Programer's Ego
Ego is a common topic among programmers, we all know that one who thinks of himself above the rest because he is capable of implementing a Red-Black tree, while there is no issue with this alone, you need to be mindful of not creating a toxic environment around you.
Impostor Syndrome
Many of us try to balance this being Modest or Humble by never allowing compliments get to our heads. At the same time, we should be careful not to suffer the Impostor Syndrome in which we cannot measure our capabilities.
When not to be Humble?
You must walk that thin line between those 2 extremes when a co-worker asks for your opinion
Could you review my Pull Request?
That's not the moment to doubt or be humble Comment, Approve, Request Changes are three valid options which we should evaluate, review, and sincerely provide feedback based on our previous knowledge and experience.
The good practices that apply, flows, code and algorithms optimizations, all those little things that give us comfort on the weekly releases.
When to be human?
That shyness and humble has their place, you must grab to it while you are performing the review,
- Evaluate the code, not the developer
- Be reasonable on why each change
- Highlight those clever solutions
Summary, be Proud of your Opinion, be Humble expressing it
Be proud of what you have accomplished, was built from your experience, reading, writing, doing, living those Eureka moments fixing bugs, and solving complex issues.
Be humble the way you communicate your opinion, be human, connect with the people you want to share your knowledge with. Remember you were also the new guy who had leaders to look up. You want to be listened not just heard.
Top comments (1)
I totally agree. It helps to be aware of our areas of improvement but also of our strengths. Problem is with the extremes, some times we either think way too highly of ourselves or we suffer from impostor syndrome. And when for example reviewing someone else's work I think the key is to be objective, not being mean, complimenting the good stuff, basically how we would like others to review our stuff.