General thoughts on Software and Life

I was recently told that mentioning that I had solved problems which nobody had solved before in my job is a sign of arrogance.

I beg to differ. There is no arrogance here. Difficult problems are solved by hard work and creativity not brute IQ or intelligence alone. You have to be persistent and you have to keep at the problem all the time till a solution is found. You have to volunteer to solve the problem when nobody is willing to entertain it.

So, these people who write books like Mark Zuckerberg was an accidental billionaire is just full of it. Nothing could be further from the truth. He did a lot of hard work with determination and focus - he did not get anything free.

So, don't think you are arrogant just because you mention the truth in your resume.

Another thing...

There maybe a senior developer who may not seem like he can be a great manager because of what he is doing right now. This is also totally untrue.

You can't judge how good or bad someone will do in a higher role because the guy is walking around with a million lines of code in his head. If there are a million lines of code there, he will be confused sometimes, he may not be able to answer questions or see things from the higher perspective. Sometimes, this is especially true if the guy really does his job very well w.r.t the code.

If you switch places with him, he may turn out to be a better manager than you are, because now his brain need not worry about 10 million lines of code.

Think about it...