I try not to give a lot of prescriptive advice about working in tech companies. There are many ways to be successful, and every company works differently. If…

sean goedecke

An essay arguing that software engineers should never let themselves become genuinely angry at work, even though anger often signals caring about the job. Angry engineers get routed around in decision-making and lose influence over time, while engineers who care but channel it productively become more effective and more listened to. The piece warns junior engineers against modeling their behavior on famously angry figures like Linus Torvalds or Bryan Cantrill, since those people's seniority and authority insulate them from consequences that would hurt anyone else. It closes by framing anger as a 'local maximum' - it feels validating but ultimately limits long-term impact compared to a calmer, more sustainable working style.

You should never be angry at work

Honestly, this is something a lot of developers learn the hard way. Being angry feels justified in the moment, but it can really hurt you long term.

I have the feeling than most of the time, anger comes from a misalignment between company’s and engineer priorities… (or at least in a shallow comparison.)
We tend to pursue craft-quality while the company try to reach better benefits. Those to goals can overlap though: a bit less of features but with more quality might make more users happy with the product. (But, well, feels like a commonplace to say that – I just hope that more companies could get that)

There must be a balance. Same in this situation. If you don’t care at all about your job, you will always do the minimum, people will remember you as the most unreliable and low-level of all, you will never grow and that’ll be your life until the end.
If you care too much, especially when you are not in a leadership position, it’s just a lose-lose for everyone. People remember you as the rager, who is perhaps better than a lot of colleagues in terms of hard skills, but nobody wants to work with your or tell you the truth about the status of something.
I’ve seen all this in jobs already and balance is the ultimate goal one should pursue. The easiest way to get started getting balanced is to realise and accept your position. For example, if you are “just” an engineer and not in a leadership or owner position, then it’s simply not your place to care about an entire project, but you should care most about your own work quality.

being angry is good, embracing your feelings is a good thing to do. Learning how to containerize it, find ways to release it. Being aggressive is not good. And that is a destructive action that is not professional.

I’ve seen a lot of engineers get angry the moment non-technical people push for a feature or requirement. I’ve seen the opposite too, PMs getting angry at engineers.
To me, both usually show a lack of maturity and communication skills.
As you grow in your career, you need to work on communication too. Most escalations can be avoided if people simply explain why they think a certain way.
Whether it’s a senior PM shouting at a junior engineer or a senior engineer getting angry at a junior PM, anger often becomes a substitute for being able to clearly explain your reasoning.