Great Startup Engineers

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