If — MooResolutions.io
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If—<br>A Senior Engineer to a Junior Engineer, 2026
If you can keep your head when prod is burning,
While Slack erupts and everyone cries “merge!”
If you can trust your tests while teams are churning,
And calmly fix the build while others surge;
If you can hear “just one small change” repeated,
And face a Product meeting without dread;
If you can ship the feature when completed,
Yet know when “done” means “documented” instead;
If you can inherit legacy without swearing,
With comments marked “temporary” built to last;
Or see your careful architecture needing
To serve some ugly business need at last;
If you can use an AI without believing
Each line of code it confidently provides;
If you can spot the things that it’s conceiving
Before they reach production on your side;
If you can learn a framework, then discern it
Is not the tool for every job at hand;
If you can find the bug before you burn it,
And choose plain, boring tools that simply stand;
If you can take a review without resenting,
And give one without sounding like a king;
If you can say “I don’t know” without pretending,
Then learn the thing instead of bluffing;
If you can teach what you know without gatekeeping,
And learn from those who know more than you do;
If neither layoffs, hype, nor AI’s creeping
Can make you lose the reason you came through;
If you can ship, yet still know when to ponder,
And build for humans rather than machines;
If you can break production without going under,
Then fix it, learn, and write what really means;
If you can keep your craft when fashions alter,
And treat each failure as another clue;
Yours is the code and all the systems after—
And—which is more—you’ll be an engineer, my son.
Original Poem by Rudyard Kipling ↗
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