Grit

Graduation season is behind us and so are the articles covering the commencement speeches. Every year there are always a few getting a lot of attention. NPR published a list of interesting commencement speeches over the years. Surely by now, you have watched the video of Steve Jobs’ three stories during his Stanford commencement speech in 2005. It is one of my favorite.

This year, Sheryl Sandberg’s speech to the 2016 graduating class at the University of California in Berkeley got much attention. She encouraged the graduates to build resilience in themselves, their places of work and their communities.

“You will not be defined by what you achieve; instead, you’ll be defined by how you survive adversity. … When the challenges come, I hope you remember that anchored deep within you is the ability to learn and grow,” she said.

She is right.

Recently I had a walk with one of the engineers in the team, who was complaining how we weren’t doing enough to promote his project. He had built a nice piece of software, and made it available to the world through Github. He had done all the right things: the software was nicely documented and packaged. It included a small tutorial. He was responsive to feedback. He had written blogposts and tweeted about it. He even had gone to conferences to talk about it. And yet, the adoption rate was low. We discussed what marketing can do to get more eyeballs on the project. However, it was also a good illustration of how building software, which people are willing to use, is hard. It takes tenacity, stubbornness and grit.

It made me realize that this is one of the key qualities to look for when hiring new engineers. Especially when you look for new grads. Forget the long list of things when interviewing candidates. It boils down to these few questions:

1. Does the person exhibit a love for the art? Whatever the art may be: programming, UX, writing, painting, music, etc. A talented (aerospace, chemical, mechanical, etc.) engineer, who loves programming, is likely better than a mediocre computer science graduate.

2. Is the person curious? Some of the best folks I know, know a little bit about many subjects. They are always curious in how things work, or why something doesn’t work.

3. Is the person of high integrity?

4. And last, but not least, does the person exhibit grit, perseverance, and endurance? The real work starts, after you shipped version 1.0 of a piece of software.

All other qualities such as being a good communicator, being flexible, ability to take feedback, valuing quality, willingness to follow process, friendly etc … just flow from these few items.

These four qualities read old-school. They are as true for a good engineer, as they are for a cowboy in the 1800s.