This point especially resonated with me: "It’s difficult to find empathy for the users of your software if you never see them use it."
Saw this first hand when we went to visit the real users. We were sure they were loving our application but had a rather sobering experience when we returned back to base...lol 🙂
Yeah, one benefit of working with smaller companies or startups. Such experiences change your complete perspective on what are the priorities when developing good software. :)
I agree that the most successful coders know how to collaborate, but I have seen the occasional "lone genius" types do okay, but they get stuck in one company being really valuable there, but not so much to the wider market.
They do okay, but unless they share everything they know and document things, they become a huge debt to the company! I knew and worked with DB gurus that companies relied on; they could come and go when they wanted, as they were so vital to the businesses. To me, this is scary!
Yeah, I had a colleague who worked remote pre-covid and he never shared knowledge so that he could keep himself employed, weird tactic as it meant he always did the same tasks and annoyed everyone
That's unfortunate. I never worked with people who kept knowledge to keep themselves employed. It's usually the size of the domain knowledge that was something unreasonably big to transfer because they worked for 2+ decades maintaining a part of the app that nobody besides them knew.
Great post Akos.
This point especially resonated with me: "It’s difficult to find empathy for the users of your software if you never see them use it."
Saw this first hand when we went to visit the real users. We were sure they were loving our application but had a rather sobering experience when we returned back to base...lol 🙂
Also, thanks for the mention!
Yeah, one benefit of working with smaller companies or startups. Such experiences change your complete perspective on what are the priorities when developing good software. :)
I agree that the most successful coders know how to collaborate, but I have seen the occasional "lone genius" types do okay, but they get stuck in one company being really valuable there, but not so much to the wider market.
They do okay, but unless they share everything they know and document things, they become a huge debt to the company! I knew and worked with DB gurus that companies relied on; they could come and go when they wanted, as they were so vital to the businesses. To me, this is scary!
Yeah, I had a colleague who worked remote pre-covid and he never shared knowledge so that he could keep himself employed, weird tactic as it meant he always did the same tasks and annoyed everyone
That's unfortunate. I never worked with people who kept knowledge to keep themselves employed. It's usually the size of the domain knowledge that was something unreasonably big to transfer because they worked for 2+ decades maintaining a part of the app that nobody besides them knew.
Yeah, I think there was something similar with him, but he also just insisted in doing it himself, instead of teaching