Become a Better Human First

If you want to be a better software engineer or architect, become a better human first.

Whenever I say this, the first reply is one of four sentences. "This doesn't matter." "Toxic people still get promoted." "You live in an ideal world." And from people who know the places I have worked: "This won't work in the Middle East, or India, or Pakistan."

I understand why people say it. I have seen it first hand, working in Pakistan.

Many workplaces, especially in regions with an unstructured work culture, treat as normal what should never be acceptable. Toxicity gets rewarded. Narcissistic leaders get protected. Self-centred people rise to key positions. Managers push beyond moral limits "to get things done". Respect and recognition are treated as optional.

So people conclude that being a better human will not help you survive or grow.

I Am Not Asking For a Utopia

I humbly disagree, and my reason is one sentence: if we stop talking about what should be, we strengthen everything that should never be.

I am not asking for a perfect workplace. I am asking for four things that are basic, reasonable and essential: respect, integrity, appreciation and recognition.

The only sustainable way I know to get there, the only way I have seen teams truly change, is through what I call human craftsmanship.

What Human Craftsmanship Means

Three sentences carry it.

Before you write clean code, write clean intentions.

Before you design resilient systems, build a resilient mindset.

Before you architect solutions, architect your character.

I have written about the first one at length in Your Code Is Your Character: the code someone else opens a year later is a portrait of the person who wrote it. This essay is about what sits underneath that.

Eight Practices

Here is how I try to practise it. None of them is new, and none of them is large.

Time for yourself. Invest time with yourself. Reflection leads to clarity, and clarity leads to better decisions. Those decisions come from silence, walking, thinking and journaling, not from the next meeting.

IQ, EQ and SQ. Logic solves problems. Empathy prevents problems. Social intelligence navigates problems. An engineer with only the first one solves the problems the others would have prevented.

Calm under pressure. Panic creates bugs. Composure creates solutions.

Learning beyond nine to six. Craftsmanship is a lifelong journey, from apprentice to journeyman to master, and the road does not end at the title. I wrote about why in Mastery Is a Moving Target.

Understanding the pressures of others. Your work should lighten someone's load, not add to it. The reviewer, the person on call and the colleague downstream all carry a load you cannot see.

Upfront, honest and respectful communication. Truth delivered with kindness builds trust. Truth delivered without kindness gets ignored, and kindness without truth gets people hurt.

Leadership as responsibility, not authority. Praise. Trust. Recognise. Acknowledge. A title gives you the right to decide. It does not give you the right to stop doing these four things.

Self-control and discipline. Intelligence is useless without an outcome. The discipline is what turns the rest of the list into results.

Even in the Harshest Environments

I do not think these practices are easy where the culture works against them. I do think they are possible, and the reason is small.

One person's humanity can shift a team.

One person's integrity can set a new standard.

One person's empathy can break a cycle of toxicity.

That is not a promise that it will. It is an observation that the opposite is also one person at a time. A culture that protects the narcissist is made of people who each decided, that day, not to say anything. Each of them could decide differently. I have written about how to see what a team actually values, behind the values page, in The Four Lists You Never Wrote Down.

Where It Starts

Better engineering starts with better humans.

Better culture starts with brave humans.

Better companies start with consistent humans.