Hi there! I'm Maneshwar. Right now, I’m building LiveAPI, a first of its kind tool for helping you automatically index API endpoints across all your repositories. LiveAPI helps you discover, understand, and use APIs in large tech infrastructures with ease.

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Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the force behind the U.S. Navy’s nuclear propulsion program, wasn’t your average military man.

He was relentless, technical, and brutally honest. While his work focused on nuclear submarines, his principles hold up frighteningly well in the world of software engineering, startups, and tech leadership.

Let’s break down Rickover’s core ideas—and how they translate into building resilient, scalable, and high-quality software.

1. Technical Competence

“If you’re going to be in charge, be in charge.”

Rickover demanded deep technical knowledge from leaders.

You couldn’t delegate understanding, you had to earn it.

In software: If you’re leading a dev team, you should be able to read the code, understand the architecture, and discuss trade-offs.

Whether you're a CTO, engineering manager, or solo founder, hand-wavy tech talk won’t cut it.

Competence builds credibility.

2. Responsibility & Accountability

“Responsibility is a unique concept… you may share it with others, but your portion is not diminished.”

Rickover didn't believe in passing the buck.

You were accountable, even if someone under you screwed up.

In startups: When that production server crashes or the billing API breaks, the blame doesn’t go to the junior dev.

It’s on the team lead, the founder, the person who owns the outcome. Ship it? Own it.

3. Attention to Detail

“The devil is in the details, but so is salvation.”

Every rivet in a submarine mattered to Rickover.

He read documentation line-by-line and grilled engineers on minor design decisions.

In code: That edge case in an auth flow? That race condition in a queue worker? Ignoring details leads to bugs, breaches, and burnouts.

Great products are made not by 10x features, but 1x consistency.

4. Questioning Attitude

“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”

Rickover taught his engineers to ask why, repeatedly.

Blind trust in process or tradition wasn’t allowed.

In engineering culture: Just because the framework recommends it doesn’t mean it fits your use case.

Just because "we've always done it this way" doesn’t mean it scales.

Build a culture where questioning isn't rebellion, it’s responsibility.

5. Engineering First

“Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.”

Rickover put engineering principles above politics or PR.

His submarines didn’t cut corners.

In startups: Don’t build flashy features on a crumbling backend.

Don’t prioritize a pretty dashboard over robust logging.

A fast-growing product built on shaky foundations will eventually collapse or worse, get hacked.

6. Continuous Learning

“You must learn constantly, if you want to remain competent.”

Rickover interviewed every officer in his program to ensure they were curious and committed to lifelong learning.

In tech: Languages evolve. Frameworks go out of date. Architectures change.

If you're not learning, you're decaying.

Whether it's RFCs, docs, conference talks, or weekend side projects, growth is not optional.

8. Rigorous Standards

“A man must not only be competent, he must be right.”

Rickover didn’t allow average.

He demanded excellence, even if it slowed things down.

In dev teams: Enforce code reviews. Don’t skip tests.

Stick to style guides. Be annoying about quality.

It pays back tenfold when you're debugging in production or scaling under pressure.

10. Hands-On Leadership

“You cannot supervise what you don’t understand.”

Rickover was infamous for inspecting things personally.

His involvement was intense—but effective.

In startups or teams: Don’t manage from slides. Dive into the terminal.

Open the pull request. Ask what’s blocking the team.

Leadership in tech doesn’t mean stepping back—it means stepping in, wisely.

Final Word

Rickover was rigid, intense, and maybe overbearing, but he built the safest, most reliable nuclear program the world had ever seen.

His principles aren’t about rigidity for its own sake, they’re about discipline where failure is not an option.

And guess what? If you're building something for real users, real money, or real scale—failure isn’t an option there either.

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