What's the core purpose of your job? To write the code?
Nope. To code yourself out of a job.
We talked about this with Robby Russell on his Maintainable Podcast – your goal is to write code in a way that others can maintain it, learn from it, and make it better.
Because when you think about it, if you're stuck keeping today's code alive, how will you ever have time to reach for bigger better challenges?
You don't have to build code that lasts forever. That's impossible. Everything needs maintenance. But does it have to be your maintenance?
The worst code is code only you can maintain. Read The Story of Mel for a fantastic cautionary tale of a genius coder.
On the podcast we also talked about technical debt, balancing speed and quality, growing fast as a startup, and about the Serverless Handbook for frontend engineers.
Enjoy ❤️
Cheers,
~Swizec
Continue reading about Your job as an engineer is to make yourself unnecessary
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- The code is not the goal
- Don't neglect your upgrades
- 4 years of coding in San Francisco, lessons learned
- Better is good
- Why even care about code structure
Become a *true* Senior Engineer
Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies
Getting that senior title is easy. Just stick around. Being a true senior takes a new way of thinking. Do you have it?
The Senior Minset email crash course
Get a free chapter from the Senior Engineer Mindset book and a sample audiobook chapter, followed by a Senior Mindset 101 email course.
You'll get insights to apply at your work right away.
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️