Let’s aspire to a sense of pride and honor in our work. No book has influenced my thinking about the craft of engineering more than Uncle Bob’s The Clean Coder. He observes that lawyers and doctors are bound by a code of both ethics and strong professional standards that give others a reasonable confidence in their conduct and reliability. That’s not to say that every doctor or lawyer is honorable or capable, but it does mean that as a field, they demand a great deal of themselves.
I found this an inspiring idea, but I didn’t truly internalize it until I happened to have a conversation about work with a pediatric surgeon. Three things struck me: an iron determination to help her patients, a level of refinement in her training that I had never before observed firsthand, and the explicit idea that the opportunity to care for others is a great privilege. I was moved, and shaken; I wanted to hold myself to a standard that high and realized that I never had.
Treat your colleagues with respect: First and foremost, respect your colleagues: your words and actions should help every single colleague feel included, justly treated, and comfortable enough to do their best work every single day. Doing so demands both individual respect and consideration of broader context—anti-racism, opposition to sexism, and general commitment to justice and inclusion.
Do your very best to follow through on what you say: Give others a reason to trust your word without fail.
Nurture your skills as a point of pride: Aim to be better than you have to be, continuously growing and improving.
Professionalism can feel thankless—other people are goofing off and being rude, so who cares if you do? My experience is that people appreciate it more than you’d think—when I’ve changed roles, people have often come up to me and thanked me for my professionalism. I have as many off days and slips of temper as you do, but if you get up every day and strive to show your colleages consideration, appreciation, and respect, people notice. In the following sections, I’ll help you avoid what I’ve found to be the most common professionalism pitfalls.
A Word About Complaining
Casual complaining is software engineers’ favorite pastime. We read bad code, we argue with pointy-haired bosses and project managers, and we fight broken tools; sometimes, we just have to let it out.1 Those frustrations are real, and sharing them can be an important release; as an industry, we also prize a playful cynicism that can make complaining seem like part of the game. I love a good kvetching session, and I’ll grant that, properly channeled, shared complaints can be the start of something great—“this is crap, and by gosh we’re going to make it better together.” That said, I’ve officially retired from the sport of complaining at work, and I advise you to partake infrequently, because it’s easy for complaining to poison a team’s spirit. Please note, before I explain this problem, the critical distinction between casual grousing—blowing off steam about everyday frustrations—and the unrelated necessity of discussing serious problems like discrimination, which is always appropriate.
I have, and you will, encounter teams whose dialogue descends into tireless whining. Their grievances may be real, and yet, if they could see themselves, I think they would be embarrassed—having lunch or coffee without a word on any subject except insult to other (well-intentioned) teams and technology, evidently in a loop where each complaint encourages the next. This is the risk of grumbling: our catharsis can bring down the people around us, potentially low enough that no one has a good word left to say. When we sink to where we can never balance complaints with optimism, we should take it as a sign that it’s time to fix our attitude or move on—find a way to be a part of building something positive.
A Word About Gossip
I’ve lived to regret every bad thing I’ve ever said about a colleague behind their back. I think I do it less than most (I certainly try to resist the urge), but I’ve lapsed from time to time. Ragging on a frustrating colleague can be spectacularly cathartic, a bonding experience with a like-minded friend, and generally a fun and relaxing time; and as far as I know it’s never blown back on me—I can’t deny it.
But we degrade ourselves and our team when we do it. A healthy team depends on mutual trust and support, on some generosity of spirit between teammates; insulting people behind their backs frays that fabric. Moreover, people admire grace and generosity and in the end look down on venom. When I left my first job and several people came up to me and told me that they’d appreciated my professionalism, I was amazed to realize that people noticed my efforts to be kind, and I felt a stab of shame for all my lapses in speaking ill of others. When shit-talking breaks out, I suggest you speak up in defense of the maligned whenever you can—if you can’t, waiting out the conversation is far better than piling on.
A Word About Office Dating
I think office dating is a bad idea, and I advise you to avoid it.2,3
For anyone who didn’t know before, #MeToo made it clear that we have a big, big problem with sexual harassment in the tech workplace. I argue: accept no risk of becoming part of the problem. Your colleague may indeed be interested in you but why risk making them uncomfortable, making it harder to work together, and possibly harming their and your career?
On top of the traditional options of friends and activities, OkCupid, Bumble, Grindr, Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Hinge, Zoosk, and I don’t know how many other dating apps are out there overflowing with people looking to date; our era probably enjoys more alternatives to workplace dating than any other in human history. In my opinion, this makes it even harder to justify the risk of distressing a coworker with an unwanted romantic advance. Bring your best professional conduct, and only your professional conduct, to the office, and you’ll never have to wonder whether you did the right thing.
Choosing Our Words Carefully
I once heard an engineer scream an exceptionally vulgar obscenity, a reference to a TV show, at the top of his lungs at the office. Mortified, enraged, and panickedly looking over my own shoulder for colleagues I assumed to already be calling HR, I hissed at him that he was out of line; he replied that the office isn’t a place where you have to behave in a special way. I couldn’t disagree more if I tried; I was confident then, and am quite confident now, that the workplace demands extraordinary care with language.
This section will explore the necessity to choose our words to maximize the comfort of our colleagues. Other sources can illuminate important topics like workplace law, inclusion, and microaggression in detail, but I feel that I must touch on this subject, because I’ve observed that many engineers feel a misplaced liberty to use language at work that makes others uncomfortable.
First, some legal context. This discussion is specific to the United States, but similar rules may apply in other countries. In the United States, the law promises workers freedom from harassment in the workplace. Harassment is defined as “unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.”4 A company is responsible for providing that safe environment and can be sued if it fails to; harassers may also be personally liable in some cases. Just as offense need not be intended to be given, you need not intend any harm for your behavior to distress others and meet the legal definition of harassment; this fact alone should give you pause.
Second, an ethical observation: we should hold our language not to the standard of what we think people should be comfortable with, but rather to the standard of allowing real comfort, of creating a workplace where everyone can do their best work in peace. It should go without saying that we never discomfit others intentionally, but even if you don’t foresee how your words hurt others, or if feel that you should be able to use term X or discuss subject Y for fun or entertainment, if it makes your colleagues uncomfortable, it is in the end incompatible with professionalism. This injunction against discomfort of course doesn’t prohibit challenging but important conversations, for example about justice or inclusion.
Finally, a practical observation: the stakes are high, and you can easily get yourself fired. When you inch toward your own line, you might already be across someone else’s, and regardless of whether your behavior meets a legal definition of harassment, a pattern of discomfiting others won’t endear you to your employer. Why risk it?
Alcohol with Colleagues
- 1.
Making an unwanted sexual advance to a colleague
- 2.
Saying something politically incorrect that offends someone
- 3.
Just getting embarrassingly sloppy, for example, throwing up
I’ve seen all three more than once; I’ve seen, for example, one colleague drunkenly call another “darling” repeatedly at the office and burst into tears when asked to stop. If you avoid drinking with colleagues, you can be sure that whatever your other failings, you won’t do that. If you absolutely must drink with coworkers or at the office, then for goodness’ sake just have one.