Hacker News Reader

I'll second this answer and expand on this:

> communicates well

The best people I work with do what they say they will do.

Additionally, your entire answer (generally) applies to pretty much any field, not just programming. But I'll also add on that great professionals understand and accept how their role supports/fits into the goals of the business.

What does 'common tooling' mean?

Tooling (of several kinds) that is easily available - everything from editors to CICD. I recall having this conversation with him in which he explained that a large part of his job was mentoring/educating/teaching younger engineers. The example he used was in VIM - minimal custom settings and scripts so that it easily translated to others (iirc the only plugin he used was NerdTree). Keeping things basic makes it easier to teach.

I assume you know this person IRL?

Yep, he was an engineer that fell into an architecture role.