Whenever I read an article that praises a software engineer as "great," I always wonder what that actually means. Is it the ability to solve problems using cod

Whenever I read an article that praises a software engineer as "great," I always wonder what that actually means. Is it the ability to solve problems using code? Is it performing maintenance? Is it the capability to navigate a socio-technological environment to build something? Or is it a mastery of technical fundamentals? In most other professions, "greatness" is often tied to the actual outcome of their work. A salesperson can say, "I sold XYZ units this month," a plumber can say, "I fixed XYZ bathrooms this month," and a soccer player can say, "I made XYZ goals or defended XYZ balls against the goal." However, when it comes to software, some people forget the importance of outcomes, or worse, claim some exceptionalism in this field. I'm not trying to be cynical here, but for me, it's quite challenging to establish if someone is great or not if we detach outcomes from the evaluation, regardless of the concept of "greatness" in this piece. At least for me, greatness has a large share of context, opportunity and concrete outcomes.