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Saturday, January 22, 2011

What I Will Never Get ...

... is why non technical people are often making technical decisions. And this is, my developer friend, what you may face during your path ...

An unusual topic for this tech blog, a hopefully real case scenario for all those developers out there: don't believe in the startup concept, as well as don't believe in the corporate concept too much; just feel your skills, and move forward!

4 comments:

Darktalker said...

I thought this exists only in my company :)

Andrea Giammarchi said...

I have talked with many developers from many different places, companies or even startups ... unfortunately this exists and it's not that easy problem to solve

Oliver said...

As you say, this happens in companies big and small... It almost sounds as if you're going to start looking for a new job (but of course I'm not expecting you to comment on this :)

Matthias said...

That's an easy one: They make decisions because they were put into the position to do so.
They might've come sideways into that role, not being technical at all, or even from a techy background, but not knowing the level of detail necessary for a good decision.

Why do they decide without your great valuable input, assuming they're not deluding themselves? Quite a few people because they feel unsafe on the chair they sit on, so demonstrating confidence is perceived as a great way forward (with terrible repercussions to you, his lowly code-implementer).
Others simply don't feel they have the time to confirm, and, again, the pressure they think they're under makes them suggest or even promise things that they/you can never deliver.
Or, to fuel your fire: They don't care about the robustness or maintainability of a solution and simply let you put a hack on top of a terrible shortcut. If it all breaks, it's your fault, not theirs. The 80/20 rule executed at its worst.