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When I was a programmer in my 20s, I saw the same among my peers and tried to emulate an engineer in my 30s. I stayed mature, tried to focus on the big picture and was always open to advice from elders because I didn't know squat yet and was aware of it.

Just by doing that I excelled in many areas, and now as a n almost 40 year old developer I try to hire people who act like I did, and believe me they're out there.

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When I was in my early 20s, did consulting stints while in grad school. One of my jobs, the senior engineer was a former Bell Labs white beard (literally) with his first 'program' hanging on his office wall :)

I remember most of my age group had enormous respect for the older engineers. But then, we didn't have Google and Wikipedia and entirely too facile access to information that lends the patina of 'knowledge' that is so easily obtained these days. So a lot of the aggressive posturing these days is really a symptom of the not knowing that you don't know that much yet ..

This is exactly why I enjoy reading HN. As a 21 year old software developer, I do not understand how can someone be arrogant, just opening github makes me acknowledge what I still need to learn.

Then I'd say you have the right mindset for a software engineer :)

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