Programmers, business and digital transformation
Tech companies are in very short supply of programmers who truly care about their employer’s business. This statement might be true across more roles and industries, but I see it very clearly in tech.
Most programmers that I encounter love their work. Regardless of how they feel about their current job, they love programming. They go home after a long day at work and they code some more, tinkering, practicing, learning. It’s a hobby as well as a profession. As someone who just learned Go during a sabbatical, I can relate. It’s fun! What a blessing to be in a field where work and play can be the same thing.
The industry has gotten really good at leveraging that passion. Job descriptions are written around the tech stack. Interviews are all about problem-solving and coding skills. Tech recruitment pays little more than lip service to what the company does. Once hired, armies of POs are deployed to shepherd us code monkeys, to think about the product and tell us what to do. For a lot of people, that’s fine.
To me, that’s a bit limiting. I read more books on business than on coding. I got into programming because I love making things but suck at crafts. I’m in it for the result more than the process. I like coding a lot and can talk about editor choices, tab sizes, and design patterns all day, but it’s all a means to an end. I’m not happy being just a code machine, I need to feel invested in the code’s purpose.
Being more interested in business than in compilers was a problem in the beginning. It scattered my attention, taking me a bit longer to understand certain computer science fundamentals. I matured as a programmer later than friends with CS degrees. But my early experiences trying to launch my own businesses, designing, selling, having meetings, opened my eyes. Software doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Understanding the user’s journey, how my employer’s product fits in their lives, why it all exists in the first place, makes all aspects of my job clearer. There’s satisfaction to be found in that clarity.
There’s a trend these days called Digital Transformation. Its premise is the notion that the best-placed people to make decisions about a product are the ones building it because they’re the experts.
Instead of a traditional organization in silos (a silo of programmers, a silo of designers, a silo of copywriters, etc) where people communicate via the top of their hierarchies and senior managers decide everything, Digitally Transformed companies have small cross-functional teams.
Each team has a goal and it’s given autonomy to pursue it, as well as all the skills necessary to achieve it. A cross-functional team can have a Product Owner, a few developers and QA, a designer and a copywriter, for instance. Because they’re such a small team, everyone’s voice is heard. And because their goal is clear and they have the autonomy to make decisions, they care and own their work more than if they were just being handed down orders from above.
It doesn’t always work, but when it does it’s wonderful. As a customer-facing Solutions Architect, I worked with teams at dozens of companies in two continents and seen it first hand. Bringing products to market quicker, launching marketing campaigns sooner, producing higher quality work, teams where everyone cares about the business absolutely rock.
But they’re rare.
Call me a romantic, but I think the world would be a better place if every product and service was made by people who truly cared about it.
Digital Transformation is a step in the right direction, and it shows that caring about the business can have a positive impact on people’s career and work quality. As natural-born problem solvers, I believe programmers are uniquely positioned to take advantage of this movement and I wish more did.
Agree? Disagree? Write a response below!
