How to Become a Good Engineer

Always Do Useful Things to Achieve Compounding

A good career is one where compounding exists. The work you do now will lead to better opportunities in the future. For me at this stage, internships (work) and research in trending areas of industry are useful things. One thing to watch out for is being hidden within the collective. The work you do may not receive clear external feedback. This has two sides: on the positive side, even if your work isn’t outstanding, you won’t be criticized; but on the negative side, you can’t improve yourself based on external feedback. You need to actively join the game.

Build a Personal Brand

Google Scholar, GitHub, blog—I connect them all through my personal website.

Build Durable Engineering Capabilities Early

In the early stage of a career, the goal should be to build a strong capability structure rather than chasing specific job titles. Focus on developing system fundamentals (operating systems, networking, distributed systems), performance engineering (concurrency, memory, low-latency optimization), infrastructure skills (cluster management, scheduling, monitoring), and the ability to abstract complex systems. These foundational capabilities retain value for over a decade and are broadly applicable across fields such as AI infrastructure, cloud computing, quantitative systems, and large-scale distributed platforms.

Applying the Barbell Strategy to a Technical Career

Inspired by the Barbell Strategy proposed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a balanced technical path can combine stability and exploration. Allocate roughly 80% of time to building solid engineering capabilities—developing systems, infrastructure, and production-grade software—while reserving the remaining 20% for exploratory research, new ideas, and emerging technologies. This approach provides a strong practical foundation while maintaining exposure to innovation and intellectual upside.

Learn New Technologies the Market Needs

Lifelong learning. Spend some time exploring new technologies, maybe create a simple demo and put it on GitHub, or write a blog post, or even record a video. Finding peers to discuss with is also a good option.

Switch Jobs to Find Better Opportunities

Changing jobs is a perfectly reasonable action. If companies can fire employees, why shouldn’t employees switch jobs? Avoid having gaps between jobs. Don’t wait until you’re idle and have nothing to do before looking for new opportunities. Instead, start searching for them while you’re still employed, using your spare time. At the same time, maintain good relationships with your former colleagues—that’s essential. But don’t switch jobs too frequently.

Information Fasting to Prevent Anxiety

When the sun goes down, the workday should also end. The brain needs rest. Don’t expose yourself to work-relat

Here, “work” refers to its broadest sense. The field I am engaged in is about using human knowledge and wisdom to build products that can change the world. In form, this could be as fundamental as being a software engineer who writes code to create software products. It could also be like Noyce inventing the integrated circuit. You can be the one who personally writes the code, or you can simply focus on thinking at the macro level and have others carry out your ideas. The key is to remember that the purpose of work is to build things with real impact, and not to lose sight of that.

Good Attitude

Stay humble, and don’t boast about your achievements when luck is on your side. Remain calm in the face of major setbacks. Put passion into the places where it is truly needed.

Elegance

Let’s build something beautiful, beautifully.

Marketing

Use github.

Investing

Using spare time (such as Saturdays) to invest and keep detailed records is highly valuable. This practice helps develop skills relevant for transitions into hedge funds or investment firms. Over the long term, disciplined investing can also enable financial independence, making it unnecessary to work solely for money.

References

Sonmez, J. (2015). Soft Skills: The Software Developer’s Life Manual. New York: Manning Publications. (Paperback, January 6, 2015)
Hunt, A., & Thomas, D. (2019). The Pragmatic Programmer: Your Journey to Mastery (20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd ed.). Boston: Addison-Wesley Professional.