Developer ego and why regulating it will make you a better professional

开发者自我意识：为何学会克制它能让你成为更优秀的专业人士

Ego, from the Latin “I”, is the psychological structure that organises our self-perception, consciousness, and identity. It acts as a mediator between instincts and morality, helping us interpret reality. Although necessary for self-esteem, an unchecked ego can distort reality and generate defensive behaviour. “Ego”（自我）一词源于拉丁语中的“我”，它是组织我们自我感知、意识和身份认同的心理结构。它充当本能与道德之间的调解人，帮助我们解读现实。虽然它对自尊心是必要的，但如果任由其膨胀，自我意识可能会扭曲现实并产生防御性行为。

From a software development perspective — or when building a professional career — it is vital to understand the processes we must master to call ourselves experts in a subject. However, when beyond expertise we begin to undervalue areas outside our profession, we fall into a common mistake: believing those areas are not important, because only what we do counts and matters. 从软件开发的角度——或者在构建职业生涯时——理解我们必须掌握哪些流程才能称得上是某个领域的专家至关重要。然而，当我们超越了专业范畴，开始轻视本职工作以外的领域时，我们就会陷入一个常见的误区：认为那些领域并不重要，因为只有我们所做的事情才算数、才有意义。

I do not judge you — it happened to me. It cost me jobs, arguments, and a closed-mindedness that showed in many ways. Only years of experience made me realise that my ignorance was not only bold, but downright loud. I would not blame myself (or you), since university curricula often do not cover these more management-oriented topics — and if they do, we were probably hungrier as students for technical knowledge than for understanding the full cycle of product development. 我并不评判你——我也曾经历过这些。它让我丢过工作、引发过争吵，并导致了一种在多方面表现出来的狭隘心态。只有多年的经验才让我意识到，我的无知不仅大胆，而且简直是“震耳欲聋”。我不会责怪自己（或你），因为大学课程往往不涵盖这些偏向管理的课题——即便有，作为学生，我们当时可能更渴望技术知识，而不是去理解完整的产品开发周期。

Beyond you and me, many products that never see the light of success probably had someone in a very technical role who used their silver bullet without considering the full picture. 除了你我之外，许多从未获得成功的产品，很可能就是因为某个身处核心技术岗位的人，在未考虑全局的情况下就祭出了他们的“银弹”。

Is your ego in check? Answer these questions

你的自我意识受控了吗？回答这些问题

To recognise this pattern of unchecked ego — or confirm it is already under control — I invite you to answer: 为了识别这种自我意识膨胀的模式——或者确认它是否已得到控制——我邀请你回答以下问题：

• ✓ Are your daily stand-up updates overly technical?
• ✓ 你的每日站会更新是否过于技术化？
• ✓ Do you not understand why team metrics matter and why they need to improve — such as velocity, performance, DORA metrics?
• ✓ 你是否不理解团队指标（如开发速度、性能、DORA指标）为何重要以及为何需要改进？
• ✓ Do you not understand why people talk about KPIs, OKRs, ROI, and similar?
• ✓ 你是否不理解人们为何谈论KPI、OKR、ROI等类似概念？
• ✓ Do ceremonies like refinements, retrospectives, pre-planning, PI planning, and other non-technical conversations feel like a waste of time?
• ✓ 你是否觉得需求细化、回顾会议、预规划、PI规划以及其他非技术性对话是在浪费时间？
• ✓ Do you fail to see the big picture, wishing you could just focus on one task at a time?
• ✓ 你是否无法看到全局，只希望一次专注于一项任务？
• ✓ Do you not understand why people in other roles sometimes want to grasp technical topics, or why it matters that they do?
• ✓ 你是否不理解为什么其他岗位的人有时想要了解技术课题，或者为什么他们这样做很重要？

If you identify with 3 or more, that is an interesting signal worth exploring — and you might even discover new fields you would like to expand into. Especially now, with AI on the rise, generalist profiles are gaining significant importance and value in the industry. 如果你符合其中3项或以上，这是一个值得探索的有趣信号——你甚至可能会发现自己想要拓展的新领域。特别是在人工智能兴起的今天，通才型人才在行业中的重要性和价值正日益凸显。

Practical advice — whether your ego is “unchecked” or you are simply curious

实用建议——无论你的自我意识是否“膨胀”，还是仅仅出于好奇

Have recurring one-on-ones with your team 与团队成员进行定期的“一对一”交流 Schedule recurring sessions with all members of your team — at least half an hour per month. Even when there is nothing specific to discuss, it strengthens a relationship beyond the technical: learn what someone’s day-to-day looks like, their processes, and how from your role you could help streamline their work. 与团队所有成员安排定期会议——每月至少半小时。即使没有具体议题，这也能加强技术之外的人际关系：了解他人的日常工作、他们的流程，以及你如何从自己的岗位出发帮助简化他们的工作。

Understand metrics and their business impact 理解指标及其业务影响 Metrics tell you how many users are happy with the product or service, how many new users are joining, and the revenue that justifies our salaries — and in less welcome news, they also reveal the volume of complaints and dissatisfaction with the experience being offered. 指标告诉你用户对产品或服务的满意度、新用户的增长情况，以及支撑我们薪水的收入来源——而在不太令人愉快的一面，它们也揭示了投诉量以及用户对现有体验的不满。

Know your users 了解你的用户 We technical people are users too — true — but we are not the users with the final say or the loudest voice. It is important to explore the real needs of people out in the world. Something you think works great might turn out to be among the least relevant things to users in their day-to-day, which in turn can affect the metrics we just discussed. 我们技术人员也是用户——没错——但我们并非拥有最终决定权或最大话语权的用户。探索现实世界中人们的真实需求非常重要。你认为效果极佳的功能，在用户的日常生活中可能恰恰是最不相关的，而这反过来又会影响我们刚才讨论的指标。

Ceremonies = learning and context opportunities 会议 = 学习与获取背景的机会 Even if you do not contribute directly, learning to filter where you can gain knowledge will greatly help your understanding of the business. In team ceremonies your feedback will always matter, so your attendance should be non-negotiable. 即使你没有直接做出贡献，学会筛选获取知识的渠道也将极大地帮助你理解业务。在团队会议中，你的反馈永远是有价值的，因此你的出席应该是不可商量的。

Let’s normalise talking about expectations 让我们将讨论“期望”常态化 If professional growth is your goal, you can find a learning path in the expectations others have of your role or of you specifically. You can also understand what those people want to hear from you when you give a status update — for example, talking about risks, blockers, or dependencies with external teams, rather than “a confusion in log formatting”. 如果职业成长是你的目标，你可以从他人对你岗位或你个人的期望中找到学习路径。你还可以了解当你在进行状态更新时，他们想听到什么——例如，谈论风险、阻碍或与外部团队的依赖关系，而不是“日志格式的混乱”。

Invest in your education 投资你的教育 Especially in topics that interest you. For free, you can find community events, social media profiles covering subjects you care about, and even workshops or webinars. If you want to invest a little more, there are online courses, books, or more academic offerings from universities such as diplomas or master’s programmes. 特别是在你感兴趣的课题上。你可以免费找到社区活动、关注你所关心领域的社交媒体账号，甚至参加研讨会或网络讲座。如果你想投入更多，还有在线课程、书籍，或者大学提供的更学术性的课程，如文凭或硕士项目。

Look outside the box 跳出思维定式 Sometimes a solution you are only implementing for your team could work for the entire organisation — and only you might realise that impact. The invitation is to look at cross-cutting problems and always keep them in mind when generating a technical solution. 有时，你仅为团队实施的解决方案可能适用于整个组织——而只有你可能意识到这种影响力。我建议你去关注那些跨部门的问题，并在制定技术方案时始终将它们纳入考量。

The goal is not to judge a system or yourself: it is to recognise the situation and want to do something about it, where the greatest benefit will be for you and for the environment you work in. More often than you imagine, attitude > aptitude. 目标不是去评判一个系统或你自己：而是去识别现状并想要做出改变，这将为你和你所处的工作环境带来最大的益处。比你想象中更常见的是，态度大于能力。