“With great power, there must also come great responsibility“. Nope. In reality, this is not the case, in our industry, often I will see “With great power, there must also come great ego“.
I realised that when a person who thinks they are alpha whether in the overall package or in certain expertise, they tend to have a higher ego and lesser patience when dealing with people who are dumber in comparison. This often happens in the IT industry. Well, the traits are pretty obvious for gamers as well,
The ego that I’m saying here isn’t the ego that programmers that stop learning, in fact, these programmers that I’ve dealt with are very passionate in their industry, the only problem? They are more fond to deal with a computer rather than a person. In summary, they will think that they have some sort of superpower that can change the world and we need them.
In case you don’t know what is ego
The world is changing at a fast pace, smarter people are getting more, the age of getting rich is going younger, and the younger generation is a lot smarter than the previous generation in overall. It seems to be a positive phenomenon, but I see it as a disaster when overall people are getting smarter but with lesser wisdom.
Our education and our surroundings taught us to get educated and to be good in certain areas so that we can survive and make a better life in the coming future. But we’ve not been taught that wisdom is as important as getting smart and getting rich at the same time.
I’ve seen too many cases where the outperform programmers show off their attitudes. I’ve to admit these people have better skills than others, but lesser humble than the rest. They have higher IQ but lesser EQ, taking lesser opinions, especially when they already have the impression that the person is not smarter than him and he will refuse or refute without giving a reasonable reason. The person with a higher ego tends to have the traits of dislike working in a team with other teammates that they think are not on par with them. And most cases, people with egos are not willing to apologise for their mistakes.
I used to admire people who are smart, they can really learn things fast, they can solve complex equations, and they can understand something without giving more hints. But today I admire people who have wisdom, regardless if they are smart or not. People who are wise, on the other hand understand that smart is a gift but without hard work others will outsmart you too. Another level of wisdom is that they understand each person can be smart in certain domains, they don’t judge or hinder those people who can’t perform well in some areas, and they understand that these people just need to be in the right place.
We may be gifted that we learn a lot faster and solve equations faster than the rest. We can be bloated with our superior skills and endless victories. But we are seldom aware that skills can be replaced, and attitude can’t. Skills can bring you that far, but attitude is the wheel that stays with you until you’ve reached your goal.
Are you an egoist’s programmer?