Product
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Cloud costs
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released
September 9, 2021
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3
min read
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The Engineer Types: Which Are You?

Updated

There are quite a few engineer types out there. Ever wonder which one you are? Are you the Night Owl, the Devil's Advocate, or something else altogether? Find out today!

The Night Owl

Ah yes - the Night Owl. They pretty much only code at night, tapping away on their rainbow backlit mechanical keyboard at ~100 words per minute. Obsessed with having only the finest gear, the Night Owl owns at least one pair of noise-cancelling headphones - the big over-the-ear kind that costs you your firstborn child. This is both to drown out the mechanical keyboard noise, and to blast The Prodigy into their ears at a barely-safe-for-humans decibel range. 

The Night Owl has a rich, complex diet of 5 Hour Energy, Monster, Redbull, and salty snacks - with the occasional salad, because that totally fixes everything, right? They’re laser-focused. They lowkey believe The Matrix was real and we’re in a simulation (speaking of, I'm just gonna leave this here...). Neo is their hero, as evidenced by the sunglasses they constantly wear. An overall fantastic engineer that produces great work - just… on a really weird schedule.

The “It Worked On My Machine”

This engineer uses the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoji wayyyyy too much in Slack. Everything seems to roll off their back, which is generally a great character trait, but not when they accidentally delete a table in prod. They’re cool, calm, and collected. Always. Say goodbye to the whole “sense of urgency” thing - it has no power here. They’re also always tired. The bags under their eyes have bags. Their favorite hobby is napping.

The “It Worked On My Machine” recites their mantra on a weekly basis. Tests, schmests - they simply ‘full send’ on everything. As a matter of fact, this engineer shouldn’t have access to deploy to prod - because they probably had a beer or two at lunch. They’re decent at their job, but don’t count on them in a fire. 

The Perfectionist

We love the Perfectionist. Who doesn’t?! They’re management’s golden child: they test their work thoroughly, they comment and tag things appropriately, and everything they submit is pristine. Most likely because of the horrid case of OCD they have. 

A huge fan of Harry Potter, the Perfectionist identifies with Hermione on a visceral basis (”It’s leviOsa not levioSA”). Their personal hero is Steve Jobs. They’re incredibly loyal to their employers, because it’s so hard for them to let go of all the perfect stuff they’ve built. 10/10, would hire again. 

The Devil's Advocate

We’re pretty sure the Devil’s Advocate has a coffee problem. Seriously, we’ve seen them with 5 empty cups at their desk while sipping on a 6th - and they never refill the pot at the office! 😡

Every PR they review has 10 comments at a minimum, and most of them are really petty: add a space here, indent there… but once in a while, they make a really good point - and that’s why people keep them around. Their favorite word? “Actually.” Incidentally, this is also how they start way too many sentences… Overall a good programmer, but probably should have been a chaos engineer. 

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So, which engineer type are you? Don’t recognize yourself yet? Don’t worry - more are coming! Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it - we all deserve a hefty helping of humor. And if you’ve never heard of Harness before, we make modern CI, CD, Feature Flags, and Cloud Cost Management software. It’s pretty awesome. You should check it out today - maybe we can solve an issue you’ve been having!

Rox

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