Why water signs make great software engineers

Last night, an old friend from my master’s program at the Rollins School of Public Health School at Emory helped me get my mattress out of storage. He did something very water-signy (kind). So I asked him his sign. He’s a Cancer. His wife, who asked him to help me, is a Pisces like me!

That made me remember: So many people from Rollins were water signs, which makes sense. Water signs care about people. So naturally, we would be attracted to fields like public health, where the main focus is on people.

But I’ve found there are also a lot of water signs who are software engineers—at least many who I meet and maybe that’s a hasty generalization, but I still wanted to make sense of why I kept meeting so many water sign software engineers!

I told this friend about the number of water sign software engineers I know and he was surprised that so many software engineers are water!

And it surprised me to meet so many water sign software engineers at first, too.

First to outline. The three water signs are Pisces 🐠 , Scorpio 🦂 , and Cancer 🦀 . We have a reputation for being sensitive, creative, and empathetic.

The astrology baddies will tell you the careers typically associated with waters signs are social work, music, art, nursing, psychic, medicine, humanitarian, or therapist. Not software engineer and yet, I keep meeting watery software engineers.

One of my best software engineering teams had mostly PISCES. Three of us were Pisces, the engineering manager, one of my colleagues, the product manager, and me! We also had one Scorpio. The we had 1 Gemini, 1 Aquarius, and 1 empathetic Capricorn.

We even had an astrologer give a workshop to our team for a team-building exercise and I asked why so many of us were water signs or had water in our chart. They told us that it was probably just because we worked at Teachers Pay Teachers, which is a startup designed to help people.

But I’ve also met even more water sign software engineers at companies that are less mission-driven.

On my next team, my engineering manager was a Cancer but I never got to know the rest of the team in that way.

I’ve also met many water signs within #100Devs, and they’re amazing engineers!

I do meet a lot of Virgo suns and Moons who are software engineers (I’m a Virgo moon). And that makes sense. Virgos are known for being analytical and data-driven. This fits in well with the software engineering stereotype.

But water signs…that’s more of a puzzle. People see us as sensitive, creative, and empathetic.

That’s not the same stereotypes one might have about software engineers.

There’s the misnomer of programming. This incorrect assumption is that software engineers are not empathetic, that we’re just about numbers, and the data, and breaking into the mainframe.

But that’s just TV.

I mean some software engineers don’t care that much about people, but empathy for the user is an essential software engineering trait, especially when you are building systems for PEOPLE.

This totally made sense for front engineering to me, but the more I learn about system design, the more I realize it also makes sense for backend and fullstack engineering as well.

(This is less of a blog post and more of a working document, so when I get more ideas, I’m adding more to this).

Software engineering is helping people

Water signs are known for being caring and helpful. Most people think that the best careers to help people are social work, medicine, nursing teaching, therapy.

But software engineering involves helping people too!

My friend put it better than me when she said “water signs are known for helping people and if you think about coding is just problem-solving, then SEs being water signs makes sense because at the end of the day they're just trying to solve a problem (and help people).”

Most of the software I have built has helped people in one way or the other.

The first thing I built as a programmer was a patient scheduling tool for Refugee Health Services, who was having challenges with billing Medicaid because the volunteer agencies that scheduled the appointments were canceling last minute. After the patient scheduling tool launched, Medicaid payments went from 68% to 100%, allowing the clinic to function more efficiently.

In the subsequent years, I built an assessment tool for pregnant and postpartum moms and birthing parents, I added features to a product that allowed teachers to assign work virtually during the pandemic, I built an app that helped people with social anxiety to network and meet more people by gamefying the networking process, and I’m building a mobile application that matches people to grief partners.

Software engineering isn’t just about making websites and mobile apps but about solving real problems for real humans!

And as a Pisces, I love that.

Software engineering is creativity

Water signs are also known for being creative. Some fields of work associated with creativity are visual arts, music, and theater.

People don’t always associate creativity with software engineering, but it involves lots of that.

In some cases, we could look at a web page as a blank canvas that we make visually appealing through HTML and CSS (or Tailwind or Bootstrap).

Many teams work with UX Designers, UX Researchers, and Product Managers who make those kind of decisions and designs for you, but some software engineers don’t know that starting out. Many start with projects that they work on their own and make their own designs and creative decisions.

Sometimes we collaborate with UX Designers and Product Managers to come up with these desicions together.

For example, what if your system is delayed and you don’t want users to leave or keep clicking the same button? What are creative solutions you could use to prevent that behavior? You can use a visual loading state to make sure users stay engaged and stop clicking. Decisions like this require creativity that water signs are prone to have.

Software engineering is working with other people

A few months ago, I had lunch with my cousins, who asked why I would want to work as a software engineer since I seemed so great with people.

I also have two friends who said they wanted to become software engineers because they were tired of working with other people.

But software engineering involves working with other people a lot. Through the agile methodology, you work with other teammates daily usually meeting at standup and other meetings. So working with others is a key part of software engineering.

I wouldn’t call water signs outgoing per se, but we tend to have an emotional intelligence that helps us to work with others well.

And because we’re working with colleagues and not customers, we’re working with people who are less likely to make us cry. That’s a big win for water signs in software engineering.

Software engineering involves empathy (system design)

Many people think that the only place for empathy in software engineering is on the frontend but system design also requires empathy as well.

So what is system design?

The Roadmap.sh defines system design as “creating a detailed blueprint of a system's architecture, components, modules, interfaces, and data to fulfill specific requirements. It includes outlining a structured plan for building, implementing, and maintaining the system, ensuring it meets functional, technical, and business needs. This process addresses considerations of scalability, performance, security, and usability, aiming to develop an efficient and effective solution.”

One concept in system design called the CAP Theorem (which I write more about here) says that in a distributed system, can only have two of the three: consistency, availability, and partition tolerance. Usually, all systems have partition tolerance so the decision really comes down to the first two: consistency or availability.

The way to decide which to choose between the two depends not only on the system but also on how the user would feel about having one but not the other.

For example, if we’re using a banking system, how would the user feel if their bank statement was unavailable for a few hours? They might be annoyed. But if their amount in their account was inconsistent with what they thought it should be, they would probably freak out. So in this case, consistency wins over availability.

Making these decisions when designing a system requires a level of empathy for the user, and for water signs, this empathy comes naturally. This is not to say that other signs don’t have empathy, but this is where we as water signs really shine. We care a lot about how other people FEEL so this aspect of system design is second nature to us.

In the end, the creativity and empathy that water signs bring to software engineering not only enrich the work but make it more human. Whether it’s system design, front-end, or back-end, the ability to consider the user’s experience is vital. For us, this isn’t just about building a functional system—it’s about building something that feels right for the people using it and working with others while building these systems.