Eavesdrop Development

In startups featuring one or more junior non-techies (customer support, salespeople, etc), you have a language problem: these people do not speak code. They often do not know the difference between intended behaviour and a bug. They also rarely know when to submit tech requests or not, often just talking amongst themselves when a seemingly small issue comes up.

Since they do not know your language (but you know theirs), it’s your responsibility to intercept and translate conversations between non-techies into a language you can categorise.

Let’s use a typical example:

Jane: “I can’t change this user’s first name”
Mark: “Yeah I usually just log out and log back in and it works”

Non-tech personnel rarely bother the nerds with issues like these, for a number of reasons. One being that they think it’s a trivial problem so don’t want to bother the headphone-people. Another being that since they have come up with a workaround they don’t necessarily see it as a problem worth fixing.

But for the tech team, that solution can spell danger. It could be a security flaw, who knows!

So what do you do? You develop excellent listening skills. Part of your job is to eavesdrop on customer-facing conversations in the office, to pick up any mentions of problems that can be solved in tech. As soon as something comes up, let the people know you are listening, and ask your questions about the problem.

This teaches people that you are alert and willing to help, and also teaches them over time that seemingly small issues are worth bringing up. Win-win for everyone.