Software engineers should be a little bit cynical

Summary

A lot of my readers call me a cynic when I say things like “you should do things that make your manager happy” or “big tech companies get to decide what projects you work on”. Alex Wennerberg put the “Sean Goedecke is a cynic” case well in his post Software Engineers Are Not Politicians. Here are some excerpts: I have no doubt that [Sean’s] advice is quite effective for navigating the upper levels of an organization dedicated to producing a large, mature software product. But what is lost is any sort of conception of value. Is it too naive to say that engineers are more than “tools in a political game”, they are specialized professionals whose role is to apply their expertise towards solving meaningful problems? The irony is that this kind of thinking destroys a company’s ability to actually make money … the idea that engineers should begin with a self-conception of doing what their manager tells them to is, to me, very bleak. It may be a good way to operate smoothly within a bureaucratic organization, and of course, one must often make compromises and take direction, but it is a bad way to do good work. I can see why people would think this way. But I love working in big tech companies! I do see myself as a professional solving meaningful problems. And I think navigating the organization to put real features or improvements in the hands of users is an excellent way - maybe the best way - to do good work. Why do I write such cynical posts, then? Well, I think that a small amount of cynicism is necessary in order to think clearly about how organizations work, and to avoid falling into the trap of being overly cynical. In general, I think good engineers ought to be a little bit cynical. The idealist view is more cynical than idealists think One doctrinaire “idealist” view of software engineering goes something like this. I’m obviously expressing it in its most lurid form, but I do think many people believe this more or less literally: We live in a late-stage-capitalis...