I Think Many Engineers Are Quietly At War With Themselves

Some talks end with applause.

Today ended with people crying.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

Quietly.

The kind of crying that happens when someone finally feels seen after years of silently questioning themselves. ❤️‍🔥

Today I gave my meetup talk:

“Why Great Engineers Don’t Just Write Code.”

And afterward, person after person came to speak to me.

Not about frameworks.

About themselves.

🔥 “I thought maybe I just wasn’t technical enough anymore.”

🔥 “I thought something was wrong with me.”

🔥 “I feel this all the time.”

🔥 “I finally feel hopeful again.”

Hopeful.

That word has stayed in my chest all evening.

Because the people saying this were not incapable people.

They were thoughtful people.

Relational people.

Strategic people.

Human-centered people.

People carrying invisible organizational complexity every day.

Exactly the kinds of engineers whose impact increasingly becomes:

💚 indirect

💚 connective

💚 collaborative

💚 organizational

💚 strategic

💚 relational

Exactly the kinds of impact many engineering cultures still struggle to recognize correctly.

🐉

Somewhere along the way, many engineering environments accidentally created a dangerous emotional equation:

That humanity and technical excellence exist in opposition to each other.

That if you are good with people, maybe you are less technical.

If you facilitate well, maybe you are less engineering-minded.

If you care about emotions, maybe you are less rational.

If you think deeply about trust, communication, identity, safety, collaboration, or leadership…

…then maybe you somehow drifted away from “real engineering.”

And I think many people carry shame around this without fully realizing it.

Because the messaging is subtle.

Not overt cruelty.

Tiny comments.

Tiny recognitions.

Tiny exclusions.

Tiny jokes.

Tiny assumptions.

“You’re really good with stakeholders.”

“This sounds more like coaching.”

“We need stronger technical leadership.”

Small sentences.

Repeated over years.

Until people slowly begin amputating parts of themselves to maintain credibility.

❤️‍🔥

And maybe that is why a movie I saw this week: Je m’appelle Agneta affected me so deeply recently too.

There is a scene I cannot stop thinking about.

Agneta stands there confronting her own aging body, her skin, her fat bits, herself.

And there is this painful moment where she almost attacks herself.

Punching at her own skin.

Not because she is shallow.

Because years of shame, invisibility, expectations, loneliness, rejection, and internalized judgment had quietly shaped the relationship she had with herself.

Watching it hurt.

Because I recognized something inside it that I think many people do psychologically every day.

Especially inside professional environments.

We punch the parts of ourselves that seem least rewarded.

The emotional parts.

The relational parts.

The soft parts.

The vulnerable parts.

The exhausted parts.

The human parts.

We compress ourselves into more acceptable shapes.

More optimized.

More credible.

More rational.

More productive.

More emotionally detached.

And over time, many people no longer realize they are at war with themselves.

🐉

Today became unexpectedly emotional for me too because my children came to the meetup.

And seeing them standing there inside the “IT Role Model” frame honestly cracked something open in me.

Because suddenly I realized:

they are watching everything.

Not only what I achieve.

But who I become while achieving it.

They are absorbing:

❤️‍🔥 whether women belong in leadership

❤️‍🔥 whether empathy weakens authority

❤️‍🔥 whether intelligence and softness can coexist

❤️‍🔥 whether humans must fragment themselves to succeed

❤️‍🔥 whether engineering is only code

❤️‍🔥 whether visibility is dangerous

❤️‍🔥 whether worth is conditional

❤️‍🔥 whether they are allowed to fully exist too

❤️‍🔥 Whether their mom full of soft curves looks beautiful while standing on the stage…

Normally I’d hide this photo of me ⬆️ only seeing mi cubed tummy … now I choose to see my happy stance instead!

And if I’m honest…

part of me grieved today.

Not from sadness exactly.

From realizing how many years I spent negotiating which parts of myself were professionally acceptable.

🐉

The engineer.

The mother.

The strategist.

The empath.

The ambitious woman.

The neurodivergent thinker.

The deeply feeling human.

The relational leader.

The intellectual.

The soft parts. Both physically and mentally ;-)

The intense parts.

Always calculating:

“How much humanity can exist here before credibility disappears?”

And I do not think I am alone in that.

I think many people in tech are exhausted from performing fragmented versions of themselves.

Especially people whose strengths become increasingly collaborative, connective, emotional, or systemic over time.

❤️‍🔥

What moved me most today was not admiration.

It was recognition.

The feeling in the room when people realized:

“Oh… maybe these parts of me are not weaknesses.”

That moment matters deeply.

Because people become dangerous to unhealthy systems the moment they stop apologizing for their humanity.

And perhaps that is the deeper shift beginning now in engineering.

Not the abandonment of technical excellence.

But the collapse of the false divide between technical intelligence and human intelligence.

Because complex systems were never only technical.

They were always human.

The code was human.

The architecture was human.

The tradeoffs were human.

The leadership was human.

The failures were human.

The innovation was human.

We just built cultures that sometimes rewarded people for pretending otherwise.

🐉

Tonight I keep thinking about how many brilliant people quietly concluded they were “less than” simply because their strengths became increasingly relational over time.

How many future leaders shrank themselves.

How many women silenced themselves.

How many empathetic engineers masked themselves.

How many collaborative thinkers questioned their legitimacy.

How many people burned out trying to prove they were still “technical enough.”

And how many children are currently watching adults decide which parts of themselves deserve to survive professionally.

That thought sits heavily in my chest tonight.

But so does hope.

Because today, in that room, I saw something else too.

I saw people slowly reconnecting with themselves.

And honestly?

I think that may be one of the most revolutionary things happening in engineering right now. 🐉💚