Engineers that Give a Shit

Great Engineers

I’ve met a few engineers I would describe as great. Those you can trust will get the job done, and in the best way possible. There are many qualities of those engineers, I recently read a paper that was all about what makes a great software engineer - spoiler alert: many qualities!

However, there is one quality that I see in almost all the engineers I would describe as great, they give a shit. They give a shit about their craft, they give a shit about users, they give a shit about where the product is going.

Doesn’t everyone?

It seems intuitive, you’d think everybody gives a shit!

Reality is, everybody has their own priorities, and for many folks being an engineer is just a job that pays the bills and they are happy with it staying that way. Many folks just do whatever they committed to doing, and intentionally avoid any fires, intentionally avoid any tough conversations, and intentionally avoid work as long as it doesn’t reflect badly on them. In other words, many people simply don’t give a shit.

This is not to say that those people are wrong. It’s totally OK for it to be just a job, that’s healthy! And I’ve seen some of those so called “great” engineers spend exactly the 8 hours (or less!) and create good boundaries and work life balance. It’s more that those great engineers genuinely care. They care when a user reports a bug, and are usually the first to respond. They care that the cost for a service is multiple times what it needs to be, they care that the API is not well documented and that users seem to be confused about it.

Great engineers’ priorities at work align with the priorities of the product/company and everyone around them feels it. I’ve been lucky enough to have some of those engineers as mentors and it’s starting to shape how I approach software engineering all together.