Integrity - invisible force for good
In high school, there’s all sorts of different conceptual lessons that teachers impart on students. One of those lessons I’m musing about today is integrity. I didn’t really understand at first what the teacher meant, it was just an abstract notion.
Luckily I had great teachers who would give us simple quotes, like “Do the right thing, even when no one’s watching” to easily remember these lessons.
“Do the right thing, even when no one’s watching.”
I didn’t really think too much else of it at the time. I always had these lessons in the back of my head. Like my wood shop teacher who said, “measure twice, cut once”. A simple lesson, when heeded, turns out to be analogous to my daily professional life. In wood shop, it saves a lot of wasted material. In the real world it saves something even more precious, time.
“Measure twice, cut once”
All of that suffices to say that integrity is requires constant practice. It is a muscle, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So, even when no one’s watching, measure twice, cut once.
Most of these lessons, for me, came in my art classes. The classes where you don’t have a teacher correcting every small mistake, and you have to learn to be resourceful and creative. It’s a matter of practicality for art teachers, the budgets slim, these lessons are free, teaching them saves money.
These lessons outside of art class saves society resources. There’s a lot of articles out there on what it takes to be a better engineer. You’ve heard them, “Top 10 lessons to go from senior to staff”, “Learn (x) framework to speed up your workflow”, “Use (y) AI tool to impress your superiors”. Those are all fine and dandy but mean nothing without integrity. The best engineers know this and practice this, and can fall back on their integrity when faced with tough challenges.
ChatGPT isn’t going to save you when the vice president asks you to publish an insecure feature, immediately.
Shipping code fast isn’t actually going to help you if you constantly are patching bugs after.
These surface level lessons ignore the deeper skills necessary to thrive and grow as an engineer. Build with integrity, with a measured thought process, and you’ll always have a fall back option.
Having integrity means you’re actually curious about where your peers are coming from, instead of automatically arguing your side.
Having integrity shows, and when folks need someone dependable for an important build, they can count on your integrity.
If you take one thing from this, it’s this, build with integrity. Build something you’re proud of, that shows you care and thought through your options.
/endrant