From what’s I see, Information Technology is both massed and messed. It indeed solves many world problem, but it doesn’t mean any problems at all. In fact, it brings even more (other) problem. Information Technology became a single point of failure by itself.

Trend after trend. Best practices keep coming to the plates like in a big buffet. How come people can chewing or digest it all? People often said “Less is More”, but seeing how it come with more words, more action, and more implementation, I’m even not sure what is less now.

Really, I am not big fans of technology trend but what can I do? I am a software engineer and I must catch up or I can’t make a living. However, the trend of technology is a trend of the world, and I’m so grateful how it slap right to my face. Yet I keep questioned my own existence.

I told to my friends, “To be a good engineer, just 2 things required: Hard Skill and Exposure.” My friends laugh, but I believe some of them may agree with me. Information Technology is a big world and ocean of knowledge, without such exposure, strangers maybe look down on you. This is what I felt for quite some time. It’s really no room for low profile engineer. In the end, how much people pay you is based on your profile, not your real experience/knowledge/skills. Of course what we have done is a solid ink in the paper, yet I worry that some of the engineer-celebrities may over-rated.

I remember our CEO once said that it’s obvious in IT for right or wrong, not possible to lie over it. You may not able to deny if something is broken, however, there are hundreds of doubt beneath a single working system. You must see how fierce the engineers fight each other in order to deliver the perfect system. First, they try to kill each other with common sense until common is not common anymore and the senses start losing its sense, then they will take out a heavy vocabulary, the fancy name, a big spoon of design principle with spicy concept and theory to choke the opponent. Some young and stubborn may keep struggling but they never can win against “real experience” with mere words. In this very arena, we are growing.

So what called Engineer is a unique combination of philosopher, magician, and artist. Engineer is a philosopher with the wisdom and how they stand for their belief. An Engineer is also a magician who performs trick and problem solving, that we don’t understand how come it happen. But within their heart, Engineer is an artist, no one actually appreciate his work other than himself. People don’t care about quality, they only care about the quantity, how many features and when it’s done, The true engineer keep work on his code to make the Mona Lisa, at least this what I believed.

The spectrum of the skill itself is really wide, it does not make sense to compare with apple to apple for engineers, even if they’re working with the same language and the same projects, we can’t find who is the greater. Everyone is struggling on their way and the journey of never-stop-learning. Some dig deeper into the domain they interested to become an expert among the experts, the data scientist or cloud engineer. Others became kind of a politician, stand up for the engineers and accommodate the company side. For people like me, I just code for a living. And coding is never a cheap job. The name itself explain how important it is, “Source Code” means the beginning (source) of everything (the systems). Yes, we are the truth seeker.