You don’t understand your software engineers

A PSA for non-technical people in tech companies

Amando Abreu
5 min readApr 4, 2018
Photo by Jefferson Santos on Unsplash

It may seem like this is all we do:

But it’s actually a bit more complex.

Generally, developers are self-motivated people, many taught themselves how to code in their spare time, and it eventually became a job. Around 81% also codes outside of work hours as a hobby.[source]

I remember when I used to sit until the late hours of the morning developing something, just because I felt that it needed to be done then and there, no matter if I was feeling hungry, tired, or skipped important chores for the day. The single most important thing was taking my current tasks to completion.

At one point, in an old company I worked at, I switched teams.

My expectations were high as everyone around me was way more senior than I was, so I expected to learn a lot.

One morning, after the standup meeting with the SCRUM master, where she was telling us how important these current tasks were, and how time was not on our side, a co-worker sits down and starts to code.

--

--