Fluent Web Development

Chapter 11. Egoless Programming

Up to this point, this book has been about technical problems. Architecture, tooling, the way the web fits together as a whole. Skills that matter, without question. But in the end they all stand in the shadow of a very different subject: ourselves, as people.

In twenty-five years in this industry, from intern to lead developer and architect, I have seen one thing confirmed over and over again: technical problems can always be solved somehow, no matter how hard they look. The things that truly get in our way are rarely technical. They are how we deal with our colleagues and the people closest to us. The people who depend on us, and the ones we depend on.

These breakdowns happen on every level: personal, cultural, historical. Someone shows up a little too confident and quietly makes a long-serving colleague feel replaceable. Someone else carries the responsibility for a decision but not the knowledge to make it, and digs in out of pride, holding up an entire project rather than admitting the gap. A senior engineer bats away a junior’s idea on reflex, and the junior never offers another one. A review comment lands on the wrong day and turns into a standoff, because the author hears “your code is bad” as “you are bad.” What every one of these breakdowns has in common is ego: not the loud, arrogant kind, but the quiet, everyday need to be right, to look capable, to defend what we’ve built. These were, without a doubt, the hardest challenges of my career, ...