I like this article particularly because I think the trope that there's something unique and different about software engineering is pretty toxic, both to we people in the field and people looking to employ people in the field. These days it feels a bit like another well known toxic field, finance, in that people conflate an outsized leverage for personal valor. It's laudable to do your work well and go home to the r…
The thing about being intelligent is that you have the capacity to find wisdom faster. I’ve worked with too many intelligent fools, and nearly all of them quit rather than face the consequences of their own actions.
I tend to stay too long, either cleaning up after my own messes or someone else’s. Maybe I watched too many westerns as a child. Who knows.
But I’d rather work with someone wise who can’t reinvent bloom filters from first principles than someone who could, and thinks doing so is a good idea.
There’s an ethical trap where you think you’re the only one here who can make something work, because now you’re on the hook to support it and if you have a negative opinion of your peers, how is that going to work out, do you think? Did you think? Or were you too busy wondering if you could do it to think about whether you should?
I think the advice, “never be the smartest person in a room” is just about the biggest bullshit in tech. Intelligent people cannot teach you to be like them. They can’t change your brain much more than you already have, just surviving school and university. But a wise person can teach you three new things before lunch, sometimes without even trying.
Don’t be the wisest person in a room, and if you must be, don’t denigrate the wisdom of beginners. Good teachers learn from their pupils.