Am I an Engineer, a Craftsman, or an Artist?

I’ve been asking myself this question for years now, and the honest answer keeps shifting depending on the day, the project, and how stubborn the problem decides to be. Not what my job title says, not what my diploma says — but how I really work when nobody is watching.

I studied software engineering in university. My diploma says engineer. My title says engineer. But somewhere along the way, I started doing music videos. News reels. Editing. Shooting. Telling stories. Work that lives in that weird gray area between precision and expression. Was that art? Or was it a craft? I never figured that out.

Then I came back to software, where the question got even messier.

There is a version of the developer that is purely structured. Established patterns. Rigid discipline. A complete blueprint before a single line of code. That’s the engineer.

That’s not how I work.

I start from a rough sketch. A feeling. An idea that’s half-formed and exciting. I dive in, follow the energy, see where the road takes me. If I hit a dead end — and I do, frequently — I take a few steps back. I destroy what I built. No hard feelings. It’s gone. I move on. The flow matters more than protecting my ego.

Does an engineer work that way? No. But an artist might.

There’s another angle to this. The division of labor.

In traditional engineering, the person who designs the bridge is not the person who pours the concrete. Engineers plan, draw, think about architecture — then pass the plans to other teams who execute them. The engineer supervises. Oversees. But doesn’t build it with their own hands.

Software doesn’t work that way. In software, the distance between thinking and making is almost zero. You go from idea to material in the same breath, with the same hands. You conceive it and you build it. That’s what makes software feel different from traditional engineering — and that zero distance is exactly what opens the door for craft and art to enter.

Of course, software is developing its own version of that split. Architects who don’t code. Managers who spec but never touch the codebase. And increasingly, developers who describe what they want and let AI generate it. The distance is growing again. Whether that’s progress or loss — I’m not sure yet.

There’s also the question of scope. How wide is the role? I often find myself being the whole orchestra. I work alone. But alone is not the same as independent. You can be independent in a team. You can be alone and completely dependent on external factors you can’t control.

Engineers work within systems. Craftsmen work on defined pieces. Artists work in ambiguity.

Software asks for all three, often in the same afternoon.

When I’m handed a rough diamond — some half-broken feature, some legacy code, some vague requirement that nobody fully understands — I can sit with it. Shape it. Polish it slowly, patiently, until the light catches it right. Fix the details. Improve the edges. Make it solid, clean, usable. That’s craftsmanship. The manual labor of the mind.

And when the intuition kicks in, when I sense what wants to emerge before I can articulate why — that’s the artist taking over. Intuition before judgment. Starting with a direction and trusting the process, even when it looks messy from the outside.

But I follow principles. I care about structure, about doing things right, about not leaving a mess behind. So the engineer stays alive too.

I like to see myself as an artist. That’s how I approach my work, and maybe that’s the closest thing to a real answer I have. But I’m not floating in pure chaos — the engineer in me keeps things grounded, and the craftsman makes sure it’s not just an idea but something that actually works, refined and polished, ready for the world.

I’m still figuring it out, honestly. But I’ve stopped trying to pick one label, and I think that’s the point. The best work I’ve done has always happened somewhere between engineering, craftsmanship, and art — where logic, patience, and intuition meet. I’m okay with carrying all three identities. They make the road more interesting.