Who was the best developer you’ve worked with — and what made them stand out?
Posted by PhaseStreet9860@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 120 comments
I’m curious to hear about the best developers people here have worked with or learned from.
What made them exceptional? Was it their calmness under pressure, problem-solving ability, communication, system design skills, or their ability to quickly learn and adapt? Or something else entirely?
In my experience, the best ones had really strong fundamentals. They could pick up any tech stack, break down complex problems clearly, and focus on solving the actual business need rather than just writing code. They also listened carefully, chose the right tools for the job, and built solutions that were simple and easy for users to work with.
Would love to hear your experiences and what traits you think truly define a top developer.
manu-adina@reddit
Wasn’t there a similar thread like this, and majority of the people said it’s autism ?
Gooeyy@reddit
If so, that doesn’t align with my experience. Some autistic coworkers of mine have been great, some have been genuine nightmares
trwolfe13@reddit
Yeah, being autistic hurts as much as it helps sometimes. My brain can’t help but get hung up on tiny details, which can be great, but it also means I can’t let it go when someone submits a PR to add a
CustomersStorewhen the others are calledCarStoreandOrderStore.I’ve spent most of my career being told by management that my standards are unrealistic and I’m too critical.
BetterWhereas3245@reddit
I'd back you up in any code review that `CustomersStore` is an unacceptable abomination.
styroxmiekkasankari@reddit
There’s the flipside that every team needs someone who is ”too critical”. I’ve found that especially when teams lack clear and proper technical leadership the standards tend to average out between how lax/anal the IC’s are. It’s good to have critical people to balance the ones who are not.
Always better to have clear standard setters but that’s not reality everywhere.
Gooeyy@reddit
Fwiw, but I do think consistency in names matters more than it’s often given credit for. Especially during 2am fire fighting sessions.
day_tripper@reddit
To be fair CustomersStore is wrong and an abomination.
gogonzo@reddit
The key is just a dash of autism, not the whole shaker
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
Yeah it was on cscq
joshocar@reddit
It depends on the work. If you are dealing with something that is very non-deterministic or requiring divergent reasoning/creativity, being on the spectrum can hinder you. If the work is very detailed focused, requires linear reasoning, and isn't customer facing then they can have a real advantage.
I worked closely with a guy on the spectrum for a project and his focus on the minute details caused the system to be over constrained and unnecessarily hard to commission/validate - "We don't need the constraints/tolerances to be down to the mm, ~3-4cm is 'good enough.'" Also, his solutions were highly specific to the exact use rather then generic solutions that could be adapted to other, similar use cases. It was a constant fight to get them to loosen requirements because it was perceived as reducing quality, which wasn't true at all.
AD1066@reddit
The non-deterministic point is interesting. I have a coworker who is on the spectrum and they are really struggling with Claude Code adoption, whereas most everyone else has seen productivity gains. (Everyone on the team has 8-25 years experience and I consider these real gains, not just vibe coding or lower quality output.)
I’m curious if this is a documented phenomenon with respect to AI.
engineerFWSWHW@reddit
The best one i worked with before isn't very technically strong, but actually his technical capability is average, but he is a good lead, listens very well, and doesn't break down under pressure/stress and knows when to delegate. Never blamed everyone and always give the impression that everything will be alright. I have a high respect to that guy.
ReasonNervous2827@reddit
How would you feel about a lead that knew that things were unrecoverable from a business standpoint, and made individual contact to advise people to start looking and also helped them land in other places with more runway?
I had to do that recently, and only one of the six people laid off did not have an offer in hand by the time the axe dropped.
Prestigious_Song_993@reddit
interesting take, but isn't technical strength crucial for a lead too?
Abject-Substance1133@reddit
idk why ur being downvoted for a question
wisconsinbrowntoen@reddit
idk why you take down votes as a personal attack and not just a convenient way to say "no"
Puzzleheaded-Ear3381@reddit
Because it tends to hide the opinion, without providing any argumentation
SolidDeveloper@reddit
Not necessarily.
nanotree@reddit
In my company, we make a distinction between tech lead and team lead for this reason. Often, the two skillsets do not converge, and someone besides the team lead emerges as the lead decision maker when it comes to high-level and lower-level technical decisions.
Tech lead's are like SME's that primarily serve the role of developer. They are pulled in when no one else has a clear answer. Team lead is the delegator, first-reaponder, and steers the team when they get off course while doing limited development work with the understanding that part of their efforts each sprint are dedicated to administrative type tasks.
Blueson@reddit
I find too often that teams puts the strongest technical person in a lead role which leads to them being bogged up doing anything but utilizing their skills. From personal experience I often think people who are very strong technically seem to lack some of the social skills required to lead a team.
A lead needs to have technical strength but there is more value putting somebody with lower technical skills but more versatile in business and social competence in the role. I'd argue both of those criteria are worth more.
bluetista1988@reddit
For a lead who is going to be doing lots of coordinating with non-tech folks, translating requirements, keeping tabs on work completion, etc I think it's fine to have someone who is average but aware of their limitations.
Side note, you shouldn't be eating downvotes for asking IMO.
veechip@reddit
its definitely not the most important thing as a lead. it can also depend on his workplace set up too but the lead can also act like a liaison between product owners and devs, or just straight up be a PM
QwikStix42@reddit
This sounds quite a bit like my current lead, at least a few years ago; he was calm and fair with feedback and tried his best to unblock his team.
However, he is now also my manager, and while that sounded perfectly fine on paper, it’s obvious that he wasn’t given much management training at all. He now frequently puts development delays that are usually out of my control (such as bad dependency changes) against me and says I don’t deliver fast enough. He also tells me to show more ownership over the codebase, yet only gives me low-hanging fruit maintenance tasks that don’t really allow me to sink my teeth into things. He has also threatened me with a PIP in the past month.
Luckily, I have just signed a new offer, but it’s wild to me how he went from one of my most respected leads to one of my least favorite managers…
Odd_Perspective3019@reddit
it’s not him it’s management a lot of engineers are really good solo then get promoted with no mgmt skills or guidance, just cause they’re good solo doesn’t mean they should manage
tcpukl@reddit
That sounds like mine as well.
They were my first lead programmer when I was fresh out of university.
I also hired them on my team about 15 years later as a different company.
Candid_Bad3551@reddit
My current mentor. When I had the choice of picking out of 3 teams. I chose him
pence_secundus@reddit
He was a ranting maniac who you couldn't put around customers however he understood that code needed to be simple, effective and actually useful for business needs rather than the wankfest in big tech.
Tango1777@reddit
Tech-wise the best devs I've worked with were those who were genuinely interested in coding and IT in general. Very few devs I met who were like that. 99,9% of those stating they like coding and they enjoy it, is not what I mean. I mean people really into it. You cannot chase them, cannot keep up, because coding is their life almost entirely. You'd have to be the same to compete. They have thrice the knowledge every meeting, they randomly share various ideas and latest info about IT world without even anybody asking. You can just tell they absolutely love it. It's not work for them, it's passion. I know I'll never be like that, because I have other things I love in life and work is not the highest priority for me. Although I do my job well, it's a night and day difference between such devs and a regular, good dev. And such devs not necessarily work for fancy brands, they can make very good money without the enterprise, big corps bullshit and have way bigger impact. And in general if such dev is also not a prick, but a normal guy, it's nice to work with one.
lunivore@reddit
2007, IIRC. He spotted a missing abstraction, I helped him implement it in small chunks that kept things working, gradually we replaced everything and ended up deleting 2/3 of the code base as a result. He has a wicked sense of humour, he's really creative, insanely curious, and very clear-sighted.
We're getting married this year.
Cahnis@reddit
Romance at work is a bold move. Glad to see it has paid out
lunivore@reddit
We were only friends while working together; the romance came after we'd both left the company.
WeiGuy@reddit
Was reading this and thought "wow they're horny for code". Nice punchline.
Dense_Gate_5193@reddit
a nicely formatted fibonacci indentation style really gets me going.
ShoePillow@reddit
I bet it keeps the complexity in check too
dvmitto@reddit
Wow, 19 years is a long time but glad you guys got a happy story!
lunivore@reddit
We weren't together for all that time; we stayed friends after we left the company and kinda fell together after that. But it's been a long time coming for sure! Thank you :)
Ill_Huckleberry_2079@reddit
Congratulations on finding the one.
lunivore@reddit
He really is.
slyiscoming@reddit
Congratulations!!!!
lunivore@reddit
Thank you :)
cdrfrk@reddit
Looks like you're code gay /s
lunivore@reddit
1) Nothing wrong with being gay 2) I’m a woman.
aj0413@reddit
Hey, nothing wrong with an oldie but goodie
cdrfrk@reddit
Was a joke
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sMMpYiiuEMc&pp=ygUJQ29kZSBnYXkg
Ok-Astronomer-5944@reddit
I was a good joke
Mandelvolt@reddit
Awwwww congrats 😀
lunivore@reddit
Thank you :)
JandersOf86@reddit
This made me feel good.
Gooeyy@reddit
The single best dev I’ve worked with had an uncanny ability to inspire people. The team I was on went from disconnected and disengaged to genuinely kicking ass in just a month or two thanks largely to his influence and quiet leadership. He was a strong engineer too, but wow his ability to lift people up around him made him the closest thing to a 10x engineer I’ve seen personally.
pl_dozer@reddit
What exactly did he do to inspire people to this extent, considering that he was quiet?
Gooeyy@reddit
To be clear - he was not necessarily a quiet guy, but his leadership was quiet in the sense he was not ordering people around or leading every meeting.
I wish I could better identify why exactly he was so great. But some things that stuck out - he was very comfortable with minor confrontation. In such a way that when he would “confront” someone about something, it didn’t even feel like a confrontation. It was just a discussion for mutual gain/understanding. Even when people got defensive or prickly, he was rock steady, but without being domineering. Maybe it helped that he was also good at recognizing his own mistakes. So it was very clear that candidly acknowledging the way something you did could have been better did not warrant embarrassment. Rather, it was almost celebrated.
I think that helped the rest of the team start speaking their mind more, leading to people feeling more involved and more heard.
Sometimes he’d give me a ring and just ask what I’ve found interesting lately, or frustrating. Sometimes that would just be a nice short discussion, sometimes it would lead to improving a process.
Sometimes I wonder if he was helped by the fact he bad an Australian accent, ha. His accent gave him a charming friendly demeanor that maybe softened the blow when he did have hard things to say.
To the credit of my coworkers, I do think we responded very well to his style. But it wouldn’t have happened without him.
ReginaldDouchely@reddit
This is how I try to be. I hope some day someone can write something like that about me.
ShoePillow@reddit
Maybe that was written about you
thinkb4acting@reddit
People are 💪
JackSpringer@reddit
I would assume quiet leadership refers to trusting people to do their job without constantly telling them what to do instead of actual introverted behaviour.
pl_dozer@reddit
I get that but he must have done something else to get a disengaged and disconnected team to kick ass in such a short time.
-doublex-@reddit
just clarifying the roadmap, eliminating blocking points, clarifying requirements and protecting the team in the agreed terms would do wonders. not saying those are things that he did, just an example.
JackSpringer@reddit
In wouldn't know, but sounds like the default highly charismatic + genuinely motivated + openly appreciative combo.
Repulsive-Hurry8172@reddit
His 10x buff has area effect
Empty_Error2587@reddit
Ah! yes, his name was Claude
photo-funk@reddit
The best person I ever worked with was my lead at mid-size robotics company in Canada 🇨🇦
He was clearly very knowledgeable, patient, and calm. What really stood out was that when you showed interest in buying into the architectural decisions that had been laid out, we went above and beyond to fill you in.
I’m not simply talking about good documentation, or a solid test suite. I’m saying that once you showed drive and interest, this veteran took you under his wing and mentored you into a senior/principal level developer.
To this day, he is one of the most humble, empathetic, and caring devs I have ever met.
Someone who is that knowledgeable and that respectful together in one person is exceedingly rare in today’s world.
Zealousideal-Talk-68@reddit
Worked with a developer that couldn't stand not being busy. So anytime things slowed down or there was a pause waiting for an answer, he would build tools to automate development, testing, documentation, devops, etc... He was an above average coder, but not a genius or anything. But he didn't like wasting time so he was meticulous with automating programming and support drudgery tasks.
So basically any app he worked on had a readme that clearly laid out how to install, test, deploy and monitor it in production. Very often he build a command line dashboard that you could test any function in any environment.
I loved covering for them when he went on vacation. Made me look like a genius. Get a call in the morning, "I know Bob is out, but could you look into this issue and see if you can figure something out by end of day?" Bring up the dashboard he made, find the link to the logs, see the issue and find a fix in 10 minutes. Test and stage the fix. Wait an hour so it doesn't seem too easy, then message back asking when it's convenient to implement the fix. Be a hero because you dove in and made a fix to a codebase that you were not responsible for.
We did give credit to Bob, but he wasn't comfortable taking it, because that wasn't his motivation. He enjoyed development and didn't like wasting time with anything else.
ProvidenceXz@reddit
We all need to learn to channel our inner bob
Nofanta@reddit
An old Russian guy. He should have been designing rockets or something. Had a simple elegant solution for any problem that most people never would have thought of. Zero ego or attitude.
goship-tech@reddit
The pattern you're describing — someone who knows what they don't know, asks good questions, ships things that work — maps onto what separates strong from weak AI tool users in an interesting way.
The best AI users I've encountered have the same quality you're describing: they're opinionated. They push back on suggestions more than you'd expect. They test constantly. They reset fast when a session isn't working. The weakest AI users are the most agreeable — they accept everything and batch-test at the end.
Same fundamental skill, just expressed differently now that the model can write the first draft.
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
Worked with Jordan Walke when react was still Faxjs. Guy is brilliant.
MrJesusAtWork@reddit
What made him stand out to you?
Early_Rooster7579@reddit
Besides essentially making react by himself? He’s just a brilliant programmer. I’m not bad myself but some people are just different. He would have the solution to complicated problems near instantly. Just something special.
thedeathgodshinigami@reddit
The best developer I have worked with was my ex manager / mentor. The guy was always calm and available, like he was so crazy involved with everything and passionate that he'll reply at almost all the time and made sure that he's not the blocker when it came to tech decisions. Guy had like 8 patents to his name and was still humble to the core. Explained problems in simplest of term and provided weird examples which sticks with you and will make you chuckle when actually doing the implementation. He was kind with PR reviews, and was notorious to ask questions on PR, he already knew answer of - this somehow helped the team develop deeper understanding of system.
fake-software-eng@reddit
Wicked smart, empathetic in terms of had empathy for customers, other engineers and the systems etc. to always choose the best solution/implementation
Odd_Soil_8998@reddit
Dude I used to work with at 2 different jobs.. He was a bit eccentric but the real defining characteristic was an emphasis on actually analyzing the problem and solution instead of relying on "best practices." It led to some unconventional but very effective solutions to interesting problems. It also meant I got to work on some foundational pieces when the popular libraries were too bloated or weren't a perfect fit for our use case. This approach made him pretty unpopular with most of my coworkers however.
SebastianSolidwork@reddit
The ones which treat me as tester serious while I do my best to provide valuable feedback.
I give a fuck about (exploratory) test cases (this bullshit of Action and Expected Result) and the arbitrary tools for them. Let's stick with Confluence, one page per ticket, and note what is worth to note on the format we find helpful. List, tables, diagrams, whatever.
By this I make my devs liking to partice in the testing.
thomas_grimjaw@reddit
I never worked with anyone that well-rounded. I was either super impressed by coding ability, or super impressed with how they set the system up.
But both had a flaw where:
FatHat@reddit
The best guy I worked with is a specialist in a pretty complicated field (3d modelling kernels -- very math heavy). He didn't frequently step outside of his wheelhouse, although he was capable of it. What I really respected about this guy though, was the professionalism of his code and his ability to think deeply about a problem before tackling it. His code has thorough tests, LOTS of (useful) comments, and a very consistent style. He was also very serious about not letting the code quality drop -- if you sent him a PR you really had to make sure that you had thought through your solution, because he would push back hard on poorly thought out submissions (not in a mean way, but you could tell he wouldn't be swayed). He's also one of those rare developers that could seemingly stop and think hard about a problem for hours before writing a line of code. Personally, I'm kind of the opposite -- I need to sketch things out in a text editor to clarify my thought process (which isn't a bad approach -- but watching him do the same thing purely in his head was pretty impressive). One other thing I really respected about him is I could bring him problems from my own field that he's not super familiar with (3d graphics) and generally suggest something kind of wild, and he'd give really good feedback on ideas even if it wasn't his specialty. In my experience most people don't give great feedback on ideas outside of their wheelhouse.
I wouldn't say this is a template for how to be a developer though, just that this guy was one of those rare people that was that much smarter than everyone else (without being a jerk about it)
c4mbo@reddit
The best dev I worked with was when I was at a large game studio. The main product was an extremely popular title, so it attracted incredible talent from around the world. The studio was trying to make their next big hit so they spun up several small teams to work out multiple ideas. I was on one of these teams.
We were working on a genre of game that is typically offline, single player. We were about to go into our alpha when it was demanded we make it multiplayer. Needless to say it felt like a death sentence since the game design and architecture needed to be completely overhauled.
The brass said we could have one extra dev for 3 months. I was skeptical that would really help, but I wasn’t going to say no. The guy showed up, he had previously been a TD at a smaller studio that had a moderately successful online based game. I gave him the run down, and then from there on out he just jumped in the driver’s seat and hit the gas!
The first couple days he reviewed the code, documented the existing architecture, and put a first draft together for for the rework. His documentation dare I say, was beautiful. It was thorough, readable, organized, and even aesthetically pleasing. I had barely any suggestions.
Then we had meetings with all the relevant teams: design, art, QA, production, central tech, etc. he knew all the right questions to ask, and all the right answers to give. He was thoughtful and respectful, but also decisive and able to challenge the conventional, ingrained ideas.
At that point it seemed like he had everything he needed. We broke down the work into relatively medium size task, and got to it.
The guy was fucking godlike. He was submitting probably between 2-4 PRs a day. And these weren’t rough implementations, they were full blown features. The code was fully documented and quite frankly, looked like mature code that had hardened over years. He also would fire and forget. He would sit down with for as long as needed to make sure to talk through things. He was ego free and welcomed any feedback. Then he go bang out the next feature.
One day I watched him and I was in awe. He would sit down with his coffee and just start typing. His eyes wouldn’t leave the screen for hours. He barely touched his mouse. If he was interrupted with questions, impromptu meetings, or just office chatter he’d happily engage and give people all the time in the world. Then he’d sit back down and boom! He was right back in his flow.
After about 2 months we were doing full end to end gameplay testing with what felt like production ready code. Security was hardened. UI, art, and gameplay was polished. We were fully integrated with devops and liveops release and monitoring systems. We had robust tooling. We had well defined runbooks, you name it! I had never been so confident in a piece of software in my life, and we hadn’t even entered alpha officially.
Unfortunately the project ended up getting killed. It wasn’t due to budget, quality, or unrealistic goals. The game just didn’t “fit” and was deemed “too niche” and didn’t “provide value to the brand”. We tried to save it and iterated on a few other ideas to help make it fit the mold, but it was to no avail. The project got spun down and my buddy was moved to another team that needed saving.
Looking back on this experience I feel the following things were what truly made my buddy standout.
He had incredibly strong soft skills. He was disarming. He was respectful to others, but was able to command respect with anyone almost immediately. He took joy in mentoring others. He could effectively communicate ideas verbally or written. He accepted feedback and criticism without the slightest bit of ego and would genuinely take it to heart.
His hard skills were like nothing I’ve seen before. The strongest T-shaped engineer I’ve ever worked with. He had a deep knowledge in seemingly every subject, and if he was weak in a domain he could ramp up on it very quickly. His code was always performant, organized, and well documented. His output was exhausting to keep up with and he could context switch on a dime and maintain focus for hours on end.
At that time I had been in the industry for over 10 years. I had been a lead on several large, critical projects and felt like I knew my shit. But working with this guy made me feel like a junior again. I learned a lot from this guy and came away from it a better dev (and a crippling case of imposter syndrome).
10/10 - would do again.
wvenable@reddit
Yes.
djslakor@reddit
The best I've worked with had a very impressive breadth of skill and could solve problems impressively quickly, but he also committed a lot of bugs.
He had a giant ego though and if you ever mentioned anything to him that he already knew, he'd act offended.
He also was a terrible communicator and would give the most terse answers possible with zero context. I still don't know if this was on purpose or if his communication skills were simply that terrible.
viitorfermier@reddit
The best swe I've worked with had an obsession with code quality, he read a lot of books, insisted on best practices, learned a lot from him.
MinimumArmadillo2394@reddit
Autism
Expert-Reaction-7472@reddit
One of the best I've worked with could do really hard code problems super quick, but was also good at pushing back on badly thought out work so good at the business context too. Bit lacking in communication skills unfortunately else would easily be lead/staff+. A lot of devs that have held those titles over the years I've not been particularly impressed by, although one principal comes to mind that I felt embodied it all - hot on the detail but seeing the role more as pastoral and architectural, steering the executive strategy and not really getting lost in the weeds.
The guy Im working with now is actually pretty strong - pushes projects forwards. I'd be a lot more pro-active but he is doing a lot of the lead stuff and doing a great job of it so Im happy to sit back and just be a ticket monkey.
boring_pants@reddit
Honestly, his judgment (in coding matters).
He was good at most of the other things you mention too, but what always impressed me was his judgment.
He was just very good at evaluating a problem and working out whether the proposed solution was suitable, or especially whether it was overengineered. He was exceptionally good at taking that step back and going "ok, this is all great, but do we need to solve all these edge cases here and now in this particular manner? Do we have all the relevant knowledge to do that in a way we won't regret?"
His judgment was absolutely horrific in other matters (I haven't talked to him in a couple of years but would expect he's Elon Musk's last fanboy), but when it came to "how should we fit this feature or bugfix into our software architecture in a way that avoids future pain, I've never met anyone who could match him.
wrex1816@reddit
The one who was pleasant to their co-workers regardless of their skill level, how or background. The one who did an adequate amount of work and then clocked off at a reasonable time. The one who I could have an actual conversation with if we were left alone for 2 minutes instead of weird silence or snapping at anyone. Who asked if they watched last night's game or how their weekend was.
People who think they are 10x'ers, rarely are, but they're 100% assholes to other people.
Background_Soft3614@reddit
reminds me of when our tiny team outpaced a giant due to their tech debt issues.
exomyth@reddit
I think the developer that I learned the most from was some guy near his pension age.
Arguably, he was not the technically strongest developer, or the quickest for that matter. I definitely grasp things and got things done quicker. But he was really good at writing code that was just very easy to read and reason through.
Working with him has improved my development more than any other developer has ever had.
HalveMaen81@reddit
Any excuse to post this article by Dan North
"The Worst Programmer I Know"
code_blooded_murder@reddit
The best software engineer I’ve worked with spent time in management before returning to development. That made him excellent at managing up and at understanding the gap between what was being asked for and what was actually needed. He had extensive experience working directly with customers, so he was strong at relationship management. Then he spent 15+ years as a consultant, building a wide range of systems, which gave him deep breadth across technologies.
He worked extremely hard and consistently delivered on time. Most importantly, he had strong soft skills: He never lost his cool or took things personally. He was a pleasure to work with and highly efficient.
I’ve only met one developer at his level. If I had 3 to 5 people like that, I’d immediately quit my job and start a startup... we’d be wildly successful at anything we chose to build.
DefiantScallion4398@reddit
sounds like he had a solid blend of tech and soft skills
Professional_Mix2418@reddit
Claude. Yup seriously.
Ok_Individual_5050@reddit
It's an addiction...
Professional_Mix2418@reddit
It's a liberation. No more massive ego's running to HR, no grumpiness, no primadonna's. And they make the same kind of mistakes. But actually cost a lot less. Yup one subscription replaces about 5-6 in the team. Let's be honest, it is the new reality.
Ok_Individual_5050@reddit
Lol ok
throwaway_0x90@reddit
No "best", but there were people that were in a particular position or had a specific skill that I benefited from learning at that phase of my career growth.
That person taught me not to be "married" to a particular tech-stack. That frameworks & programming languages come and go. Focus on the problem(s) you're trying to fix, don't be obsessed about exactly what tools are used to solve it. Be flexible.
Noobsauce9001@reddit
There’s no one “best” but I’ve know one with a certain talent I’d not witnessed elsewhere, it both stuck out and created a lot of value for the company.
Was a guy I’ve worked with across two jobs for 9 years. He’s an average developer, disciplined and hard working enough to get the job done.
What sticks out about him though, is that he’s very positive, kind, and easy to get along with. In a room full of sweaty hyper analytical developers, someone who can hold that mindset well enough to perform their job while also having the social skills to get along with people and be positive is really rare. He was beloved at both jobs I worked, had a reputation for taking the “smart but difficult engineer with an ego” and winning them over, helping others work with them. Was popular with non engineering departments too.
merRedditor@reddit
At my last role, there was one developer who just stood out from everybody else. I felt bad for him because he was being overworked by management that equated can with should, but he had amazing insight and problem-solving capabilities, and was very dedicated to completing tasks properly. He was always kind and available to help. Because of his skill, he was immune to office politics. Everyone else was manufacturing problems to stay employed, and trying to throw others under the bus to get ahead, and he was just solving problems and helping others.
SufficientApricot165@reddit
One guy I worked with he was technically unmatched in the deparment I worked in. Had set up almost the entire software infrastructure by.himself. But the best thing about him was that even though he was well aware of how good he was he never talked down to anyone. Always was patient when he tried explaining something complex even if it took several attmpts.
Just a phenomenal person to work with
SufficientApricot165@reddit
One guy I worked with he was technically unmatched in the deparment I worked in. Had set up almost the entire software infrastructure by.himself. But the best thing about him was that even though he was well aware of how good he was he never talked down to anyone. Always was patient when he tried explaining something complex even if it took several attmpts.
Just a phenomenal person to work with
SufficientApricot165@reddit
One guy I worked with he was technically unmatched in the deparment I worked in. Had set up almost the entire software infrastructure by.himself. But the best thing about him was that even though he was well aware of how good he was he never talked down to anyone. Always was patient when he tried explaining something complex even if it took several attmpts.
Just a phenomenal person to work with
Extra-Organization-6@reddit
the best one i worked with had this habit of asking 'what happens if we're wrong' before writing the fix. not 'what if it breaks', but what if we're fixing the wrong thing. saved us from shipping solutions to phantom problems a dozen times. calmness and fundamentals matter, but the meta-skill was knowing when not to code at all.
bluetista1988@reddit
In the mid 2010s, he'd been coding for decades by then while I was a burgeoning senior. He was insanely smart with a lot of foresight and had a strong work ethic. He'd write code defensively to avoid/solve problems you didn't think would exist until you saw how his code had already anticipated and handled that weird corner case nobody thought about.
I remember he built this HTTP PATCH API call mapper for our database in like 90 minutes that 10x'd our DB performance. It would have taken our entire team weeks to months to figure all of that out.
I think at one point he was among the top StackOverflow posters for topics related to our tech stack too.
The only knock on him was his directness, which could rub people the wrong way, but he was quite personable, fair, and friendly if you got to know him. I was lucky to work in the trenches with that guy. If you've ever seen Luca's words of wisdom in The Bear (TV series) that's pretty much how it felt working with him.
PlanOdd3177@reddit
This thread is great to read as a junior! The best dev I look up to at my company really takes his time to understand the problem and reads documentation fairly thoroughly before he starts coding. As a result his code is pretty clean and robust. I always find it hard to spend time planning before I just get anxious and want to start writing. So my code looks like it was written by someone who's only planned one or two steps ahead.
attrox_@reddit
I think the guy literally can do everything. Not only he had all those qualities you listed, he can cook and bake. He baked everyone in the office really good cupcake. He build furniture and did his own home renovation by himself. I'd love to continue working with him because he was always the smartest in the room. At the time he was a senior engineer but you can tell from the way he communicate that he is on his way to be principal/staff engineer
Arqueete@reddit
I'm thinking of a dev I worked with who was the sort of person you call over when you're way over your head troubleshooting some wacky bug. I feel like the skills that made her good at helping with that sort of thing were:
a) being level-headed. I rarely saw her get truly frustrated at a person or problem and she had a lot of patience for tinkering with things, and
b) being someone with a lot of curiosity about tech and strong fundamentals. Even though she had a specific type of work she did professionally, she had messed around with stuff like video game design and robotics just for fun and I think it gave her perspective. She was never intimidated by the unfamiliar.
CTProper@reddit
My first software job was at a ma and pa dev shop run by a 60 year old man and his wife. There were 4 other employees including me, 2 being his children. This guy was the smartest kindest software engineer I have ever worked with. He was a principle engineer back in the early eBay and SuiteLedger (now NetSuite owned by Oracle) days.
He had a great understanding of what businesses actually needed instead of just following their instructions. It was crazy because he was a funny old guy and then at the flip of a dime would be a serious solutions architect. Great guy
avbrodie@reddit
That sounds idyllic 😭
maulowski@reddit
Two guys actually. The guy that mentored me early in my career taught me a lot about the craft. He has a unique way of solving problems and it was interesting to collaborate with him. The other was a software architect. The guy had a strong intuition for building software and he helped me understand the difficulties of building distributed systems (read: I still suck at it but at least I know why).
redditorsinha@reddit
The best developer I worked with was way senior than me. He has almost the same years of experience as my age. The best part about him, which till this day I try to install in me but fails to do, is he actually listened to every opinion and rarely gets irritated. I joined the team when I was fresh out of college and I almost learned everything from him and other team members. Even though he would listen to my opinion and will entertain it if it has merit. Never had any ego that I am a senior so I know better. And believe me, it sas not a show. He genuinely believed in it. He had a way of explaining things that although I hate vegans, his opinion made me change my views about it and I can at least respect them. He instilled a lot of confidence in me that I still carry with me, which helps a lot.
YahenP@reddit
It was in the early nineties, somewhere between Windows 3.0 and 3.11. He was over 50 years old. In those days, it was more rare to see a programmer that age than a Tasmanian lion, considered extinct. I was young then, full of energy and hope, like any young specialist who has recently completed the first five years of his career. I still had plenty of strength, a little experience already (or so I thought). All roads were open. And then he was there. An old veteran. Yes, he was very good at programming, and even more so at algorithms. An excellent mentor. But... looking at him, I realized that I didn't want to be like him in my old age. I don't want to at all. It was the best lesson he taught me, without even knowing it. But I'm stupid. I'm very stupid. I didn't draw any conclusions. Years have passed, I'm much older than he was then, and I... I'm an exact copy of that loser. good (I hope) at programming), not so bad at algorithms, an excess of experience and... and all of this is actually garbage. Useless garbage. The main thing is to leave the profession in time. That's what's important. I was taught an object lesson, but I didn't realize the full significance. Every year I told myself: just a couple more years. It's such a thrill to be an engineer. And a couple of years later I told myself the same thing. And one day I woke up as that same dinosaur who rather foolishly wasted his life and energy on... well, yes. wasted it on something I liked.
Hziak@reddit
Hired a JR in ‘21 who had only ever written game cheats before. Kid was a total wiz though and loved going on deep dives and reading technical explanations of how obscure or low-level things worked. I gave him a very long leash once we finished training him on our web services and let him assign himself a few small tasks every sprint to encourage him to explore. Ended up rewriting our core service template, a lot of our libraries and generally improving basically everything we ever built as a company in a very tangible way.
From my whole career, despite a decade of age difference, he’s the only dev I’m still basically in daily contact with and see semi regularly socially even though we haven’t worked together for three years now.
In terms of what made him great - endless curiosity, always pushing for improving things, not needing to be hand held (wasn’t afraid to try new things or daunted by learning.) and was reliable. I feel like there’s probably a lot of people like him out there, but, without patting myself on the back, I think great devs need a good environment to actually realize their potential. This company in particular that we worked at gave us a lot of flexibility and only cared more or less that we met our deliverables. They didn’t set specific processes for my teams and gave us the same long leash I gave him. And I think that’s what allowed us to write the best code of my career on the most effective product in my career, despite having the smallest team of my career. It was really only for having the right people together across the org that made that possible. Because I know that if we had all of that freedom where I work now, everything would just fall apart instead.
Anyways, now he works for Microsoft and tells me about all this code that he writes that I barely even understand. It’s humbling, but the dude earns every bit of that enormous paycheck every day.
Idea-Aggressive@reddit
GreenJello from IRC. The happiest person helping strangers, always quick to respond, dedicated a lot of his life helping others. Never asked anything back. I force him to accept a donation for a hot chocolate or coffee once. He was very young, believed to be much older. But depression took him away. RIP!
zayelion@reddit
I had a whole team of people, mid to seniors, focused on clear communication and staying tuned into the reality of any situation. No ivory tower, BS. Then QA and devOps with military backgrounds that maintained that same no BS mindset.
The best was the team lead. He just never gave up solving a problem.
dsound@reddit
The best one was this guy who would solve all my tickets for me and allow me to take credit
BorderKeeper@reddit
To me the best developers I worked with were the types that could grab a complex problem, break it into clear non-overlapping pieces, create interfaces besides the pieces that were not made "to suit the needs of each piece", but "what does logically makes sense for each side to know". You then get a ticket with the skeleton already in place and it's smooth sailing, but getting all of this in place and correct requires superhuman ability to understand the upstream needs and be able to analyze problems very well.
Another thing is I had this one developer I consider a true senior to me since everytime I read his PRs they read like a good novel. It was so clear to read I almost had fun following the abstractions around and I never saw this level of eloquence since.
Dimencia@reddit
Strangely, it wasn't the guy who was a savant at building extremely complicated abstractions overnight to solve some problem - it was the guy who could read the first guy's nonsense, and explain why we needed the complicated bits and what benefit they provided, as well as point out alternatives and (informed guesses about) why he didn't choose those
68Warrior@reddit
The best “developer” I ever worked with was basically the rainman of code. Dude could design an absurdly complex system in his mind to solve our needs. However, he sucked at communicating and was a nightmare to work under. Once he established the vision, he was mad we didn’t all instantly grasp it as well. He also didn’t believe in teaching. He has been stuck as a lead for 15 years.
The best developer I have worked with is my current lead. I’m a career switcher, he’s the same age as me with more YOE. I would actually say I’m equally or better educated than him, but his ability to research and break down problems while delegating and being chill is unmatched. He’s also the first to share knowledge and he does it well. He made lead with only a few YOE.
Aggravating_Yak_1170@reddit
The attention to detail, he knows just by looking at logs/code/network what's happening and where the issue is. Its kind of a sorcery.
Which-Meat-3388@reddit
Just like your example. A rare blend of tactical, organization level influence, confident yet humble, and technically exceptional and fluid. I met him early in my career where he started out being the guy who came in to save the day. Solved the hardest problems in a stack he’s never seen. 5 years later and he could do the same thing across literally any part of a 500 head engineering org. On top of all that he’s just a good dude. The only area for improvement would have been mentorship to share his unique approach to problem solving.
He remains the highest level IC I’ve ever known to this day. That is inspirational for someone like me who will never be a manager, CTO, or similar. I just like being hands on but concede I will never have what he does, which is likely a golden blend of highly functional spectrum.
Frequent_Bag9260@reddit
Creative people are the best devs. Hands down. They can debug and pick up technologies so quickly. They’re not burdened by the insecurities of admitting you don’t know something.
bigorangemachine@reddit
My guy at my advertising job.
Guy was quiet... actually had a EDM following that was huge online...
But ya... quiet dood... kept to himself.. barely spoke.
Guy was very non-typical programmer... very deliberate... very cautious... only put print statements in when reading the code wasn't validating his assumptions (I always var_dump'd the stack just to be 100% sure). He was great at fixing bugs... always found the issues with the weird edge cases.
I got the sense his mentors were like near retirement so he imbued a lot of deliberate code where you don't write anything unless you are sure.
My style is more improvisational & more UI features. One time while we was talking I mentioned I just about edit every JPG the client sends us; a few weeks later he came over and asked me how to fix this one JPG that tiled. It had an compression artifact on the edges... I just told him "ya just crop 1px both sides" and he learned something from me which really impressed me because he was held in such high regard in the company he was always willing to come over and ask for help or wants to learn new things. Really made an impression on me
just10bps@reddit
the best developer i worked with - my previous manager. very meticulous and did things in a consistent, repeatable way everytime. would always communicate every thing he was doing - i.e not randomly cooking up requirements with PMs - made sure i was always involved in discussions. would always highlight the importance of conveying information in a simple and understandable way, it shaped how i think about problems and communicating a lot.
he drilled into me the importance of writing code that is "easy" to work with. however, terrible mamager otherwise because of how much he micromanaged.
For me this meets the criteria of an exceptional developer: - reliable (responds to messages timely, closes the loop on outstanding questions, conversations, keeps their word on updates) - good communication (coordinates on things that affect others, makes sure everyone is on the same page before going ahead etc) - nice to work with (sociable, can keep discussions casual) - calm (not ruffled easily or gets hyper)
surprisingly unless you are a one man army working on a linux kernel etc, it's the soft skills that matter much more.
etxipcli@reddit
Good developers are force multipliers. A combination of tech skills and just being a great guy to work with are who I'm thinking of. Getting a nice head of steam and operating on all cylinders is a lot easier when have have a positive and competent technical leadership.