When developers are required to interact with the customer on a regular basis, the freewheeling effects described in this article are damped massively.
The potential for insanity goes off the charts when the development team is siloed away in solitary confinement and the only interactions with the client occur via some prison guard known as "project manager" sliding notes under the door.
Working with the customer sometimes sucks. Just like exercise and eating vegetables sometimes suck. It's a temporary unhappiness that keeps us grounded in reality.
But you have to be willing to break out of the bubble, including getting on a plane, and I see very few people being willing to do that.
But... but what would Project Managers do, then?
Anyway the key thing for any software developer AND Project Managers to do is regularly work first level helpdesk.
Did you conquer commercial real-estate ushering in the future of work and society, or did you build a handy scheduling app?
Did you have a neat idea for an online community or did you revolutionize human connection?
I think it takes a certain type of mental or emotional deficit to forfeit all of your free time and the majority stake in your company for funding for a tiny shot at hitting a grand-lam.
"Not everything needs to be a platform". I remember a 10 person company that did translation dispatch for medical needs in California. And the CEO was insisting we needed to someday "become a platform."
The apps I pay for are simple and focus on a super basic interface. BookFusion and Libro.fm are great examples.
Truer words have never been spoken.
I once tried to explain a pointless debate over the definitions of "acceptance testing" versus "regression testing" to a non-tech person, and they said that was the most relatable thing I'd ever told them about my job.
How great the impact is depends on how management uses the data. If they use it add resolution to broad strokes from studies and the like, there may be no negative impact at all, but in my experience it's much, much more common for management to read analytics like tea leaves and interpret it in whatever way best fits the individual's/team's biases/agendas.
Obviously, the number of uniquely different users has an influence, and users most often do not truly know what they need, but that's our job to tease appart.
Turns out the users most often benefits from small changes that reduces friction toward achieving their goal. Any time saving will be appreciated, but only if it can be trusted to work. Nothing worse than the dread of knowing an action might or might not work randomly.
I use most software today with a constant sense of fear that the next action will break something and waste my time. Undo probably doesn't work properly anyways
It's very frustrating.
More actual interaction between end-users and programmers makes the end-users better at reporting bugs and describing what they want (and at having an idea how complex a certain request actually is).
Because the multiple translations from customer wish to project manager language to backlog items are all lossy.
Software that is not about the user and more about the developers or the providers struggles with alignment and optimizing for the outcomes of the user instead of their own.
Or weaken your security so it works with their fucked up legacy firewall that cant ever be changed and so on.
Talking to users -> not even once.
Might be only this bad in B2B software
JohnMakin•45m ago
Hold on, this isn't that crazy in today's day and age. I used to wash my hands basically only when using the restroom or before eating. Since the pandemic though, I started upping that a lot (not every 30 minutes, but pretty frequently) and since then almost never get sick.
hackingonempty•23m ago
EvanAnderson•22m ago