Metadata
- Author: Kent Beck
- Full Title:: The Impossibility of Making an Elite Engineer
- Category:: 🗞️Articles
- Document Tags:: Career tips,
- URL:: https://tidyfirst.substack.com/p/the-impossibility-of-making-an-elite?_bhlid=ccb022d318f976f0168afe4f37a05a0aa8312c8c
- Finished date:: 2024-09-11
Highlights
Longevity/diversity. Elite engineers stick with projects long enough to see the consequences of their decisions. Insight is best mined deep in maintenance. At the same time, elite engineers have enough diversity of projects to separate context-dependent lessons from more general ones. (View Highlight)
Success/failure. Elite engineers need to succeed enough to maintain confidence and initiative but they also need to fail enough to question themselves and their assumptions when doing so is valuable. (View Highlight)
Mentored/self-directed. Most elite engineers can point to one or more mentors who changed the trajectory of their career. Elite engineers are also self-directed learners, trusting their curiosity as a compass pointing towards future growth. (View Highlight)
Urgency/slack. Elite engineers work hard, but lots of folks work hard. Elite engineers have the habit of investing the margin in personal growth. When that odd hour or two isn’t likely to yield a great new feature, it can still yield useful learning. (View Highlight)