[bjornsing]

I don’t mind calling myself a 10x engineer, but it’s of course better when others do so. ;)

Honestly I’m quite tired of this false humility norm. Seems to me it’s mostly about redistributing the fruits of common labors from those that focus on the craft and try to improve their productivity, towards the socially focused “humility experts”. I much prefer working with cocky 10x engineers rather than these humility policing 1x ones…

[yourapostasy]

> Honestly I’m quite tired of this false humility norm.

It is a matter of where you focus your humility.

Your accomplishments and deliveries? Absolutely market how they are 10X impacts than the norm. No need to label them "10X" of course. Point out their impacts, and the impact craters on problem spaces label themselves. And thereby you get labeled.

How much you rely upon everyone around you and they in turn rely upon you? Absolutely show humility here. These days, 10X impacts don't happen frequently until entire teams are coordinating together over long periods of time.

The knowledge tree in our industry is effectively infinite in all directions now. No matter how broad your reach, there are always more topics you haven't been exposed to. No matter how deep your "T" stem areas, there is always more depth to plumb even if you are at the cutting edge, for the fundamental limits of physics is the only true bottom of that trench.

Humility is absolutely essential when offering to help others and organically receive help from others to mutually cover everyone's gaps across this functionally infinite canvas of knowledge when taking down objectives together.

[bjornsing]

> Humility is absolutely essential when offering to help others and organically receive help from others to mutually cover everyone's gaps across this functionally infinite canvas of knowledge when taking down objectives together.

I don't know... Humans have a very strong tendency to promote cultural norms that will make them successful. So the socially focused "humility experts" want to make the game about humility. One of their IMHO less ethical moves is to sabotage others who do not want to play their game.

I'm good at writing software and leading software teams. I want the game to be about that: the software. I have no problem what so ever with people being proud of their work. I'm not going to refuse to help someone because I don't think they are humble enough. It would never even cross my mind. It would defeat the purpose: creating great software.

[yourapostasy]

> One of their IMHO less ethical moves is to sabotage others who do not want to play their game.

Oh, those are straight up assholes in a different clothing of the week. Yeah, once I identify one of those, I route around them if I can, or they find that my teams and I will only work with them on a very formalized, documented in the open, by the book, unfailingly positive and polite basis. If I have to, the juniors I advise will see their work that is unavoidably interfacing with such people championed by other managers and me.

It vastly slows down the delivery velocity around said person, but I've found no other solution when I'm forced to work with them as they're utterly toxic to work with otherwise. Such a person will find the Nash equilibrium adjusts the more they give up said behavior, but in my experience I've never seen one of these types turn completely around (but that might just be a function of only consulting and not sticking around long enough to find out).

[throwaway0147]

The problem in my experience is that cocky attitudes have a tendency to spread and it creates a really difficult work environment.

You also have to take the Dunning-Kruger effect into account, where most developers aren't able to evaluate themselves correctly. In our work we have a tendency to view thing as "right" and "wrong". I often find people with a few years of experience to be the worst. They have enough experience to recognise that they are more knowledgable than juniors, but lack the overall picture.

Some even come out of studies this way, because they are used to being the smartest in their class and have built up their egos. "Why is the old shitty code written this way, they must have been stupid? We need to rewrite it in the framework I read about in the blog last week". Only experience will teach them that things are not that simple. If they are not exposed to the right working environments in their first jobs, they will spread this negativity for years until they (hopefully) grow as persons.

Pro tip: If something looks unnecessarily complex, there may actually be a reason for it. In the case where you need to rewrite/refactor working stable code, don't try to negatively push down others to enhance your own feeling of superiority. Keep the arguments as objective as possible. If you have tracked the code to specific individuals, at least talk to them in private first to get their input instead of assuming you know best.

[bjornsing]

Thanks for this. These are all real problems. But why is the solution that I change my behaviour?

This is exactly what I'm tired of: Because other people are assholes with big frail egos who do not understand their place in the world... I have to change? No, they have to change.

Putting this on me just glosses over and prolongs the real problem: That a lot of people with frail big egos need to realize they are not all that and come down to earth.

[notac]

honestly from reading how you write about yourself, I would immediately drop you into the "thinks more highly of themselves than they ought". Bucket. People who call themselves high performing rarely are in my experience. It's the humble people who learn and grow for the joy of it who truly shine.

[bjornsing]

Being proud of your abilities and accomplishments is not mutually exclusive with curiosity and joy of learning.

More generally: Your perceived correlations are not necessarily causal relationships.

[joxel]

Thanks for this. There’s too much of me in this than I would like..

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

There's a difference between cocky and confident.

[P5fRxh5kUvp2th]

I agree with this, one of the things I absolutely hate seeing (on this site, no less) is the whole "imposter syndrome". It's basically humble bragging.

This is my strength and I'm absolutely better at it than most. There's lots of things I'm completely inadequate at, this aint one of 'em.

[whywhywhywhy]

The lie that being humble is a virtue is something you have to unlearn.

In reality if you won’t shout about how great your work is how can you expect anyone else to care about it.

[noufalibrahim]

I think it's a marketing thing. I'd call myself that if i were attending a job interview perhaps and trying to sell myself.

I wouldn't call myself that if I were speaking to a junior developer and helping him with something that's difficult enough to sap his confidence.