No Good Engineer Is Arrogant
agilitza.com
agilitza.com
But the problem with this approach is that in real life the majority of people are not like this. Many people are vastly overconfident and arrogant in their skills, I've had encounters with very good developers who simple refused to even hear an alternative solution or who did not do the most basic stuff to verify certain things before starting implementing them even though someone who had tons of experience in a certain niche compared to him told him to.
So a truly great engineer also needs to be arrogant/assertive/loud as that is the only way to fight other arrogant people. The "quiet confident" engineers opinion will be overruled by loud incomptent engineers.
physically large, loud, bossy, no doubt talented but relentlessly seeking to shout out others, "look at me" more than others, take control of budgets and company leadership at every opportunity.. and do some math. Build a system of slave-like labor from wanna-be's and then mercilessly and ruthlessly take their work as your own, demand that it is all yours, and take legal control with "investors" on your side.
source: direct contact with said jerk Wolfram
What is the underlying cause here? Or is this just a product of group psychology...(?) I feel like it's typically weak and/or incompetent management but hesitating to jump right to that because it's largely out of most people's control beyond a job change.
I don't think you need to be arrogant, but you do need to know how to argue rationally. At least this works quite well with germanic-origin folks, maybe not so well in other contexts.
Another thing that helps is reputation, you do need to build that and that allows your arguments to be heard. No need really to be arrogant and loud IMO still.
This reputation thing, also brings other problems, because it's not good when people don't challenge you, then you need to find skeptics. This is very necessary when you do high end stuff.
Foundations of Arrogance: A Broad Survey and Framework for Research - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8101990/
Evidence for arrogance: On the relative importance of expertise, outcome, and manner - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5500344/
I would not call Linus Torvalds or Steve Jobs or Henry Ford humble...
This article is AI generated sentimental clickbait.
If you have true substance.. you have earned the right to operate in a certain kind of way to the extent that your word can be trusted more than others.
Why is this so difficult to understand? lol
That's exactly the reason why concrete examples help make things clearer ...
I kept this one intentional as a thesis statement, but the concrete examples live in the companion pieces — like a bug that took 7 years to find because I kept assuming my mental model was right (https://agilitza.com/blog/the-7-year-bug-that-took-3-minutes...).
That one's the humility and persistence lesson in action.
I do use AI tools in my writing process — the ideas, stories, and opinions are mine (20+ years of them), but I use AI to help structure and polish the prose.
I think this is where most technical writing is heading, and I'm still finding the right balance between efficiency and keeping my natural voice. Appreciate the feedback.
Not if you want anyone to actually bother reading it. I want to read what you have to say, flaws and all. Not what comes after the slop machine did a pass on your work.
> This isn’t a sign of incompetence. It’s a sign that you’re actually doing real work.
> Your value as an engineer isn’t in executing the same playbook forever. It’s in expanding the domain of what’s possible.
> That experience doesn’t produce arrogance. It produces humility.
> They’re not confident that they already have all the answers. They’re confident that they’ll find them.