What is ownership? It is something I first heard as a term from my manager when I first worked at a fintech that had many ex FAANG graduates. As a non native English speaker, it took me a while to understand, but eventually I did. It is what makes a software engineer effective, it differentiates low performers from high performers, and it is a must-have trait for high performing engineers.
Having a high sense of ownership means you treat the system as if it were your own. You make sure the code going into the system is proper, well tested, and performant. You observe the performance of the system regularly and escalate as soon as you find an error, and you make improvements so the system can work better and handle more requests per second. You do not need to be directed by your EM or PM to do this, and you do not need a Jira ticket to justify it.
A high sense of ownership also shows when you are working on a feature or project. It means making sure it is delivered on time, communicating early at the first signs of a looming delay, and making sure your collaborators share the same vision. You do not need to be a team lead to do this, you just have to be vocal and prove it with actions.
A high sense of ownership can also mean pushing back against managers who are trying to do something misinformed with the system, because you may know about consequences that are not obvious from the outside. As software engineers, you are the closest to the system, so you are the ones who best understand its emergent properties.
I grew up in a system designed to remove ownership from you. Eastern parenting most of the time means tiger parenting. Your parents decide what you should do, and you just need to spend as much time as possible studying according to their direction. School systems that only ask you to agree with the material and complete homework, where success is measured entirely by homework and exam results, reinforce this further. Shame culture makes you more passive and afraid to be seen negatively for pushing back or asking questions. Even my manager at my previous company could point out this distinction between engineers from the same country.
I have seen how low ownership plays out in a company. A big feature gets requested but the team lacks ownership, meaning less verification in production, less edge case testing, and it all leads to crunch time, incidents, and stress for everyone. Many of these traits were common in the ZIRP era, mainly because of cheap money and companies focusing on increasing headcount. But with COVID and the economic downturn, companies have become more ruthless. Teams are now expected to step up or step out, or the companies do not survive.
It is very important as software engineers to always strive for high ownership. It shows that you are reliable, it frees your manager from micromanaging you, and it proves you are worth what you are paid for.