This is a story of a developer. Maybe it will sound similar to yours or maybe not.
When he started developing he was full of ideas on how to do stuff. Straight out of university, he thought he knew how to do everything and would take on the world.
Soon after he started his first job, he noticed things where actually not all as he expected, and he focus on learning from people that shared with him ideas, patterns, etc. That blameless environment didn't last long, as blame when things fail where thrown to him and said he was not as reliable as other more senior developers. He was also not taken serious in meeting due his small experience in real world.
This broke the young developer and he embarked on a mission to become The Senior Developer as its lead requested. He went into practices he didn't knew, created and used tooling to validate the quality of what he was doing, etc. Until one day he was pad on his back as one of the main reliable person on the team.
So with great honor one day. The developer became the lead developer of the team and was asked to move the project and create a new team. He embarked on search of the best of the best (in his thoughts and experience), but did not find what he wanted. So his boss tired said take this person and he will do the work. Things went wrong and this developer blamed the other new developer. He finally found new developers and straight the project as to its standards, with his way of thinking.
He was proud with he chest up high explaining how to do stuff by his experience, the practices where the correct ones that strategy also, the code for amazing. Nevertheless the product seem to still do very similar things to when he started, but objectives where met so everything was great.
He moved into new places to work to find something new. He learned from other people new things and took them as the way to do things.
His experience is what he talked from all the time, why and how they did things in the past. One day he found a similar developer to him, a person that will not pull back of technical discussion based on his experience. The issue was they where never able to get to an agreement point, so delivery was slow as hell. Also younger developers felt they had to sit back as the senior people discussed things.
After watching their environment was not very healthy, they talked and ended up thinking that they did not really need to go for the best option, as if it worked it will unblock things, and they could be change at some point on the future. They understood nothing was written in stone.
They also started sharing more responsibility to the entire team sitting back and letting the entire team bring thoughts and idea. Soon after that team was feeling like the best place to work for them and their peers. It was becoming a safer and better environment to work, and things where getting done.
One day the developer thought for himself what changed?! his technical experience had not change, but the code seemed more natural and simpler, the practices allowed them to release all the time, he trust everyone of the team. It actually click on his mind... his ego was gone.
He went into new things always with the idea that ego was not good. He grew different teams all delivering value and making people feel full of their job. He still shares passionately his ideas, as he likes conversations and learn from everyone.
Nowadays his biggest regret that comes to mind often are those developers along the way his ego did wrong to.
His mind at this point is set on how can he help others to break the circle of ego, specially the so called "Seniors".
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