After working in the industry for a decade, I’ve noticed that the software engineers I work with have a tendency to bucket themselves into a specific kind of personality archetype. Here’s a list of some of the archetypes I noticed ordered in terms of beneficial, blissfully innocent, or just outright demonic.

The Truth Seeker

The truth seeker desires nothing more than to pursue the truth. Makes good faith research and provides solidly backed defense of their proposals using concrete numbers. Always great to have one on your team. Considers complete context and constraints of all aspects of the project not just engineering.

The Nerd

Reads W3C proposals. Knows the nuances of all of Postgres’s locking levels. Loves and proselytizes Rust. Probably into cryptographic algorithms. If you ever wanted a deep dive in an area you just wanted a shallow introduction to, the Nerd is your guy.

The Doctor

Has a PHD in Astrophysics. Why are they data plumbling web software… Similar to The Nerd, but more book smart and less knowledgeable about engineering topics specifically. Still obviously very smart.

The Bureaucrat

Creates processes that you better follow. Otherwise will get very upset at you. Do not ignore the procedures. Read the documentation first before consulting.

The Tourist

Keeps up to date with all the latest trendy frameworks / technologies. Will always try to suggest it despite how new and untested it is.

The Hacker

Given a problem, will get it done in a quarter time than anyone else. How…

Cargo Culter

The Cargo Culture loves to stay educated. Always has their pulse on hot technologies or what tech influencers are saying. Proselytizes the last thing they learned despite the solution being only tangentially applicable to the current code base, or directly detrimental (Introducing GraphQL to fix dynamic querying performance problems). Very convincing due to strong but usually incorrect convictions.

The Gollum

Maintaining the same feature for years and very protective of it. Very difficult to ask for changes or improvements to their feature. Very difficult to get a PR approved against their feature. Feature most likely underperformant more crusty hacked on layers than the earth itself.

The Dick

Probably very smart, otherwise would have gotten fired. Is usually helpful, but you’ll probably feel bad about it.

The Complexity Demon

Always will try to suggest a more complicated solution first. Is more interested in the challenge than addressing the customer’s problem. Most likely has ulterior motives around career advancement.

The AI Evangelist

Is very bullish on AI. Often vibe codes most of their PR. Also vibe reviews their PR.

The DOGEler

Deleting / Rewriting code at all costs. Ignores context in the name of reducing lines of code or rewriting existing features to fit their model. Almost always introduces a critical regression and many smaller regressions.

The Buffoon

Very confident. Very wrong. Talks a lot. Says nothing.

The Absentee

The guy probably working two jobs. Isn’t responsive for several days, then releases a batch of sloppy prs. Repeat.

Which one are you?