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It sounds incredibly demotivating. Is it?
by korijn 4y ago
It sounds incredibly demotivating. Is it?
- papito 4y agoI save that passion for personal projects. After all, the work is buying someone else a nice house and the new electric Delorian.
- korijn 4y agoWell, unless your product makes a real positive impact on people's quality of life or the environment. :) Maybe I'm just fortunate to have such an employer. (Of course my CEO also gets rich in the process, but that's not the only "mission".)
- egeozcan 4y agoWhy should it be demotivating trying do something perfectly as requested? Many of us, including me, come from freelancing, and perhaps that trained many to answer most customer requests with "ok but what you really want is...", but in a company where there are people doing that as their job... Why bother? Actually I would even go further and argue that too many passionate developers talking product management in every refinement meeting is a big inefficiency, and depending on the company size, sometimes even one is one too many.
- aidaman 4y agolol because developing products that users want/work well for users is 100x more important than writing code.
- egeozcan 4y agoProtecting the environment and sustainability is also 100x more important than that. Do we ever draw a line where our responsibilities end or as developers do we have to gather knowledge and make the best decisions until we reach singularity or the heat death of the universe? Delegating is okay, or you burn yourself out.
- MattGaiser 4y agoNot at all. There are plenty of technical challenges that must be resolved within that. I can be fascinated by the plumbing without really understanding what the data is for. A lot of it is also personality. I am odd. Very odd. At times Sheldon Cooper odd. Know the exact seat I want on a 787 vs an A220 odd. That makes my empathy for users awful. I will spend tons of money on pain points in my life that make everyone else think I am nuts. I will completely ignore areas of life that are top priorities for most people. I obsess when making decisions and willingly read reems of documents to figure out all the rules. There are so many things that I do that normal people do not do. Because of that, I cannot create mass market products.I do not think anything like a typical user. I know my limits there.
- korijn 4y agoThat's fair! Thank you for the insight.
- tomc1985 4y agoEmpathy/sympathy are important factors here. As a fellow weirdo I do not see my weirdness as an excuse for being unable to 'walk a mile in their shoes'. There are lots of people around us constantly transmitting their emotional status, I see no reason to not pay attention to that.
- MattGaiser 4y agoI have consistently found myself unable to do it well, so I outsource it. People may transmit, but I do not receive it with any meaningful accuracy.
- aidaman 4y agojust because you're odd doesn't mean you can't empathize with others. that's a huge cop out.
- krageon 4y agoFundamentally any feature request is just an engineering problem. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes they're not. If you trust whoever makes these issues on your board (or whatever it is you use), why would it be demotivating? You know you're building stuff folks want, because making sure that's the case is what the person making those issues is trying to do. If you can't trust your coworkers, every workplace is demotivating.
- korijn 4y agoThis is a fair argument. Thanks for engaging.