Over on the “Shaping Software” site they just posted a short article titled “Lessons in Software from Eric Brechner.” Eric is the Director of Development Excellence on the Engineering Excellence team at Microsoft. The article focuses on his insights about what attributes shape developers into software engineers. He suggests that strength and balance attributes are important. Briefly, they are enumerated as follows:

Strength attributes

• Insightful
• Reflective
• Principled

Balance attributes

• Serving and advocating
• Eecution and slack
• Trust and risk

I really enjoy reading articles like this where the author focuses on the human side of software engineering. As Eric says, You can’t accomplish anything truly impactful alone.

I think it is worth the time to read through this article! Highly recommended.