Source: Empirical Software Engineering
Published: December 2019

Question: What makes a great software engineer?

What qualities take a software engineer from good to great? Researchers at University of Washington Seattle surveyed 1,926 expert Microsoft engineers and conducted 77 interviews to find the critical attributes of exceptional engineers.

To gather high quality data, only engineers with SDE II certification and at least 5-10 years of experience were asked to participate. Respondents were incentivized with a gift certificate raffle. They were asked to rate each of 54 attributes and whether one could be a great engineer without it.

Make a prediction: What was the #1-rated attribute of a great engineer?

1. Hardworking

2. Pays attention to coding details

3. Mentally capable of handling coding complexity

4. Continuously improving

   SUBMIT YOUR ANSWER

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