A Unified Theory of Ego, Empathy, and Humility at Work

Summary

In our daily lives empathy and humility are obvious virtues we aspire to. They keep our egos in check. Less obvious is that they’re practical skills in the workplace, too. I think, for developers and technical leaders in particular, that the absence of ego is the best way to further our careers and do great work.In the simplest of terms the ego is the characteristic of personhood that enables us to practice self-reflection, self-awareness, and accountability for the actions or decisions we take.However, the ego also motivates us to reframe our perception of the world in whatever way keeps us centered in it. Each of us is perpetually driven to justify our place in the world. This constant self-justification is like an engine that idles for our entire lives, and it requires constant fine-tuning. When it runs amok this is what we call a “big” ego.Breaking News! Developers Have Egos!I’m not thinking only of the 10x engineer stereotype, although I’ve worked with such folks in the past. Ego is more nuanced than that. Besides the most arrogant developer in the room throwing their weight around, our egos manifest in hundreds of ways that are much harder to detect.As developers we’re more susceptible to letting our egos run free. The nature of our work is so technical that to others it can seem obscure, arcane, or even magical. Sometimes we don’t do enough to actively dispel that notion—and just like that half the work of self-justification is already done for us.Very often it’s not intentional. The simplest example is the overuse of jargon and acronyms. We all do it, but as Jeremy Keith explains:Still, I get why initialisms run rampant in technical discussions. You can be sure that most discussions of particle physics would be incomprehensible to outsiders, not necessarily because of the concepts, but because of the terminology.Simply mashing a few letters together can be empowering for ourselves while being exclusionary for others. It’s an artifact—albeit a small one—of ou...