Great Startup Engineers (opens in new tab)

So great startup engineers should have focus, compassion, balance, responsibility, and openness. When would you ever not desire these traits in someone? The opposite is scatter-brained, indifferent, unbalanced, irresponsible, and uncommunicative; all rather undesirable traits.

I'd much prefer to learn about some trade-offs. Is lacking any one of these traits a deal-breaker? What if someone's very focused and compassionate, but a little irresponsible?

And most importantly, how does one evaluate these traits?

None of the qualities mentioned here are really specific to startups. Even if you work in a big company with lots of product managers and marketing people, being able to focus, take responsibility and empathize with your users is key to being a good developer. And definitely good qualities to have if you ever want to be promoted beyond an entry-level job.

I went in expecting something about dedication and ability to go the extra mile and be a "rockstar"—but instead it was a refreshingly short and focused list of often undervalued traits. Nice article.

I have a problem refocusing again and again. How does one go about that? Are there any resources that can help one with that. I am very comfortable with focusing on one thing and getting it done, but as soon as I switch contexts, I take a while to get up to speed.

Compassion is a great one, a trait I feel like we don't spend enough time talking about as an element of success. I've worked with many extremely talented, genuinely bright people whose business skills suffered because of a lack of compassion and empathy: for their users, coworkers, or people they generally (and probably correctly) considered less intelligent than themselves. Making a conscious and genuine effort to understand someone else's position and needs will get you MUCH further than dogmatic self-righteousness - even if you really are right. ;)

He is missing one thing a great start-up engineer should have: a great big chunk of equity, preferably all of it.

Stop blogging and add a fucking progress bar and transfer speed indicator to your file transfer app, ffs.