In our modern world, we need software engineers. We need them to work with us effectively and efficiently to help create competitive advantage in our operations.  I am sure when you read this you may have stories of order of magnitude improvements because of great software!

A Story About a Brilliant Software Engineer

I have managed several software engineers and can say without hesitation that each one has been intellectually gifted. I enjoyed working with these teams and often had terrific outcomes. On the other hand, we often had communication challenges about client comments about their work or change orders that required rework.

One engineer built several terrific applications and custom tool sets which boosted profitability. But many times, when receiving clients or my feedback it would lead to tension and delays, which often blew out budgets and gave us both heartburn and anxiety.

While reviewing one of this engineer’s projects user interface (UI), I was dismayed to see a misspelling of a simple word on a navigation button. When I pointed it out, he pushed back, saying “That is what the client required!” I then asked incredulously, “why would the client ask for a word to be misspelled?” He replied “the client’s written specifications had the word misspelled”.  Our conversation went downhill, and we ended up at an impasse. In the end he refused to either talk to the client or change the misspelling until I met with the client and requested a change order. 

So, what was going on?  Why did a spelling error end up in an ugly confrontation?  

Two businessmen arguing

A Second Story About a Mystifying Misstep

During a status meeting with another software engineer, she said she was behind on her timeline because she had spent the better part of two days attempting to rewrite code for an existing production system.   When I asked if she figured out what was wrong she answered that there were no bugs but there had been a power outage that crashed the server and the data was corrupt.

I then suggested that rather than write new code to work around the data corruption, why not work with our system administrator to restore from a backup and see if that worked. (Of course it did.)  

Again, this person was easily the smartest person in the company at the time. Why did she make this irrational choice to take a time consuming and ineffective path?

Two businessmen arguing

How Improving My Own Emotional Intelligence Helped

While I am not a software engineer, I am software engineer ‘adjacent’.  Below is a list of findings based on my own experiences. I found that when I worked to improve my own improved emotional intelligence, I became a much better manager.

  • Fear of confrontations, or fear of being seen as stupid or inept are close to the surface in folks like us.
  • Many IT pros and software engineers, despite having above average intelligence, tend to avoid social interaction.  
  • Social communication skill deficits are common. This can lead to misunderstanding non-verbal cues or feeling criticism as a personal attack.
  • The result of these social deficits eventually can lead to an intense fear of conflict.
  • Fear pushes us into our ‘reptile or dinosaur’ brains, where we experience feedback as destructive and derogatory, and then either fight, flee, or shutdown.

To refer back to my earlier management missteps. I now understand now that the first engineer’s fear of confronting the client about a misspelled word was so terrifying that he ended up making irrational leap to assume it was deliberate.

In the second scenario, the engineer was so afraid of being found out as inept, she avoided asking for help from her colleagues.