A 20-year-experienced CTO’s Advice “Don’t Be a Humble Developer”
A 20-year-experienced CTO’s Advice “Don’t Be a Humble Developer”
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Looking at this article realistically, yes, you do need to play the game to succeed in your career.
However, this attitude bothers me on a deep level. I believe there is a systematic issue here with how corporations recognise the work that their employees put in.
We discussed why some great developers don’t get their deserved recognition or financial benefits, and sometimes, some mediocre devs achieve more than the good ones.
This situation should not be occuring. Encouraging developers to be "less humble" is a bandaid solution. There are many skilled developers who are unable to just be "less humble", especially developers who are neuroatypical and suffer from, say, a generalized anxiety disorder. Or anyone who suffers with regular feelings of imposter syndrome no matter their successes. Why should these employees be punished for their managers not being able to appropriately evaluate the performance of their team?
I know it's not easy for managers to assess the performance alongside their other responsibilities. I do not know what the correct answer to this issue is. But certainly the correct answer is not this. It does work, but it will not solve the underlying issue that corporations have with appropriately evaluating the performance of their employees in a way that is not systematically ableist and otherwise unfairly punishing.
It's also really tough for a non technical manager to assess a technical person, which makes sense. We have to different strengths and parts to play in the system, they can't be expected to do their role and keep up with technical skills (if they ever had them to begin with). It's a shame that we're often encouraged to become more managerial to get ahead or to get more responsibility/"power" (in the sense of saying what we think needs to get done, or who should get recognition).
I really wish more companies would stop seeing managers as being bosses. I don't know why a lot of places seem to think that dictatorships in the workplaces are the way to go. I've had so much success in places where my manager saw me (a technical lead) as an equal partner on a project, where both our opinions were weighted equally. I think it helped give those more introverted developers a voice. Since my responsibilty was the technical side I was really able to stay on top if their work and know what they were actually capable of. Some of my colleagues have had the same experience and it's really helped us from keeping introverted talented devs from falling through the cracks.
I think the key is finding companies that are inherently technical (e.g. the CEO is a rockstar dev). I think if I see good code I do not care so much about how humble the developer is, I see it in the form of beautiful code.