“I’d rather hire a lazy engineer…”

There’s a lot of different types of laziness in this world.

Not all of them have names.

But there’s two types you should definitely be aware of.

To a manager, laziness is the worst.

Fire him!

Get rid of him!

He’s lazy!

He’s good for nothing!

He told me himself was lazy.

To an engineer, or anybody who is very smart, a certain kind of laziness can be a good thing.

The lazy software developer will automate a boring or error prone process.

A lazy engineer would rather take a walk, thinking about a problem for a few hours and then implement the solution in just a few minutes than to spend countless hours banging their on the desk.

The worst thing a software developer or engineer can do is tell their non-technical managers “I’m lazy” and then actually show pride in their statement.

To admit laziness (no matter how clever) will never do a developer’s career at the company any favours.