Engineers do get promoted for writing simple code

Summary

It’s a popular joke among software engineers that writing overcomplicated, unmaintainable code is a pathway to job security. After all, if you’re the only person who can work on a system, they can’t fire you. There’s a related take that “nobody gets promoted for simplicity”: in other words, engineers who deliver overcomplicated crap will be promoted, because their work looks more impressive to non-technical managers. There’s a grain of truth in this, of course. As I’ve said before, one mark of an elegant solution is that it makes the problem look easy (like how pro skiers make terrifying slopes look doable). However, I worry that some engineers take this too far. It’s actually a really bad idea to over-complicate your own work. Simple software engineering does get rewarded, and on balance will take you further in your career. Non-technical managers are not stupid The main reason for this is exactly the cynical point above: most managers are non-technical and cannot judge the difficulty of technical work. Of course, in the absence of anything better, managers will treat visible complexity as a mark of difficulty. But they usually do have something better to go on: actual results. Compare two new engineers: one who writes easy-looking simple code, and one who writes hard-looking complex code. When they’re each assigned a task, the simple engineer will quickly solve it and move onto the next thing. The complex engineer will take longer to solve it, encounter more bugs, and generally be busier. At this point, their manager might prefer the complex engineer. But what about the next task, or the task after that? Pretty soon the simple engineer will outstrip the complex one. In a year’s time, the simple engineer will have a much longer list of successful projects, and a reputation for delivering with minimal fuss. Managers pay a lot of attention to engineers with a reputation like that. Of course, the complex engineer might try a variety of clever tricks to avoid their fat...