The Superiority That Killed Many Developers

These last few days, I was scrolling through social media when a meme stopped me cold. It made me question the entire tech journey, especially in software engineering.

It showed an expert with no-code tools saying to a developer: “Vous les développeurs, vous vous sentez supérieurs.” (“You developers, you feel superior.”)

The developer’s response? “Mais on est supérieurs.” (“But we are superior.”)

Every developer knows that feeling. The rush of executing your first “Hello World” program. You feel like Klaus in The Originals, suddenly brimming with power and a sense of untouchability, of course, without his fatal weakness (the oak). That first program, named as if we’re greeting a new universe, makes us feel like we’ve crossed into another realm. And practically, we have.

But like Klaus, we all have our “oak.” That vulnerability is what keeps us human. And it’s the first thing we forget.

The Art of Feeling Ourselves

This is where the dangerous art begins. Every junior developer masters the art of feeling unique of knowing something others don’t. You start dreaming of multi-billion dollar startups. And then, the killing virus kicks in: arrogance.

This is the critical fork in the road. The point that decides whether you become a great engineer, or remain just a code writer.

Yes, there is a profound difference.

A Software Engineer solves problems. They see beyond the syntax to the systemic need. A Code Writer, however, simply translates user stories into functional lines. They complete tasks.

This divergence starts in the “arrogance era.” Here, you have two choices:

1. Follow your ego into mastery. You acknowledge the arrogance, then use it as fuel to dive deeper. You learn design, architecture, user psychology, communication. You build not just code, but solutions. The result? You become superior not just in your mind, but in practicability. Your value is undeniable.

2. Believe being a code writer is enough. You cling to the delusion that technical skill in isolation is king. You stagnate in a comfortable bubble. You might as well be printing “Hello Delusion World,” because you’re coding in an echo chamber.

   
   

How That Superiority Kills Careers

So, how does this mindset kill potential? It traps many as permanent code writers while their peers pierce through to become tech leaders and entrepreneurs.

Being a true problem-solver requires critical and analytical thinking. But that’s only half the battle. You must then know how to sell the solution.

This is where many code writers fail. They dismiss sales and marketing as “non-technical” or beneath them. They end up with amazing code, elegant algorithms, and impressive GitHub repositories, but only GitHub knows what they did. Their brilliance remains invisible to the world that needs it. Their career plateaus because impact is not measured in commits, but in adopted solutions.

It’s Never Too Late

If you see yourself in the “code writer” description, breathe. This is good. You’ve just broken the first and biggest barrier: self-awareness.

Now, build the bridge to engineering.

Learn sales skills. Not to become a salesman, but to understand value, persuasion, and narrative. Learn marketing. Not to run ads, but to understand your user’s world, their language, and their pain points.

These skills gift you with something more valuable than any framework: empathy. They give you the patience to truly listen to users instead of assuming you know what’s best. They allow you to welcome feedback, even if it means deleting hundreds of lines of perfect code to rebuild something truly needed.

At the end of the day, we are tech servants. Our responsibility is to deliver a piece of technology that serves, that solves, that eases.

In the art of being yourself, choose to be a leader. Choose to be an entrepreneur of solutions. To do that, you must kill the toxic superiority mindset and serve your true master: the one who doesn’t understand your code, the one in the dark when you and your geek friends dive deep into debate.

The end user.

Serve them, and you will never just write code again. You will build legacies.