Metadata
- Author: seangoedecke.com
- Full Title: Good Engineers Are Right, a Lot
- Category:#articles
- Document Tags: Development
- Summary: Good engineers are often correct in their technical decisions and statements. This reliability is a valuable trait that can be assessed based on how frequently they are right. While it’s impossible to always be correct, consistently being right is key to effective engineering.
- URL: https://seangoedecke.com/being-right-a-lot/
Highlights
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Good engineers are right, a lot. They’re right about concrete factual statements about how software systems work (e.g. endpoint X has rate limit Y). They’re right about concrete plans (e.g. we can’t add this check here, but it’ll work there). They’re right about a million small decisions that they make when they write code, which shows up in their code generally working and causing fewer bugs. (View Highlight)
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You can assess an engineer based on how smart they sound in conversation, whether they use light mode VSCode or dark mode vim, what their title is, and so on. But if you have the time, it’s far more reliable to assess them based on whether they’re right a lot. For technical colleagues, this assessment comes automatically: you can just ask yourself whether you feel default relaxed or suspicious when they make claims, or how much of a critical eye you naturally bring to review their PRs. Otherwise you can pay attention to what they say with confidence, and whether it turns out to be correct. If you’re an engineer, there’s a pretty good chance that your manager is quietly tracking this. (View Highlight)
📂 Articles | Последнее изменение: 07.02.2025 09:46