Brilliant article on what differentiates senior engineers.

Every successful engineer I’ve met, upon finishing up a design or getting ready for a project, will continually ask their peers questions along the lines of:
  • What could I be missing?
  • How will this not work?
  • Will you please shoot as many holes as possible into my thinking on this?
  • Even if it’s technically sound, is it understandable enough for the rest of the organization to operate, troubleshoot, and extend it?

This is because they know that nothing they make will ever only be in their hands, and that good peer review is what makes better design decisions. As it’s been said elsewhere, they “beg for the bad news.”