It's time to listen

Developers and developer adjacent professionals have been pushing around their non-techie colleagues for far too long. We brazenly spout off technical jargon to make work seem harder than it is, and then look down on those who cared enough to even ask for an improvement.

This attitude is catching up with us, as our colleagues cheer on vibe-coding AI tools… security, scalability, and architecture be damned!

As for me, I’m happy that the reckoning has come.

It’s time to stop doubling estimates, and derailing timelines over minor changes. It’s time to stop belittling the folks trying to use your software to get something done. It’s time for software to be good, and for software projects to be done well.

The best part of being a developer is that it lets you sink your teeth into problem spaces that have nothing to do with writing code. We build software for everything, so we have to learn about everything. That’s hard, but it’s our job. The best way to to that is to listen. Learn from the sages who know nothing about DB schemas, but everything about dental x-rays, or payment reconciliation, or compliance reporting, or whatever.

It’s time to listen.