THIS is SLOWING Down your Backend Engineering Growth

How perfectionism is killing your productivity and what to do about it

I want to introduce you to two pretend backend engineers.

Let's call them Chris and James.

Both are smart, driven, and genuinely care about shipping good software. They take pride in their code and love solving complex problems.

But when it comes to feedback, they respond very differently.

Chris welcomes code reviews. He sees them as a way to learn and make the codebase better.

James, on the other hand, takes feedback personally. He gets defensive. He rewrites the same module for the fifth time. And even after it ships, he's still thinking about all the ways it could have been "more elegant."

That's the difference between Chris, a healthy builder, and James, a backend perfectionist.

If you're anything like me, you have a bit of James in you.

This is the urge to write the cleanest, most scalable code. To refactor just one more time. To spend two days debating the "right" folder structure.

Recently, I dove into the psychology of perfectionism and how it applies to backend work. The truth is that backend engineers often confuse excellence with control.

We obsess over edge cases, infrastructure, and optimal architecture patterns. And while that sounds like a good thing, it usually works against us.

Let's unpack it.

Why Perfectionism Hurts Backend Engineers

On the surface, perfectionism seems like a strength.

It means you care. That you have high standards.

And honestly, it can get you pretty far. You might become the go-to person on your team for writing rock-solid services.

But here's the catch: perfectionists don't actually ship more.

They think more. They tweak more. But they don't necessarily deliver better results.

One study on software teams found that developers who rated themselves as "perfectionists" were more likely to miss deadlines, over-engineer solutions, and burn out.

They weren't lazy. They were just afraid. Afraid of building the "wrong" thing or looking stupid in a pull request.

And that fear creates a cycle:

You feel behind, so you over-prepare. That makes you slower, and now you feel even further behind.

The worst part?

You stop taking risks. You avoid learning in public. You don't share that side project until it's perfect. You don't push that feature branch because the tests aren't "beautiful" yet.

That's not productivity. That's paralysis.

Why Healthy Engineering Beats Perfect Engineering

Healthy engineers optimize for clarity, speed, and progress.

Those are the big three. They know that "done and testable" is often better than "ideal but still in staging." They don't let elegance block execution.

So how do you shift from backend perfectionism to healthy backend progress?

Here are 5 things that have helped me, and I still need to remind myself of them constantly.

1. Start Ugly and Refactor Later

If you're building a new service, don't wait for the perfect API design or the best ORM abstraction.

Just start building something. Make an endpoint. Log something.

Write a failing test. The best backend code usually starts out ugly, but it ships, gets feedback, and evolves. This feedback loop is called iteration.

There's a concept in economics called the law of diminishing returns. After a certain point, more effort gives you less output.

That applies to your code, too. Sure, the first few hours of cleanup help. But eventually, obsessing over the "right" enumeration name or index order wastes more time than it saves.

Progress matters more than polish.

2. Surrender to the Bugs

Things break.

Deployments fail, and race conditions pop up in different situations.

That's an inevitable part of the job. Every backend engineer faces these challenges often.

If you tie your self-worth to whether your backend code is completely flawless, you're setting yourself up for constant disappointment and will likely end up hating this career path.

Nothing in backend engineering is truly flawless or perfect.

There are only tradeoffs that must be carefully considered, and those tradeoffs can range from hitting a specific deadline on time, avoiding the pitfalls of over-engineering, or designing systems that can scale effectively with your team.

The reality is that nothing in software development follows a perfectly linear path. Everything involves some form of compromise or tradeoff in some way or another.

Instead, embrace what I call imperfection by design. Your system doesn't have to be completely bug-free. It has to be understandable and maintainable. Focus on building systems that gracefully handle failures rather than trying to prevent every possible failure.

This perspective represents a much healthier target for your engineering efforts and will lead to more sustainable development practices in the long run.

3. Redefine Failure as Feedback

Every failed deployment teaches you something valuable about your system's architecture.

Every ugly refactor reveals a better mental model of the codebase and exposes hidden assumptions you might have made.

These learning experiences are crucial for deep understanding. Failure isn't a representation of your engineering ability. It's evidence that you're tackling real, complex problems with meaningful results.

If you're not failing occasionally, you're likely staying too comfortable in familiar territory and not pushing yourself toward growth.

The most significant professional development happens at the edge of your capabilities. And if you're only working on code that you're absolutely sure will succeed without issues, you're probably not growing as an engineer.

The most valuable skills are often developed when navigating uncertainty and recovering from unexpected outcomes.

4. Stretch Outside Your Comfort Zone

Write the migration script. Own the security audit. Speak up in the design review.

Backend perfectionists often hide behind code because code feels safe and controllable. It follows logical rules and provides feedback.

But genuine career growth happens in those uncomfortable spaces, in the moments when you're uncertain about the outcome but still choose to step up and take ownership.

These stretching experiences create your engineering identity far more effectively than perfecting code in isolation ever could.

I used to avoid technical presentations altogether. I constantly thought, "Who am I to teach this material? Some more experienced engineers could do this better." But teaching actually forced me to learn concepts more deeply than I otherwise would have.

The preparation process revealed gaps in my understanding that I hadn't previously recognized.

Similarly, contributing to open-source projects, even when my initial pull requests weren't perfectly polished, exposed me to different perspectives and coding styles.

5. Set Open-Ended Goals

Perfectionists love checklists and detailed plans.

But rigid goals can often backfire when building complex software systems. This happens because software development inherently contains unknowns.

You don't always know exactly how long something will take or whether that feature is even worth building.

Instead of setting overly specific targets like "completely rewrite the entire authentication flow this week," try adopting a more learning approach, such as "let's investigate what's causing the slowdown in our system."

Also, rather than aiming to "perfect the CI/CD pipeline to eliminate all potential issues," shift to "identify one meaningful improvement we can make to our deployment process and implement it with proper metrics to measure the impact."

These represent what I've come to call N.I.C.E. goals, a framework that improves how I approach backend engineering challenges while reducing perfectionist tendencies:

• Near-term: What specific, reasonable progress can I make this week rather than planning months ahead?

• Input-based: What concrete actions can I take within my control, rather than focusing exclusively on outcomes?

• Controllable: Am I actually in charge of this particular component or process, or does it require coordination with other teams?

• Energizing: Does this particular challenge or approach actually motivate me to write code and solve problems?

I have really been enjoying using the NICE format, as I create a lot of content, and it can be hard to press publish sometimes.

The Bottom Line

Progress is always better than perfection. That's the real backend mindset.

If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear your own backend perfectionism story. The journey from perfectionist to healthy builder is ongoing, but it's one of the most important shifts you can make as an engineer.

Remember: your code doesn't have to be perfect.

It just has to work, be maintainable, and solve real problems.

Everything else is just noise.

Cheers friends,

Eric Roby

Find me online:

LinkedIn / YouTube / Threads

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