Things good engineers do

Dear new developer,

I found this post covered some things that good software engineers do. It doesn’t focus on the technical aspects, but on other aspects of software development. Things they do:

• Ask for help
• Work on one thing at a time
• Prioritise unblocking

My favorite quote:

In software development we rarely have the luxury of a todo list with a single item on it. Despite this, we are not able to work on two things simultaneously. Every time you work on one thing and change to another you pay the cost of mentally (and sometimes in development environment) context switching. As a result the most efficient way to work is generally to take one task to completion before starting another task.

These are all key things for engineers to do. The first makes sure you aren’t beating your head against the wall unnecessarily. The second makes sure you can focus on one thing and avoid context switching. For many kinds of development work, this is the most efficient way to accomplish a task. The third acknowledges that you should optimize for team productivity over individual productivity.

Three great pieces of advice. Worth reading the whole post, “Some Things Good Engineers Do”.

Sincerely,

Dan