What We Make of What We've Been Given: Sartre's Guide to Engineering

What matters is not what has been made of us, but what we make of what has been made of us.

A Philosophical Wednesday Reflection

Jean-Paul Sartre once said: "What matters is not what has been made of us, but what we make of what has been made of us." Though Sartre was an existentialist philosopher (and, admittedly, leaned toward communism), this statement captures something profound about the engineering life.

The Illusion of Starting from Scratch

Sometimes we're lucky. We become founding engineers, starting a new architecture from the ground up. We shape the system, make the first decisions, set the direction. This creates a seductive illusion—that we're creating something from nothing, building in a vacuum.

But even in these blessed circumstances, we're already standing on the shoulders of giants. The languages we choose, the patterns we apply, the databases we select—all of these were shaped by people who came before us. They made us, in a sense. They created the constraints within which we operate.

The real question isn't whether these constraints exist. They always do. The real question is: what will we do with them?

Victims or Architects?

Will we be victims of our constraints? Or will we find the stronger side of these limitations and build systems that actually leverage them to their advantage?

This is more philosophical and fundamental than it might first appear. It really does matter what we make from the things that land in our hands. How we see problems. How we solve them. How we apply the knowledge we've accumulated. Sometimes, what initially seems limiting opens up completely different perspectives on what we're trying to accomplish.

We Always Start on Page 15

Here's the truth we often forget: we're always building on top of something that already exists. Even when creating a completely new product, we rely on the "social brain" of our predecessors—their work, mathematical fundamentals, physical principles, accumulated wisdom.

The engineering skill is in how we combine these fundamentals, how we move them forward.

This becomes especially clear when we're supporting legacy systems. What really matters isn't how these systems were originally built, but what we do with them now. How we extend them. How we keep them operational. How we find new ways of doing things while preserving the best parts that got us here. How we decide when it's time to do something different.

We never start from an empty page in practice. We all start our engineering story from page 15. Or page 17. Maybe somewhere in the middle of someone else's book, someone else's journey. We just get handed something—sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously—that needs to continue. And we must decide what to do with it.

Engineering on Steroids

This is the main engineering skill that Sartre inadvertently formulated: what we make of what we've been given.

It's a description of the engineering role on steroids. We start in the middle of somebody else's journey and continue it. We make it successful, or we fail completely. Sometimes it's up to us. Sometimes it's up to a more complex set of causal events beyond our control.

But philosophy, you see, is foundational to engineering. Sartre really did describe the life of an engineer in this single statement, even though he was talking about existentialism and things that seem, at first glance, quite far from engineering topics.

A Question for You

So I'll leave this thought with you: How were you made? What was given into your hands? What do you want to do with all of these things? What do you want to create? How do you want to shape your own future and the future of your products?

Remember: you're not a victim of what you've inherited. You're an architect of what comes next.

This is a Philosophical Wednesday reflection on engineering, constraints, and agency.