I tend to observe that seasoned/good software engineers are too busy tackling problems of similar difficulty to be caught up praising, following, and prostrating themselves to others. It's not a habit of mine and I don't hold anyone who does it in high esteem. I tend to think someone praises another to a large extent because they don't hold themselves in high regards. If they did and were of similar skill level, it wouldn't seem a big deal to them right? i.e : Tweet (high profile software engineer) : Today I cut 500ms out of a 4 second operation on a consumer device Me : OK .. last week I cut a 10 second switch-over operation on a enterprise switch (grosses 8 billion dollars in revenue a year) down to 300ms. I thought that was just a part of my job as a software engineer.