Technial Thinking
Technical thinking centers around three core principles: purposeful problem solving, architectural awareness, and tradeoff recognition . In practice, this means breaking down ideas into testable components, evaluating long-term impacts, collaboratively discussing design approaches, and proactively addressing complexity.
Critical thinking in engineering starts with asking, "Why are we solving this?" and ensuring the problem is both relevant and timely. Understanding how each task fits into the broader system, considering dependencies, performance, and long-term maintenance, helps teams avoid waste and prioritize effectively. Being explicit about tradeoffs, including what won’t be done, keeps decisions intentional and aligned with long-term goals.
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Day-to-day, this means resisting over-engineering by simplifying ideas and focusing on testable solutions. Teams should consider long-term impacts before merging code, discuss tradeoffs openly, and raise concerns early. These practices foster collaboration, reduce risk, and embed thoughtful decision-making into everyday work.
Core Principles of Technical Thinking
Always ask, "Why are we solving this?" and "Is this the right problem to solve right now?"
Understand how your work fits into the broader system, dependencies, performance, scalability, and future maintenance all matter.
Every decision has a cost. Good technical thinkers are explicit about what they’re choosing not to do and why.
Applying Technical Thinking Day-to-Day
Challenge over-engineering by breaking down ideas to their simplest, testable form.
Ask, "What’s the long-term impact of this implementation?" before merging code.
Discuss design approaches collaboratively, weighing tradeoffs in terms of performance, maintainability, and risk.
Proactively raise red flags or complexity early, don’t defer hard conversations.