
For Developers, Ego Is the Enemy - Phatossi
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/ego-is-the-enemy-for-software-developers-585909fb0501
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jjn2009
The dynamic for founders is completely different from employees in terms of
work ethic, a job is a job, a company you own a large number of shares is a
lifestyle choice of dedication. Nothing about the quotes seems to reflect a
lack of ego, I would argue they all had a bit of ego in their earlier years.
Each of the quoted were set on making a profound difference in world with
their ventures. That in itself likely requires that you maintain the idea that
your efforts and ideas have significant importance in the world and
transitively you as a person have profound importance aka ego.

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Phatossi
A short excerpt from the article:

"When you hear the word enemy, you probably think about regular expressions,
bugs, deployments, meetings, and deadlines. Actually, in our quest to reach
our goals and become the software developers we want to be, we are usually our
own worst enemies. Ego is what prevents us from asking for help, learning,
collaborating and working hard."

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legostormtroopr
Larry Wall disagrees - Laziness, Impatience, Hubris - and I'm inclined to
believe him.

To succeed at programming requires a level of ego, if you don't tackle a
problem from the "I'm going to win" mindset, the compiler, the interpreter,
the debugger will beat you every time.

~~~
regulation_d
I had been at my first developer gig for about 6 months when we hired a new
team lead. He was a good leader and a talented developer. I wanted to learn as
much from him as I could. In my first 1:1 with him, I asked him to be as
brutally honest with me as he felt I could handle, in his feedback, be it code
reviews or whatever. There were many moments in the next year that I regretted
asking that. But those were the moments of weakness, moments when my ego was
taking a beating and I didn't think I could handle one more PR comment. If I
had deferred to my ego, if I had intimated that I couldn't handle that
standard, that would have been a mistake.

Hubris is great in the binary. This thing is going to happen. Or like you say,
"I'm going to win." It may be less helpful in the gradient.

Feedback may not be painful for everyone, but it is for me. And it takes
reigning in my ego to be as receptive to feedback as I should be.

