In this video, engineering leader Gregor Ojstersek reflects on his personal experience trying to be the "hero"—working long hours, taking on every detail, and attempting to solve all problems quickly—as he transitioned from senior engineer to team lead. He explains why heroism, defined as short, intense bursts of effort to rescue projects, is unsustainable and leads to burnout, using a Newton's third‑law analogy to illustrate the inevitable opposite reaction of fatigue. He argues that long‑term success comes from consistent, incremental improvement (the 1%‑per‑day compounding principle) rather than occasional spikes of effort. He recommends three habit‑building books (Atomic Habits, Getting Things Done, Deep Work) and outlines the managerial metrics he values—consistency, predictability, and reliability—because they provide stable expectations for the team and business. He shares a past bad habit of over‑optimistic estimations and hero‑mode quick fixes, noting that such behavior can become a liability. The video ends with a call for viewers to comment on heroism, and an invitation to subscribe to his Engineering Leadership newsletter, which reaches over 100,000 readers with bi‑weekly articles.
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We all like to be viewed as high performers and people that get things done. One of the ways that we may believe that to achieve this is by being the hero. And when the time comes to save the project or to release a new feature, we would be working long hours in order to achieve that. So is this a good thing or is this a bad thing? Well, you can already see from the title of the video that this is not a behavior that I'm a fan of, and we will define why That is the case in this video. So let me first start with my story trying to be a hero. I've made many different mistakes in my career, both as engineer and also manager, and one of them was that I wanted to be a hero who could solve all the issues instead of focusing on long-term success as a team. This was especially prominent when I grew from senior software engineer to team lead. I wanted to be included in all of the details and have a say in everything in order to have complete control of the team and the project. I spent long hours every day and also weekends doing that, and, uh, this got me close to burning out, and it made me rethink what I should actually be doing. This describes what heroism is in our industry pretty well. It's a state where we think that we need to do an extraordinary amount of work in specific time frame. The problem comes because it's not sustainable and it can lead to burnout, and Newton's third law states this behavior really well: for every action in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. So if we spend a whole weekend working on finishing the project during the crunch time, there will be an opposite reaction where we will need to recharge in order to get back to the normal state. Do this enough times and you may be close to burning out. The same is true with working long hours every day. Every person is different, but the real competitive advantage comes from having good work-life balance. A good work-life balance is what keeps us doing good work long-term. Let's get into that next. So let me share how important good work long-term is in this example. If you can get 1% better each day for 1 year, you'll end up 37 times better by the time you're done. And if you get 1% worse each day for 1 year, you'll decline nearly down to zero. What starts as a small win or a minor setback accumulates into something much more. Consistency will always prevail over short spikes of great work. Short spikes of hard work can lead to burnout, and that will actually cause the opposite effect. I believe that in our great industry, If you're not growing, you're stagnating. And ultimately, because things are changing so fast, you actually are getting worse if you are not learning new things. So definitely invest in developing good habits and find a way to stay consistent for longer periods of time. That's where really good things happen. If you haven't read these 3 books yet, I highly recommend them. The first one is Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones. By James Clear. The second one is Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. And the third one is Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport. Now let's get to why me as a manager value long-term good work instead of short spikes of great work next. Whenever I look at the performance of a certain engineer, I always look at consistency, predictability, and reliability. The reason is that I rather know exactly what I can expect than hope to get good work unexpectedly. I want to avoid variability as much as possible, and when I'm organizing work or considering any timelines for projects, I want to know what I can expect. And being a true professional means exactly that. Sporadic behavior will just lead to loss of credibility. All 3 traits that I mentioned before are extremely important for any engineering organization. In order for the business to be successful, for the end, you want to be predictable as much as possible. A consistent, reliable, and predictable engineering organization is a huge asset for the business. Now, for the end of this video, let me tell you one of the bad habits that I used to do, especially at the start of my career. I wanted to be the hero who finishes everything very quickly. I was always very optimistic regarding how long will a certain functionality or a project take, and a lot of times my answer was Okay, that is very easy to develop and I can do it very quickly. Well, it turned out that it wasn't actually so easy and I spent the whole night working on it just to prove everyone that it wasn't so hard. After many failures, I learned that it's not the end of the world if something takes more time than it's actually estimated, as long as there are valid reasons for it and the overall project is still on track. Some tasks may take longer, some tasks will take less time. You get better at it, but you'll never be perfect. Trying to be the hero may give you some short-term satisfaction, but you may actually become a big liability to the team because it's not something you can sustain long-term. I'm curious to hear what do you think about heroism in the engineering industry. Make sure to share that in the comments. To learn more, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership, where I share similar tips and advice on how to be a great Engineering Leader. There are more than 100,000 people already reading it, and I publish 2 new articles every week. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you on the next one.
