Strengths Are Your Weaknesses

Summary

“People are package deals; you take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin.” — Steve Jobs I’ve noticed something interesting about almost every engineer I’ve managed: their biggest strengths and their most frustrating weaknesses are often the exact same trait showing up in different contexts. I learned this lesson personally when I was still a junior engineer. My ability to code quickly made me very productive — I’d often ship features in half the time estimated. My manager praised my speed constantly. Well, until one day… During a particularly painful postmortem, we discovered that a production issue happened because of an edge case I had missed in my rush to complete the feature. My strength (coding speed) and my weakness (occasionally overlooking details) weren’t separate traits — they were the exact same characteristic showing up differently depending on the context. This isn’t just true for me or a few people — it’s nearly universal. The qualities we celebrate in our team members are usually the same ones causing our biggest headaches. They’re not separate traits; they’re two sides of the same coin. So what can we do about this? Three things have helped me: Get real about this duality in your 1:1s. Most people see their strengths and weaknesses as separate things. They’re not. In 1:1s, I’ll say something like: “Your ability to dive deep into problems is why you find solutions nobody else can. It’s also why you sometimes miss deadlines. Same trait, different outcomes.” This simple reframing helps people stop beating themselves up over their “flaws.” Be crystal clear about context. Don’t make people guess when their natural tendencies help versus hurt. One of my engineers was incredibly collaborative—wouldn’t make a single decision without getting everyone’s input. I told him exactly when this worked and when it didn’t: “For architecture decisions? Get all the input you want. For day-to-day coding decisi...