Development Crutches; What Makes a Good Engineer?
Author: Joseph | Filed under: Coding, ProjectsIn my time as a software engineer, I have worked with many people. Over the years, I have met very talented engineers, and done my best to learn from them. I have had four “mentors” throughout my career, in three positions, and they have all been intelligent, helpful individuals that have helped me ramp-up on projects, and enhance my understanding of interesting fields of study. I fondly remember working with Brian Moore and learning a good deal about how the JVM works, especially with regard to garbage collection. My mentor during my internship at Pitney Bowes was very helpful at focusing my fresh-from-college mind to real-world tasks. My coworkers at my current position are all very skilled in their respective areas of IP Telephony, and have been doing this since before I graduated high school. Throughout all of these jobs, all of these people, I have never felt awkward asking a question, and I have been rewarded with bits and pieces of their knowledge over time.
On the other side of this coin, I have also met a handful of people who are not very talented at all. I’ve met “Oracle specialists” who seem to not know the first thing about designing a relational database structure. I’ve seen Java UI designers who can barely write a line of Java code, beyond what their “GUI Builder” creates for them. And I’ve seen engineers claiming to be a “domain expert” in certain things get called out as incorrect by a skilled engineer and a Google search.






