The Folly of Software Engineering

The Software Engineer's Mentality

Software Engineering is an intricate and complicated art. A software engineer must always consider the edge cases, the optimizations, trade-offs, the pros and the cons. I see tons of post reiterating this same concept: "A senior engineer is someone that constantly learns new technologies and thinks about their systems, challenges themselves to learn more, and always finds gaps to fill", or something tangent to that. Think of the software engineers role and the consequences of it, if there's a bug, the instinct is to blame the person that coded the feature, even when a team reviews the PRs, even when a product leader made decisions about functionality. I'm not saying only software engineers are blamed for problems, but in my experience, people tend to turn their heads towards the engineer first. Even within software, when the mobile app has a bug its often pointed at the mobile team, even when the back-end sends the wrong data. The point is that software engineers are constantly looking at their code, designs, architecture, whatever it may be as not good enough. There are cons, there are problems, and the engineer takes the responsibility to make sure these gaps are covered. In business when a software engineer brings up a problem, they are told to fix it. When QA finds a bug, the developer goes back and fixes it. The more edge cases and gaps an engineer finds on their own, the fewer they have to deal with through slow communications, and the "better their performance". I'm sure this concept relates to other engineering disciplines too, because there is the stereotype that the engineer is always complaining about a process, a decision, or a system, even outside the thing they are engineering.

The Problem

Finding gaps and trade-offs efficiently makes for an effective engineer. But over time, this leads to some real problems. This mindset is grown when we work on projects or even build things at work, and mentality is a fragile thing. Humans aren't meant to have multiple personalities, we actually call that a disorder. Because of this, a strong engineer with a healthy mind is someone who goes home and continues to look for trade-offs, gaps, and ultimately issues. Maybe this is a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem, do particular and incessant people become engineers, or does engineering reward these mentalities and ingrain them in the people that chose this route? I would argue the latter, but I'm not a psychologist nor psychiatrist, so I can only speak to my experiences. But think about what this does, in a world where our careers and professional accomplishments hold so much social weight, where our salaries determine our worth, and where our ability to outperform our peers tells us we have the genetic makeup to be the fittest, we encourage engineers to always look for problems. There is a reason Eastern philosophy often focuses on letting things be, being present, and being grateful for what we have; its because you have to enjoy life while you live it, else you end up living your whole life with the lens of nothing is ever good enough. Stoicism tells us to put our noses to the grindstone and work hard and engineering makes us doubt everything, which makes a peaceful life very difficult to attain.

The Balance

The truth is, nothing is ever perfect. There will always be a gap, there will always be a trade-off, there will always be a better way to build something. But when is it good enough? When can we look at what we've done and be grateful for how far we've come? And what happens when we accept we've done enough, do we run out of goals? What should we be driven by? I'm not sure how to answer these questions, but I don't think they really need to be answered. I've always been goal driven and its earned me a life where I'm always complaining about things that aren't good enough, and how I could have done something better. The truth is I'm healthy, active, I never worry about the heat or the AC, putting gas in my car, or putting food on the table. All things consider, I have an amazing life that I should be incredibly grateful for. But I constantly battle with that voice in my head that tells me if I work harder I could have more things for myself, it tells me I shouldn't take PTO because it puts project delivery at risk which looks bad professionally. It tells me I could set up my future family if I sacrifice fun times now and save for them later, even when I put 26% of my paycheck into my savings at a minimum, not enough. The folly of engineering is this idea that finding gaps, problems, issues, bugs, is what makes someone great. The truth is, a strong engineer knows good enough, can put in an honest effort, and be content with the progress they make. Society tells us to be THE best, when maybe we should just do OUR best.