On Developers

Hey there, welcome back, assuming you weren’t reading over the holiday weekend.

This post on three types of developers (or six depending) amused me greatly. It’s actually pretty accurate. Someone should pen a companion piece about the x types of IT people, another highly enjoyable topic.

Photo by Will Scullin from Flickr used under Creative Commons

I suppose I should clarify that I consider myself something of a developer, if only to avoid sounding like a total jerk by identifying types of developers.

Thinking about developers, I’m reminded of a common myth about developers that rages among the technical and non-technical alike.

In my journeys as a consultant, sometime developer and product manager, I’ve come across lots of different types of users, and there is a common myth among them that developers are grumpy and don’t want to add features. This has always bugged me, but it’s just not true.

In reality, developers love to add features and meet user requirements because they are creators. They want people to use their code, and they want to solve problems because ultimately, this is how they measure themselves personally and against other developers.

On the other hand, developers fear scope creep because it handicaps their ability to meet deadlines. The vast majority of developers are measured, at least in part, on the ability to meet deadlines, so naturally, they are squeamish when scope creeps.

Even so, developers will build just about anything.

This can be a huge problem for users because it creates complexity. Users need a barrier between themselves (their requirements) and the developers to protect the product from being too functional.

This is where the crankiness of product management arises.

Of course many users deal with a single group that handles both IT and internal application development, which may lead to the cranky myth. IT is always and will always be cranky.

Why? Because no one ever calls IT to say everything is running smoothly, thanks. IT is where problems go.

Having been both IT and development in my career, I’ve observed all these behaviors in myself and my colleagues, and I suppose I should point out that crankiness doesn’t translate into meanness.

Anyway, what have you seen wrt to developers, product management, IT?

Find the comments.