Comment by xquce
6 hours ago
Not a false dichotomy. I agree with OP and I can say for certain that if you are one of the few developers that is "fond of meetings with customers" you are not the the type of person OP is talking about, and you are more rare than you think.
I am a former Dev turned PO/PM and now CEO, I can tell you many a developers are not fond of those meetings you are fond of and people like myself don't insert our selves where we don't belong, we simply join the meeting and have the vital conversation with the customers/stakeholders whos payments make payroll possible, while the developers refused to.
My team have always commented and liked that I "shielded" them from the none technical meetings and distilled customer needs in our kanban, without them having to go to the meeting. While I agree this isn't the "best way" to do things, I simply have never seen a Dev Team work as the way HN tries to make the role sound "Dev/Eng and the customer is the only thing needed". Would love for this to be the case!
Also for those who think I'm down talking the abilities of my team, we made a company together when we left a huge company we worked for, as Co owners and even now we use same setup is used :)
> you are more rare than you think.
Truth. I'm that person and didn't appreciate how rare I was until I became an EM and learned that most of my team would actively avoid conversations with the customer. Even though I have no way to quantify it, I'm sure it's benefitted my career.
Are those people in contact with the customer able to make decisions regarding the roadmap or feature design? It’s a miserable position to be in front of unhappy customers while having no power to solve anything (which is why I tend to be polite with customer support).
> I simply have never seen a Dev Team work as the way HN tries to make the role sound "Dev/Eng and the customer is the only thing needed". Would love for this to be the case!
I think a lot of HN truly believes that Software Developer is the only important role at their company. Software goes straight from the developer's brain, through his fingertips into the computer, and then on to the online store (run by nobody) for customers to buy. Engineering managers, program managers, product managers, marketers, MBAs, tech writers, QA, lawyers, process people, various admins and liaisons... they all exist to play pointless political games, have distracting meetings, and obstruct the One True Role. Design docs, planning, schedules, e-mails, JIRA, reviews, syncs, exec updates... all are useless parts of a scheme to torture the developer. It should just be "developers developing, and then money comes in from somewhere." This is an exaggeration, but you see these themes all over the comment section.
> I think a lot of HN truly believes that Software Developer is the only important role at their company.
I doubt that. A lot of HN might have believed that some 10 years ago, perhaps, but most of those people have either matured or been driven away by the shift in the discourse.
I was one of the people who used to believe that, but the years of experience have taught me several important lessons that changed my mind. That change in attitude came both from my own failures and from having the rare privilege to work with people who were actually good at those other roles you listed.
> This is an exaggeration, but you see these themes all over the comment section.
And you'll keep seeing those comments, just like you'll keep seeing the comments about how developers are hypocritical divas. Those comments come from people's bad experiences.
Workplace political games are a thing. Unnecessary meetings and documents are a thing. Problematic, unprofessional developers are a thing.
100%, majority of the posts here are based in fantasy of how the world should work. They're also highlighting why most Devs cant deal with customers effectively. Customers aren't showing up with a clear spec and handing it off while middle managers butt in and ruin the whole thing.
Though I agree, most managers are BSing way too much, but the reality is that most Devs cannot navigate conversations like they think they can, and like you said, nor do they want to. And that is exactly what the managers do.
There's an in-between point that I think is better than either, but it can be more difficult to find the right balance: Direct contact with internal stakeholders (with the manager still somewhat involved to still have a good overall view and help prioritize / push back / act as a general buffer), while shielded from customers. That's the place I've always preferred.
I don't know how rare it is. I have always found it harder to write software when I don't know the people who will use it or get to see what they feel about it. It's part of the feedback loop.
When I get good feedback it's like winning a prize and when it's bad it lets me see where we should be spending our time rather than were we perhaps thought we should.