the best SWE are outcome, impact and people oriented - good code is just the baseline

There’s so much great content in this dissertation, and it’s from 2016, but the things that made a great SWE then still hold true today.

Paul Luo Li lays out the concentric circle model of being a great SWE. I’m summarizing over 40 attributes that reminds me of the Dalio baseball card/dot collector approach to management.

Self directed curiosity engine that gets stuff done (Personal Characteristics)
Knows how to do their job effective within the system they operate (Decision Making)
Is a team player (Teammates)
Builds and Ships Software (Product)

This is over 300 pages long but well worth the review especially if you’re responsible for managing or setting career maps for engineers.

_{Quote Citation: Paul Luo Li, “What makes a great software engineer?”, 2016, https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/dissertations/Li2016Dissertation.pdf}