When the Smartest Engineer in the Room Asks for Review

At Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, even the most senior software engineers — the architects of systems used by billions of people — don't ship code alone. Before any change goes live, it passes through what's called a "pull request": the engineer formally submits their work for colleagues to scrutinize, question, and correct. A junior developer three months out of college can flag a flaw in a principal engineer's code. The system assumes that no one, regardless of title or tenure, is above needing another set of eyes.

This isn't humiliation — it's considered the mark of a mature professional. The engineers who resist code review, who insist their work needs no outside perspective, are the ones who introduce the most catastrophic failures. Pride in software, as in life, is how systems crash.

Jesus modeled this kind of deliberate submission. The One through whom all things were made (John 1:3) entered the world as a dependent infant, learned a trade from a human father, and at every turn submitted His will to the Father's. Philippians 2 calls us to have "the same mindset as Christ Jesus" — to count others' wisdom significant, to hold our certainties loosely before God and community.

Humility isn't weakness. It's the architecture of wisdom. When we open our plans, our pride, and our assumptions to God and to trusted community, we become the kind of people whose lives don't crash in production.