“Big company” developers: do you call yourself “Unit 3829” or “autonomous drone 283”? Because seeing comments like above so frequently, you’d think developers are sacred and never do wrong but have no free will or input.
Being strictly professional and capable and executing on a problem has nothing to do with being a "drone". Developers should be looking out strictly and exclusively for their own interests, just as the company that employs them does. Excitement and enthusiasm are tools used to get a better deal on behalf of the company than the company deserves, and that's literally it.
I've worked in tech my whole life and never heard a dev make these comments are bad claims. I only work in the boring world though. Is this a startup or FAANG or silicon valley thing?
Of the developers I've met recently, this wouldn't surprise me at all. The world revolves around them. Not the product. Not the user. Not the company. They are a "developer" or worse, an "engineer" and can do no wrong.
More likely from developers who hate to identify as developers because developers like to focus on development problems without empathy for the end result.
My comment was about the company as a whole, and slightly targeted more towards management. That said, you are right, dev usually has very little control over these kinds of decisions.
When I started working for more consumer facing application developing companies, I tried to adopt the software developers equivalent of "if you're the developer of a new experimental plane, you're the first to go up in the said plane."
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