Yes, and more importantly...<p>Strengths are weaknesses because they create a bias to use the strength rather than developing a weak alternate, and you only get better at what you do - creating a virtuous cycle that can quickly turn vicious.<p>This will happen whenever growth is mediated mainly by feedback loops. (Think hard about that!)<p>The solution is instead to have a model of what you're trying to grow, whether it's a company or a positive presence in the world, and be willing to sacrifice to make that happen.
In my experience, people aren't so static as to have dualities. They don't fit so neatly into little descriptors.<p>What is a strength? Something you are inherently talented at? A skill you have plenty of experience with? A subject you have a lot of knowledge of? What you are motivated by?<p>What is a weakness?<p>I see that most people are rather adaptable to context. When you're working at a startup building an app make AI complete your Uber orders for you, there's no reason to be focused on making sure the system is scalable to a million requests per second. Most people tend to understand that. They may have a lot of experience building highly scalable backend systems, they may <i>want</i> to build another system like that again because it pleases them to do so. But most people will see the forest for the trees and focus on getting the project out the door in the fastest way possible because they probably won't have a million customers for a long time... if at all.<p>I tend to look for what people <i>value</i> when building a team. You'll need to match the set-intersection of the teams' values with the goals of the business. People are motivated to work on thing they value. We can tolerate working on things we don't but try to avoid doing that for too long. So if the business needs a highly reliable system because failures can lose their customers millions of dollars a minute for downtime then you'll want to stock your team with developers that value those things the company cares about.<p>What you're good at today can change tomorrow. You can be better at it. It's a skill, it's knowledge, it's something you can acquire: it's not an attribute or trait of you as a person.
Better formulated as: <i>some</i> weaknesses may be unintended consequences of your strengths under certain conditions. Rules of thumb like this are useful approximations of reality, but I wouldn't elevate them to the level of a principle that I would use in 1:1s. All the little phenomena that people like the author (myself included) in the tech/management world have observed and written about, would probably add up to several thousand. Human behaviour is complex. Sometimes you have no choice but to handle it on a case by case basis.
Yes.<p>Sometimes it's hard to convince people that this works in reverse too. Traits like lack of commitment or emotional distance from work also means they'll be less affected when the org goes in pure chaos mode or the work is boring as hell.<p>Diversity is also about these kind of differences inside the org.
In the example used, I don't think strength (speed) is the same trait causing weakness (overlooking).<p>Collaborative development might have minimized the risk of the production issue.<p>* Design is not reviewed by other team members<p>* Coding is not reviewed by other team members<p>* Not proper automated testing (if it was a regression issue)<p>* Finally, speed with accuracy is what we need to focus on, while training/practicing ourselves. This comes with experience.<p>So it is a minor tweak we need to make.
This is brilliant! It really is context dependent. There's probably exceptions to that though.<p>I heard an example yesterday that dealt with a more "universally" negative trait: a boss gave feedback to a colleague who was widely considered an asshole.<p>Everyone had already told him to stop being an asshole and that didn't help at all. That's not actionable.<p>Instead, they boiled it down to four specific behaviors that produced the complaints, and then came up with alternative behaviors to execute in those situations.<p>The complaints went away within a week.<p>Source: Alex Hormozi<p>---<p>Edit: I've just read a few of the other posts on this blog (Terrible Software), they are equally brilliant. Highly recommended.
I came across this idea after a dark period of meditation: creativity is the productive use of rumination, anxiety or mania. The best creators I know (offhand example, Heston Blumenthal) had rampant mental illness during their most creative periods. I myself suffer from clinical anxiety periodically, which I have to manage proactively.<p>It’s very sobering to realize you have to take the bad with the good, and sometimes it’s not worth it. Being average isn’t so bad.
My brain is waterfall in an agile world.<p>Strength: Seeing the bigger picture and the ability to hold an entire system in my head along with the context of prior projects and the body of knowledge I've built. I can build large complex enterprise systems in my mind all at once and articulate the principles and patterns involved to my peers and clients.<p>Weakness: I am often frustrated and upset when I don't have enough information to do this and will wait and procrastinate until I have enough information to form this system fully in my mind, then build or design or document a thing all at once.<p>I am perceived by my peers to be a, "slow" developer so I got "Peter Principle"'d into a Solution Architect and consultant.<p>My coping mechanism to handle this when I do agile development with peers is, when working with incomplete information, develop many versions of the same partial system in my head. A/B test them and extrapolate from incomplete information the most likely complete system.<p>Then build that version.
I'm so happy i work on a team. Early in my career I substituted my speed for what I saw as deep experience of others around me. I was the one willing to move fast and break things and I'm still doing that. Fortunately, I've learned to temper my eagerness by teaming up with others willing to probe my approach. I'm still impatience and eager but I'm much, much stronger in a team than as a lone cowboy.
Interest side of the story. I was trained in kung fu - wing chunwith a little group in Guadalajara, Mexico. Really good ideas , resistance and trainging.<p>One of the VERY FEW Verbal classes was this. "Sometimes you dont know the weakness of your enemy and have not time to research. As A Rule of thumb, their biggest strngth, is thei great weakness".<p>Examples of the real life.
1 ) i was being filmed in the street with a Handcam from seven people of a destructive cult, i cited they call to their followers to do that in a forum. I was Filmed INSIDe the police station too. Losers. The principal proof to the fact they were a destructive cult ? The filmation<p>2 ) In my job in a public university some admin had the exclusibve right/permissions to put the SSL in the servers structure. We needdo a internal memorandum each three months and they took a whole week to do so. 50-60 people cant use the system. I got some interns and ask them to put an auto renewi SSL in a vultr instance, they can do in 15 minutes or less. Then, each blackout i only pass the info they are doing late a job than a simple intern/advanced student can automate in 15 minutes. They pedantic strength, was later the reason i get a promotion myself for report the solutions THREE years before.<p>3 ) In a divorce case, in mexico, a friend was asked as a part of that a 800 USD MONTHLY Bill for therapist of their exwife sons fo r a whole year. (stepsons of them),. The lawyer, exwife and therapist say that mutltiple times. Ok. Then we ask for the IRS equivalent invoice, and go for perjury by the lawyer, therapist and exwife for simulated operations (no irs invoice, all are lyieng and cometting fraud). The judge himself is currently near to be revoked for fraud in evidence. But was very STRONG the scandal they do when fake the therapist invoice ina onfficial document.
Yup I have realized that too, it's just two faces of the same coin. I have also found out that what I really WANT to do is usually not something I'm good at.<p>For example I consider myself good at being a middle man between backend and analyst (I work as a data engineer in between) because none has the time and interest to communicate with each other -- so I usually took up the initiative and clear up things. I also work in small companies where people are expected to wear multiple hats, so no one gets their toes stepped on. But oh how I HATE that part of the job. How I want to get into some low level programming which is further from the "stakeholders" and the scope is larger than two weeks! Then I did a bit of low level projects and found myself not really good at what I want to do -- at least not good enough to even think about applying for such a job where everyone has done projects left and right when they were in schools. The mental doesn't help either. I might be able to be more productive if I don't need to work or/and don't have a family, but I can get rid of none.
I've seen the duality helping in some cases and being a problem. IMO, the problem part essentially arises when your trait overruns the goals / priorities of the business or your manager is ineffective in communicating the right thing to you. Business usually looks for realized impact as a metric
I guess this is a relatively common observation nowadays
<a href="https://medium.com/luminasticity/your-greatest-strength-is-your-greatest-weakness-7dc344cb1588" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/luminasticity/your-greatest-strength-is-y...</a>
This reminds me of the coding interview I had where I completely missed a requirement because of my desire to get the code out there. Still got the job, so I can't complain!<p>Great framing of an issue and it's something I'm going to be thinking about over the weekend. Thanks for sharing!
I would conceptualize it rather differently. Let say you have two daemons inside, Fast Coder and Detail Scrutinizer. It is about checking how much power every one of them is given on two separate scales (every each of them working in their dominion). If you switch on only one and neglect the other, you can get into trouble (or not, depending on the circumstances). Anyway, these are two variables, two facets, and knowing how to mix them appropriately makes the whole difference. It's like internal combustion engine mixing few kinds of fuel. What you get at given moment depends on the mixture of these different qualities.
Your leader should think of that, not you. It's _their job_.<p>They should pair you, the speedster, with an accurate careful reviewer that doesn't code very fast. Pronto, that combination makes both 'weaknesses' disappear.<p>That's because they are not weaknesses. Humans fail, all of us. Teams exist for that.<p>Making a team work in harmony is your leader's responsibility. Do not let them slack on this. They are paid good money for this expectation. You are not, you earn as a bottom feeder. Why do his job?<p>He should also hire the right persons, looking to complement the team. If some skill is missing (like QA or review experienced engineers), that's their fault, not yours.
I think strengths are more difficult to define than weaknesses, because they are very context dependent. “Speed” may be useful in certain situations, but in many cases “speed” can be harmful in more ways than just overlooking details. You miss out on opportunities to learn, to ask for help, to become better at thinking critically as a software engineer.<p>What the idea of “strengths being weaknesses” reflects is how much we identify with our present state of ability. It seems like we get it backwards. We ask our jobs to fit us as people, rather than how we as individuals can become best for the job.
I've said something similar for a while. That dual interview question "what is your greatest strength? what is your greatest weakness" is a very bad question.<p>Your strengths and weaknesses are joined at the hip, and they are the two sides of the same coin which is your personality.<p>In some contexts, your personality becomes a strength. In other contexts it becomes a weakness.<p>The trick is whether you are able to recognise under what circumstances your personality becomes a strength, and what you then do to allow you to play to your strengths, and maximize its effect, or obversely, whether you are able to recognise under what circumstances your personality becomes a weakness, and what kind of external mitigations do you or have you then put in place, to minimize the effect of that weakness.<p>So in that sense, the typical "I work too hard" passive-aggressive response is a bad response. A good response would be that you tend to be a hard worker, which is good when you need to be relied upon, but bad in terms of having work-life balance and getting easily burnt out. Hence the external mitigations should be a clearly negotiated work package which insists on sticking to work hours and allocated holidays.<p>Or, another example, adaptability. Adaptability is great if the role requires it. But it's a curse if you find yourself becoming the "go to" man for all bunch of unrelated things, which then distract you from your number 1 task and opportunities for growth. So the mitigation strategy is a clearly defined role and responsibilities.
This is a good insight, though I wouldn't limit it to software engineering.<p>I've discussed with my therapist many times that my biggest mental health challenges are from the exact same personality traits that bring me my greatest joy and value. Every maladaptive trait has its adaptive aspects and vice versa. If I were to try to eliminate those maladaptive aspects, I'd probably lose much of the adaptive side as well.<p>There is a real zen to being able to note that the things which cause the most anguish also cause the most joy and accepting both sides of that coin at the same time.
I think this goes in line with companies as a whole as well. I work at a place where features are pushed at a very very high speed and we have realized that the tradeoff is us missing pretty crucial edge cases in our development. Now i’m not sure if people have worked in a place where they shipped products fast but were able to minimize bugs but i’d love to hear how your company achieved that. Is it even possible? Does it all come down to hiring to suit your fast paced needs?
Just yesterday i saw this quote from Brian Eno -<p><i>Every increase in your knowledge is a simultaneous decrease. You learn and you unlearn at the same time. A new certainty is a new doubt as well.</i><p>I pondered it a bit and arrived at "learning is losing innocence", from the point of view of somebody who mulls over Enos process. I think that sort of ties-in with this article.
My professor always said: "The sum of the problems is constant"<p>You can code faster, but then you might overlook things. You can work a lot and earn a lot of money, but you might struggle with nurturing your friendships. You can have a partner but then you'll have arguments with them. You can remain single but then you'll have to deal with loneliness.
How can having a comprehensive understanding of your infrastructure/stack be a weakness exactly?<p>My high-level view of backend development is to make functions that transform one persisted consistent state to another. Define the start/end states and all the code that's used to do that is implementation detail. The other part is fast reads of same.
The only context for my weakness being a strength is running operations or my own business, or high-level architecture. My preference is for not being detail-oriented, but I rally to do that when I have to, which is often when troubleshooting code. I have to break down the problem and simplify it, not just to be effective but to keep motivated.
The article mentioned speed of dev as a trait that's both a strength and a weakness. I suppose the opposite of that is quality orientated, but not very fast.<p>What are other dimensions along which there's this duality of strength/weakness in engineers (or even in the general workplace) that you've seen either in yourself or other coworkers?
This is a good, astute essay providing a useful mental framework that can undermine many a developer's innate imposter syndrome. The concept of duality is a great discriminator, it is just subtle enough that focusing on one's strength as a duality is a mind game that distracts from what normally spirals into negative self suspicion.
100% true and research backs this up: strengths are also risks (or weaknesses).
- If you're very disagreeable you will offend people, but at the same time hold your ground (important in high impact roles).
- If you're very driven, you might tend to dominate people.
- If you're very flexible, you might be impulsive.<p>and so on.<p>Try this <a href="https://www.gyfted.me/personality-quiz/strengthsfinder-test-free" rel="nofollow">https://www.gyfted.me/personality-quiz/strengthsfinder-test-...</a> or this <a href="https://www.gyfted.me/quiz-landing/bfas-personality-test" rel="nofollow">https://www.gyfted.me/quiz-landing/bfas-personality-test</a> to learn more about your strengths/traits
Sorry, on a side note, I've been noticing the artwork for each blog post. It looks very aesthetic - is this AI generated? or actual artwork? I don't seem to find a source...
This is true.<p>- like in the example, fast people have trouble going slow.<p>- people who are exceptional at details might be poor at big-picture.<p>- super passionate people can take criticism of their ideas personally<p>- people who are slow might be steady
Michael Scott: Why don’t I tell you what my greatest weaknesses are? I work too hard, I care too much and sometimes I can be too invested in my job.<p>David Wallace: Okay. And your strengths?<p>Michael Scott: Well, my weaknesses are actually strengths.<p>David Wallace: Oh. Yes. Very good.
there should be a word for that horrible feeling when you realize that the things you love about yourself and the things you can't stand about yourself are all just yourself
Wow, this really spoke to me. I’ve always been proud of how fast I work, but yeah... that speed has backfired more than once. I used to feel bad about it, but now I get it
It's like saying strength and weakness are relative concepts: strength has its side effects just as weakness can be beneficial in certain circumstances.
If we're comparing prolific programmers with pragmatic programmers, I wonder if there's an analog on the management side?<p>I look at our leaders today - our CEOS, elected officials, presidents and their lieutenants like Elon Musk - and I see a narrow sampling of humanity chosen for high executive function but little else. Who consider humanity's greatest virtues like empathy to be liabilities. Where is the self-awareness, the doubt, even the shame that brings wisdom?<p>I worry that this tireless race towards maximization of efficiency and reduction of cost above all else is driving the whole world towards ensh@ttification. When we could so easily take a step back, breathe, and find outside-the-box solutions beyond the zero-sum game of the status quo. If only they would let us..