John Allspaw – On Being A Senior Engineer:

“In any project, the designers, product managers, operations engineers, developers, and business development folks all have goals and perspectives, and mature engineers realize that those goals and views may be different. They understand this so that they can navigate effectively in the work that they do. Being empathetic in this sense means having the ability to view the project from another person’s perspective and to take that into consideration into your own work.

Goal conflicts are inherent in all engineering work, and complaining about them (instead of embracing them as requirements for success) is a sign of a less mature engineer.”