Mission?

Is software development my passion?

Most of the people reading this article responded yes. That’s good. I like software development as well. I could not stand it in other case. How would I sit in front of screen for more than 6h per day? Hoping that we do what we are really passionate about it would be good to realise what could help us to keep our work interesting and satisfying or improve that.

From time to time we think that we need to do boring stuff because project we work in is old, it is based on legacy technologies, our business reject innovations…

Let me do one step back and again ask few questions.

• Who pays software engineer?
• What is the outcome of software development?
• How would you describe a good piece of software that you as user like to use?

1. Clients are paying for our work, if there were no business we won’t be needed.
2. Digital solution for real life problem.
3. Software that overcome real challenge - having that piece of software in place thing is simple.

Answering on above question reveals the mission consider as the most important for Software Developers. Once we understand what it our life will be easier.

Why?

Because we will focus on right things, as the outcome we will start delivering software that makes sense and people will start appreciating it. Happy Client = Happy Programmer. Happy Developer is using modern technologies, have time to learn, have chance to see algorithms working in production.

My story

At the beginning of my career I struggled. After few months I’ve joined project I got more and more frustrated. I was asking myself and my team following questions.

Why we can’t use a modern stack, and we need to use old java 6? Why business is not willing to give us money/time to deal with tech debt? I was not able to learn, experience new technologies. What is wrong?

After some time, I’ve the changed job, but it didn’t help much. In the next place all was the same after some time.

Once I’ve realised what is really a Mission of Software Developer my life got much happier. My focus shifted onto clients, proper understanding of business problem became my goal. Once clients noticed that I was perceived as partner - not as necessary cost. I noticed that working together will bring value to all parties. They were more eager to let me use new technologies. Once I showed right attitude business was more eager to accept usage of new technologies, sometimes even seeing in them advantage.

You will immediately discover Mission once you became boss and use software to solve business problems. If you hire software developer or company you will expect them to bring your business value. Value means solution to your business challenges, this means money to pay that company. You would not be interested to give developers opportunity to play with a modern stack or learn new technologies.

That’s all for now. More to come.