 17-year-old software engineer with a handful of industrial experience.

Generally, we can all agree that young people are mostly single regardless of their profession.

 A recent survey by Stack Overflow across 83,243 developers shows that 50% of respondents wrote their first code between the ages of 11 -17 and 14% between the ages of 5 – 10 already writing codes.

Additionally, 27,876 developers from this sample size between the ages of 25 – 34 consider themselves professional developers.

This only implies that coders start young and you’ll expect most young people to be single as they are still discovering life and understanding the nitty-gritty of relationships.

4. Gender Factor

We tend to have more men as programmers, software engineers or developers than women.

 This is in accordance with the Stack Overflow survey data across the same sample size of over 80, 000 developers and shows that 91% of developers are men.

Now you must be wondering how does been a man affect being single?

A new census data analysis in United State shows that men are now more likely than women to be unpartnered, which wasn’t the case 30 years ago.

 The growth in the single population is driven mainly by the decline in marriage among adults who are at prime working age.

 So we can shift our lens from the programming profession and see it from a more robust perspective that men generally, are single.

5. Non-Correlating Interest

Programming revolves around code, so don’t be surprised to find out that some programmers are only attracted to ladies to code or share similar interests.

They eat, breathe and talk a lot about code.

Their jokes are geeky and they would expect a partner who can decipher their sense of humor.

I found this conversation between a programmer and his girlfriend:

Girlfriend: Baby you have changed a lot these days, you didn’t reply to my message.

Programmer: Not at all sweetheart, It’s just some tension

Girlfriend: You always hide your tension from me, Please share it with me so that together we can come up with a solution. Come in and let me know what the problem is.

Programmer: Okay then listen, When I’m storing data to the database it shows 404, but Null pointer exception is there, and there is a missing connection string in web config. Actually, data is already parsing but there is an error of json tag, I’m trying to resolve the json data at runtime and sending using WCF.

Girlfriend: Okay baby, mom is calling me, I’ll catch you later. BYE.

You certainly won’t blame the lady for zooming off because what’s all this.

Some programmers tend to get too geeky with their girlfriend without caring much about if she flows with the discussion or not.

See this video discussion between a software engineer and his girlfriend below.

Here’s a similar joke from one of my contacts on Whatsapp who happens to be a senior app developer.

Apparently, his girlfriend is also into programming so they randomly crack jokes like this in their spare time.

Some already married programmers do prefer to hang out with their work colleagues who share similar interests as they do than spend time with their wives.

Here is a statement from an aged developer obtained from forum discussions.

 I’m a fifty years old programmer with a teenage girl living with me. And I’m single. 

Obviously, for 12 years I was married to a woman, but it was difficult to live with a person who didn’t know anything about programming. 

Sometimes I’m really introverted, especially when I am trying to solve complex situations, bugs etc.

So the bulk of programmers that are keen about finding a match with similar career interests tend to be single, unlike their colleagues who don’t care much.

6. Remote working over Onsite appearance

Since the global pandemic, remote working has been the order of the day.

All around the world, more and more employers are embracing flexible schedules for their remote teams leading to new remote work trends and more remote work options.

Recent research by Owl labs revealed that nearly 1 in 2 people (48%) said that if they were no longer able to work remotely, they would start looking for another job that offered more flexibility in when they worked, with men saying they would quit nearly 60% more than women.

As a result of remote work, programmers do have little or no physical interaction with work colleagues.

I’m in Africa and work remotely for a company in Florida, United State. 7 months on the job and I haven’t had any physical interaction with my colleagues as they are all scattered across the globe and we only get to catch up via meetings and zoom calls.

Programmers often rely on business trips or general onsite meetings that occur at least once a year to meet and get to know more about their colleagues.

Going to the office regularly is not a guarantee that you’ll bump into the love of your life at the workplace but it will increase your chances of spreading your relationship net.

After-work hangouts and many more, all increase one’s chances of cohabiting and the remote lifestyle of programmers make this impossible.

Despite all these, there is always a brighter side to things as we will see in the next section.

Why you should date a Programmer

Programming is an attractive profession and you are advised to date a programmer because:

Programmers are highly empathetic (spent a lot of time working with multiple clients and understanding their thought processes), they are patient ( an inbuilt virtue nurtured from developing and building software), they are rational thinkers, have adept problem-solving skills and are highly committed.

Wrong Relationship Stereotypes about Programmers

Let’s take a look at some of the wrong relationship stereotypes from the media about programmers.

1. Programmers don’t have girlfriends because they are introverts
2. Most Programmers are Autistic (autism spectrum candidate) making it difficult to develop emotions needed for relationships
3. Programmers don’t go into relationships because they are socially inept.
4. Programmers don’t have girlfriends or boyfriends because they are nerdy.

Okay, hold on..

The fact that a certain fraction of programmers are introverts, autistic, nerdy and socially inept doesn’t mean these traits are exclusive to all programmers and it’s wrong stereotypically to use this as a general assumption in ascertaining why programmers are single.

Here’s what an autistic programmer has to say about this:

 Aspies are known to have a harder time getting into relationships because we have a brain wiring issue that means that we have a harder time recognizing emotions and feelings in other people from cues such as body language and voice intonation.

This is often misinterpreted as us not caring how other people feel – or in us being introverted. 

That’s not true. 

If you TELL me how you feel (rather than expecting me to figure it out using Betazoid empath techniques) then I’m as empathic, caring and concerned as anyone else. 

Just don’t expect me to notice how you’re feeling from the way you’re standing or your facial expression…I simply cannot figure that out because my brain is broken.

 In essence, if you have a crush on an autistic programmer, walk up to him and tell him how you feel.

Walking in a stylish way like Jennifer Lopez, 10 times past his front work desk won’t send any positive signal.

I guess it will be shocking for you to find out that introverts and aspies even last longer in relationships than extroverts and non-autistic people.

Conclusion

Some programmers have girlfriends, some are single due to a couple of reasons like spending too much time coding without socializing, age and gender factors, non-correlating interest with the opposite sex and the remote working lifestyle which reduces the chances of cohabiting.

A  small fraction of programmers like the autistic ones find it difficult to get into relationships but tend to last longer in relationships.

If you are an aged programmer and find it difficult having a girlfriend don’t be worried because you might sink into a state of depression.

ADVISE:  ​​Learn more about yourself and your interests in ladies to avoid making wrong decisions.

Also, learn about relationships and try to improve your communication skills.

Find a balance between work and other activities, get new hobbies that are not coding-related to become more interesting and try to attend a few social events.

With time, everything will fall in place.

And it’s a wrap.

If you are a programmer, I’d love you to share your thoughts about relationship and dating with me in the comment section below.

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Till we meet again on another article,

Happy Coding!