Early in my career, I spent countless late nights rewriting code to meet shifting requirements and looming deadlines. Overtime became routine, and I often wondered if I was cut out for the industry.
Frustration and the threat of burnout eventually led me to leave software development entirely for nearly a decade. I sought roles where the only qualifier was โcoding not requiredโ.
It wasnโt until I worked a business analyst that I understood what was going wrong: poor communication and a failure to align on shared goals. Developers donโt fail because of a lack of skillโthey fail when theyโre forced to work in the basement and code in the dark.
Armed with this insight, I returned to software development โ not just to write better code, but to advocate for better requirements. The approach: closer collaboration and trusted interactions.
Itโs not so much a commercial proposition Iโm selling, but more like starting a movement or finding a tribe. Perhaps itโs simply aspiring to make things better for all the developers out there, whom I still feel a personal affiliation with.
Honestly, are we any closer to true collaboration between developers and the business than we were ten years ago?
Iโm not sure how far weโve come, but I know thereโs still work to be done.