You need ego to work in big tech. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that says "I can figure this out" even when the evidence says you can't.
Sean Goedecke1 argues this is not arrogance in the bully sense. It's a durable self-belief that survives constant confusion, incomplete knowledge, technical disagreement, and organisational friction. The kind that lets you act despite ignorance instead of freezing in it.
Why Ego Matters in Engineering
Large-scale software engineering is inherently humbling. Engineers work inside codebases too large to fully understand, spend much of their time being wrong, and still need to move forward anyway.
In that environment, a strong ego functions as a stabiliser. It supports the belief that a path through the ambiguity can be found, even when there is no immediate evidence that the problem is tractable.
This same ego is required in large companies because decisions do not make themselves. Senior engineers need to take positions, challenge incorrect assumptions, and absorb the social cost of making changes that some people will dislike.
| Situation | Low-ego failure mode | Useful ego response |
|---|---|---|
| Confusing system behaviour | Hesitation and self-doubt | Keep investigating until the problem emerges |
| Architecture debate | Endless hedging | Take a position with acknowledged trade-offs |
| Bad assumption in a meeting | Stay silent | Correct the claim clearly and early |
| Org-wide change | Avoid conflict | Proceed knowing some disagreement is inevitable |
A low-ego culture can become passive if nobody is willing to say "this is the right call." Productive engineers need an almost unreasonable belief that they can still find the answer, even in systems they helped build that they no longer fully understand.
Why Big Tech Needs It Even More
In large organisations, decisions don't make themselves. Someone has to fill the vacuum or a less-informed person will.
Goedecke identifies three behaviours that matter:
Take positions. Endless nuance just lets worse decisions happen. Taking positions is a duty because otherwise less-informed decision makers fill the vacuum.
Tolerate making enemies. Useful change in large companies often annoys someone, so conflict avoidance becomes a delivery constraint. Senior engineers need enough ego to believe they may be the only person in the room seeing the problem correctly.
Interrupt bad reasoning early. Silence in leadership meetings can turn bad assumptions into months of wasted engineering effort. Silence lets bad assumptions calcify into funded work.
Sometimes you're the only person in the room seeing the problem clearly. You need enough ego to believe that might be true.
The Counterweight: Organisational Humility
The same engineer who needs a strong ego in technical work also needs to suppress it when executive priorities shift. Engineers usually have latitude on implementation, but very little on strategy. Confusing those layers is a common source of pain and burnout.
An engineer may do excellent work, be correct on the merits, and still lose due to political context several layers above them. Projects can be cancelled late, priorities can reverse suddenly, and strong effort may go unrewarded.
At the end of the day, your job - the reason the company pays you - is to execute on your boss's and your boss's boss's plans, whether you agree with them or not.
Sean Goedecke
Remaining effective requires the ability to absorb that without treating every organisational setback as a personal injustice. The skill is separating technical conviction from status attachment.
Engineers are paid mainly to execute plans, not to unilaterally redefine them. Hard work that is punished or discarded is especially burnout-inducing because the expected reward never arrives. Emotional resilience in big tech depends on this separation.
The Chameleon Model
Highly effective engineers are neither uniformly humble nor uniformly forceful. They are adaptive.
They show high ego when ambiguity, weak reasoning, or delivery inertia need to be overcome. They show low ego when the company makes a strategic call they do not control.
That creates a difficult profile to emulate. Engineers who are too soft cannot drive change. Engineers who are too proud cannot survive large-company reality. The effective middle is psychologically demanding because it asks for confidence without entitlement.
| Pattern | Result |
|---|---|
| Uniform humility | No one drives difficult decisions through ambiguity |
| Uniform ego | Executives and politics eventually crush it |
| Situational switching | Drives change when needed, adapts when overruled |
This helps explain why strong big-tech staff engineers are rare. The switching is exhausting. You have to believe you're right enough to argue. And believe you might be wrong enough to let go. Both at the same time.
Summary
- Big codebases need stabilising ego. You'll be wrong and confused. Belief that you can still find the answer is the useful kind.
- Big tech rewards commitment. Take positions, tolerate friction, interrupt bad reasoning.
- Org humility is the counterweight. Strategy isn't your layer. Don't personalise executive reversals. Matt Hogg's framing of ego, empathy and humility2 lands in a similar place.
- Effective staff engineers are chameleons. High ego with peers, low ego with executives.
What's Next
Next time you feel hesitation in a technical debate, ask: is my silence helping the project, or just protecting my comfort? The answer usually tells you whether you need more ego in that room, not less.