The top 1% of software engineers do something every day that the other 99% do not do. I see this over and over again and the difference is startling.

I have a friend who is easily what I would consider a top 1% software engineer. As an example of this, I must share a story…

When my friend and I met, he was interviewing for a job on my team. He was a bit scatterbrained, but in that brilliant sort of way. Clearly he could code and had built many, many things. He is very much a builder.

He also collects… hobbies.

We ended up sitting next to each other and I would basically drive him crazy going back and forth on insane ideas I had about software engineering and architecture. It was fun, for me at least.

After like six months, he was tasked to build (largely by himself) a credit card processing API like Stripe or BrainTree. There were no resources for this project beyond his time and enough budget to do certification audits and so on.

Along with the help of a super brilliant IT guy who ended up doing some of the architecture and coding along the way, the two of them managed to build an incredible payments platform that ran on AWS. I believe they were the first to pull this off in a way that was PCI compliant, certified, and secure to whatever levels is required to be running the backend platform, not just using someone else’s platform.

Anyhow, both of those guys are actually top tier developers and as you would imagine, years later are working on building a payments platform for a mobile payments startup.

Now that I think of it, both of those guys have the same habit I’ve seen with other top 1% developers. (Apologies for interrupting the stream of consciousness)

So what is that weird habit that I keep seeing in the top 1% of software engineers?

They are always building something. Not just at work. Outside of work too. Always building.

These are the people who write code every day at their day job, and then go home and write code on something else that they want to exist. I’m also one of those people, so I know what it’s about.

I think it’s some kind of obsession with creating or making things. In the past, people would build cars or houses or things like that. Now, it’s code. And for many of us, that’s just what we do.

It’s only weird from the outside. If you write code every day, it’s normal, like a warm fuzzy blanket on a cold winter’s day.

And I’ve seen this kind of obsessive behavior in other fields. Top NBA basketball players like LeBron James, Michael Jordan, and Kobe Bryant are famous for practicing and training every day harder than everyone else, even after they reach MVP status.

Warren Buffet, who has been the richest man or among the richest men in the world for decades still goes to work every day to invest and grow his business. He still reads and studies all day long. There is no need to. He wants to. He has to. It’s his life’s work.

I like to learn about guitar players because I play guitar too. In probably dozens of interviews with the best players, guys like John Mayer, Steve Vai, Robben Ford, Joe Bonamassa, etc. they all are playing the guitar pretty much every day. Usually they will play for hours a day. It’s what they love to do.

So, that obsession that drives someone to do what they do whether they are being paid to do it or not. To train when they are already the best. To make something just because they must.

It is their life’s work.

That is what I believe makes someone a top 1% in any field, including software engineering. When it’s your obsession, when it’s your life’s work, when it’s what you do whether or not you get paid to do it, when it’s what you want to learn about and study no matter if anyone tells you to do it.

That is a quality that the top 1% programmers have in common. And that is a rare thing indeed.

-Brian

P.S. I write about code and career issues elsewhere too…