Eat Sleep Explain Repeat
The software developer’s other mantra, when dealing with management.
I’m pretty sure that as a fellow highly progressive software engineer working in the Grand Game of Software Engineering that one of the things you find yourself doing, repeatedly, day after day, is explaining the same thing over and over again. To the same person.
Now, I’m not talking about explaining how the project manager¹ should always put their Post-Its inside of the swim lanes instead of across them. Nor am I talk about how stand-up meetings should really be about status rather than explaining what you’ve been doing and how you’re doing it to the resident agile evangelist².
But I am talking about how management generally asks an awful lot of questions, but pays absolutely no attention to the answer — unless someone is going to ask them about it later on.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve developed some algorithm or other, a simply magical exercise conjured with difficultly from the aether — thanks for asking, something that always makes me feel like I’ve done something actually quite important, but then inevitably I’m asked about it some management droid or other and have to explain it very carefully and thoroughly.
Inevitably, of course, I can see their eyes glaze over and the explanation go in one ear, encounter…
