5 ms·

Pretty much spot on. The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. Take out any of those an

Pretty much spot on. The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. Take out any of those and you get either nothing or a disaster. But if all come together, you will have someone on your team who doesn't just recognize that missed opportunity the other excellent other engineers already realized, but actively go against the plans of at least one level of management in order to do what's right for the company. They tend to create a lot of friction, but can often save a project. I personally love working with these kinds of people as I was formerly one of them — and they can and often do make the best managers later on (funnily enough, I've heard similar stories in the bio of almost any technology leader I respect). Having made the mistake more than one time of accidentally enabling people who didn't have the loyalty / optimism or technical excellence parts though, I get why these kinds of people are usually held in place in large organizations. The resulting friction, bickering and havoc can as well break teams and companies.

birdyrooster 5y ago
Very best engineers, nothing, and disasters. Which are you?
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  BTW, for the down-voters, this was rhetorical question and not a personal attack. The GP comment created this dichotomy and I was just pointing it out.
geoduck14 5y ago
> The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. You are absolutely right. I'd like to point out, that as one person, I've been both depending on the role. If I'm in a new space with new tech, I need to learn before I have the technical excellence. If I don't feel safe, I won't have courage to challenge leadership. If don't have hope, I won't have optimism in the future.
- rjzzleep 5y ago
  I find that boxed thinking quite problematic. Plenty of great solutions came without loyalty or optimism. Why did we throw positive thinking into the mix of otherwise confrontantional systems. I say confrontational systems, because the only way to actually spark change in a system that has been systematically extinguishing sparks of change is actually confrontation. And the very fact that confrontation as such is now associated with negative emotion (same with conflict actually) goes hand in hand with the top level comment on this issue. Confrontation/conflict is bad, optimism is good. Confrontration is how you bring attention to a problem. Conflict is what happens when that dominant idea is challenged by another idea.
  - andrekandre 5y ago
    Confrontration is how you bring attention to a problem. Conflict is what happens when that dominant idea is challenged by another idea. both of these are difficult to act on or enable if management doesnt make it worth while to do so (because of blame, micromanagement, politics etc) what i mean to say is, confrontation/conflict is a normal part of debugging reality, and is healthy as long as there is an open/healthy system to enable it

birdyrooster 5y ago

Very best engineers, nothing, and disasters. Which are you?

birdyrooster 5y ago
BTW, for the down-voters, this was rhetorical question and not a personal attack. The GP comment created this dichotomy and I was just pointing it out.

geoduck14 5y ago

> The very best engineers often have a mix of technical excellence, courage / nonconformism and loyalty / optimism. You are absolutely right. I'd like to point out, that as one person, I've been both depending on the role. If I'm in a new space with new tech, I need to learn before I have the technical excellence. If I don't feel safe, I won't have courage to challenge leadership. If don't have hope, I won't have optimism in the future.

rjzzleep 5y ago
I find that boxed thinking quite problematic. Plenty of great solutions came without loyalty or optimism. Why did we throw positive thinking into the mix of otherwise confrontantional systems. I say confrontational systems, because the only way to actually spark change in a system that has been systematically extinguishing sparks of change is actually confrontation. And the very fact that confrontation as such is now associated with negative emotion (same with conflict actually) goes hand in hand with the top level comment on this issue. Confrontation/conflict is bad, optimism is good. Confrontration is how you bring attention to a problem. Conflict is what happens when that dominant idea is challenged by another idea.
- andrekandre 5y ago
  Confrontration is how you bring attention to a problem. Conflict is what happens when that dominant idea is challenged by another idea. both of these are difficult to act on or enable if management doesnt make it worth while to do so (because of blame, micromanagement, politics etc) what i mean to say is, confrontation/conflict is a normal part of debugging reality, and is healthy as long as there is an open/healthy system to enable it