Engineering Leadership

Engineering Leadership

Share this post

Engineering Leadership
Engineering Leadership
Learning to be a great engineer/engineering leader is a marathon, not a sprint

Learning to be a great engineer/engineering leader is a marathon, not a sprint

It takes time to become great at software engineering!

Gregor Ojstersek's avatar
Gregor Ojstersek
Jan 31, 2023
∙ Paid
3

Share this post

Engineering Leadership
Engineering Leadership
Learning to be a great engineer/engineering leader is a marathon, not a sprint
Share

Intro

Like in every discipline it takes time to become great. The same is in software engineering, if you wish to become great at it, you need to spend time learning programming languages, concepts, patterns and work on real-world problems.

How much time does it take to become great?

How much time do I need to spend to become great at it? Well, that’s a good question. The answer varies and can be different for every individual.

The “ten-year rule” suggests that it takes about 10 years to become an expert at something. But the path to greatness takes some more.

Becoming great at something can mean different things. Greatness may suggest that just several individuals reach that status in a particular field, for example in basketball, there are just several people who are in the hall of fame in the NBA.

In software engineering, it’s hard to align the word great to a particular award. In my point of view being great in software engineering is a mix of decisions, actions, results, knowledge, and…

This post is for paid subscribers

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in
© 2025 Gregor Ojstersek
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start writingGet the app
Substack is the home for great culture

Share