Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I dislike the term "compiler people" or "compiler folks."
No doubt that compilers are interesting pieces of technology that people can study in great depth, but there have been times where I've been asked to gatekeep people based on whether they were a "compiler person." "Yes, they're a successful engineer working on a different team at our company," past managers would say, "but before we allow them to transfer to our team, could you suss out whether they're a 'compiler person?'" I found this ridiculous, because I don't consider myself to have a "compiler person" background, but those same managers treated me as if I were a "compiler person." It's just a biased idea of what kinds of experiences, interests, and demographics a person who works on compilers should have.
The other day I posted a job posting for my team, and someone asked me if I was "hiring compiler folks as well." So, presumably, my current position is not something for "compiler folks?" I guess I was part of the "in group" before (a bona fide "compiler person!"), but now I'm not, based on the fact that I work on a "programming language tooling" team -- "tooling" must be a bad word among "compiler folks."
This is an especially sore spot for me because, being located in New York and with no interest in moving, I've often struggled to find open positions related to compilers and programming languages. Sure, I could work on these if I moved to California, but not here. I've been lucky to find what I could. But, meanwhile, I guess I've telegraphed my "compiler personhood" online, to the point that Stanford interns ask me for mentorship on how to "get into compilers." If I only knew! Apparently, there's some secret club I (used to?) belong to, so maybe I should tell these people to figure out the membership criteria. A lot of them seem more like "compiler people" than I've ever felt, and they live in California, so, I've always felt pretty envious of their position.
