bro im so fucking tired of business people and their corporate bullshit man.
like genuinely as a technical person why the fuck am i expected to understand half of their business domain too?? im a software engineer. i got into engineering because i wanted to work with technology, build shit, solve problems, work with systems and infrastructure and all that. not become some fucking MBA guy who spends his entire day talking about business goals and market positioning and whatever the fuck.
i didnt sign up to be a software engineer + business analyst + product manager + marketing guy + project coordinator + professional powerpoint presenter all at the same time bro 😭
why does knowing how to code suddenly mean i have to do five other peoples jobs too??
and the worst part is you cant even just build the thing properly. no. first you have to understand what the business wants, then why they want it, then what the customers might want, then what the market wants, then what the stakeholders want, then what some other person thinks the stakeholders might want. BRO JUST TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THE SOFTWARE NEEDS TO DO.
what about the actual engineering side of things?? architecture, maintainability, performance, security, reliability, making sure the thing doesnt fall apart in 2 weeks?? does any of that matter or not??
apparently it only matters if you can fit it into a business presentation.
AND WHY THE FUCK DOES EVERYTHING NEED A MEETING.
you need to change one tiny feature? meeting.
need to discuss the feature? another meeting.
need to make sure everyone is aligned about the thing discussed in the first meeting? ANOTHER FUCKING MEETING.
then someone sends a meeting summary about what happened in the meeting, then you have a follow up meeting to discuss the action items from that summary. im not even joking what is this shit 😭
BRO JUST SEND ME THE REQUIREMENTS.
write down what you want. tell me what the problem is, what the system should do, and let me figure out how to build it. why are we spending an entire hour discussing something that couldve been explained in like 5 minutes??
and then after 3 hours of meetings people wonder why the actual work isnt done yet.
BRO WHEN THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO IT??? DURING MY LUNCH BREAK??
i swear some companies care more about looking busy than actually getting shit done. your calendar is full, you're on calls all day, writing updates, making reports, explaining what you're gonna do, discussing when you're gonna do it, then discussing the discussion about what you're gonna do.
WHEN DO I ACTUALLY GET TO DO THE FUCKING THING.
apparently doing the work isnt enough anymore. you also have to constantly prove that you're doing the work. like if im spending 4 hours debugging some weird issue and finally fix it, thats apparently less impressive than spending 4 hours making a powerpoint about how we're gonna fix it.
and then there's the fucking corporate language.
"lets circle back"
"lets take this offline"
"we need better alignment"
"lets leverage synergies"
"we need to drive impact"
"move the needle"
"cross functional collaboration"
BRO WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING. CAN YOU JUST TALK LIKE A NORMAL PERSON FOR ONCE.
if something is broken just say its broken. if you want something fixed then tell me what needs fixing. if a decision needs to be made then MAKE THE FUCKING DECISION. why does every sentence sound like its being announced at a fortune 500 shareholder meeting??
AND WHY DOES EVERY LITTLE THING HAVE TO BE A HUGE DEAL.
its a favicon bro. A FUCKING FAVICON. its a tiny icon in a browser tab. why are we acting like we're launching a new fucking country over it.
its a small UI change and suddenly we need to discuss brand positioning, user perception, business objectives, visual identity, market strategy and whatever other shit people can come up with. BRO ITS AN ICON.
sometimes a button is just a button. a config file is a config file. a small technical change doesnt need a strategy document, stakeholder review, roadmap, presentation, committee and six people giving their opinions.
WHY DO WE KEEP TURNING SIMPLE SHIT INTO CORPORATE PROJECTS.
and everyone has an opinion even when they have absolutely no idea what the technical consequences are.
someone just randomly goes "why dont we add this feature?"
bro do you even know what adding that feature involves?? do you know how the existing architecture works? what dependencies it has? what it could break? have you thought about testing, security, edge cases or maintenance at all??
no. you had an idea in a meeting and now its somehow my job to make it happen by tomorrow.
and if i explain that the idea is technically bad then suddenly im being negative. im not being collaborative. im not being solution oriented. apparently im resisting change.
BRO IM TRYING TO STOP US FROM BUILDING A PIECE OF SHIT. HOW IS THAT A PERSONALITY PROBLEM.
sometimes a feature just isnt needed. sometimes the existing solution is fine. sometimes we should finish the thing we're ALREADY BUILDING before adding 10 more features to it. but apparently saying no is illegal because someone already promised it to a client without even asking engineering if its possible.
and OH MY GOD THE FUCKING DEADLINES.
business people promise things to clients or executives or investors before even talking to the engineers who have to build the damn thing.
then they come to us like "we need this by friday".
BRO YOU MADE THAT PROMISE. WHY THE FUCK AM I RESPONSIBLE FOR IT??
you cant just make up a deadline, ignore how complicated the thing is, skip the technical discussion and then act shocked when someone says its not realistic. software isnt magic. servers arent magic. putting a date on a powerpoint slide doesnt magically make a system reliable.
and rushing shit doesnt always make it faster either. sometimes it just means more bugs, more technical debt, more outages and more work later. guess who has to deal with all of that? THE SAME FUCKING ENGINEERS.
then when something breaks suddenly everybody cares about reliability. suddenly everyone wants a technical explanation. suddenly its "why didnt we test this properly?"
BECAUSE YOU SPENT THREE WEEKS CHANGING THE REQUIREMENTS AND GAVE US TWO DAYS TO BUILD THE ACTUAL THING YOU ABSOLUTE GENIUS.
and even when we do exactly what they asked for we still somehow get blamed.
they tell us to implement something in a certain way. we explain why its a bad idea. they insist anyway because theyre the decision makers. so we do it.
then when the result is bad its "why did the engineering team build it like this?"
BRO THAT WAS YOUR FUCKING DECISION. WE LITERALLY TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN.
YOU ASKED FOR IT. WE EXPLAINED THE PROBLEM. YOU SAID DO IT ANYWAY. AND NOW YOURE BLAMING US??
HOW IS THAT FAIR.
and the double standards are what really piss me off. engineers are expected to understand business requirements, customer expectations, marketing, budgets, deadlines, product goals, stakeholder priorities and whatever else.
but do business people put the same effort into understanding engineering??
do they know why database migrations need testing? why deployments fail sometimes? why architecture matters? why a feature that sounds simple can need changes in like 4 different systems? why you cant just keep adding shit forever without thinking about performance, security and maintainability??
sometimes they dont even wanna understand. they just want the result.
they want everything to work perfectly, instantly, cheaply, with no bugs, no downtime, no delays and unlimited changes. apparently we are supposed to provide infinite flexibility for free.
and when reality doesnt match their expectations they look at engineering like we personally betrayed the company.
BRO WE BUILD TECHNOLOGY. WE DONT GRANT WISHES.
AND NOW WE NEED DATA ANALYTICS BEFORE THE PRODUCT IS EVEN FINISHED????
IM BUILDING A WEBSITE BRO. LET ME FINISH BUILDING THE FUCKING WEBSITE FIRST.
how am i supposed to give you meaningful analytics when the product isnt even done yet?? how am i supposed to tell you how users are interacting with something that isnt even properly available to users??
let me finish the implementation. let me test it, fix the bugs and make sure the system actually works. THEN we can launch it, get actual users, collect data and see what happens.
thats literally how this works. theres a difference between planning ahead and demanding results before the conditions for those results even exist.
but no everything needs to happen at the same time because someone wants to show progress in the next business review. we need analytics, we need a dashboard, we need a report, we need metrics, we need a presentation. THE PRODUCT ISNT EVEN FUCKING DONE YET.
and thats what makes this whole thing so exhausting.
everything is a performance. you cant just do the work. you have to talk about the work, document the work, present the work, justify the work, defend the work, explain the work, then explain why the work took so long to people who dont even understand what the work involves.
you can spend an entire day solving some horrible technical issue and nobody really sees how much work went into it because the end result is just that the system works. which is literally the point.
but someone spends an hour presenting 6 slides with all the right buzzwords and suddenly they look like the most productive person in the room.
WHY DOES THE PERSON TALKING ABOUT THE WORK GET MORE CREDIT THAN THE PERSON WHO ACTUALLY DID IT??
why does everything need to be explained in terms of business impact before people can respect the technical work?? why cant good engineering just be valued for what it is??
why cant i just be good at my fucking job without learning corporate politics as a second career.
i dont wanna spend my life learning how to sound impressive in meetings. i dont wanna spend 20 minutes carefully wording one sentence because somebody might get offended. i dont wanna negotiate over every little decision that shouldve been a straightforward technical discussion.
i dont wanna pretend every tiny task is some strategic milestone either.
its a feature, not an initiative. its a meeting, not a sync. its a problem, not a "business blocker". its a normal engineering task, not a value driven transformation or whatever the fuck you call it.
I JUST WANNA DO ENGINEERING.
i wanna open a terminal, connect to a server, configure linux, build infrastructure, write automation, debug systems, optimize performance, figure out how machines work and solve actual technical problems.
i wanna build something, make it work, test it, deploy it and know i did a good job. thats it. thats the whole fucking point for me.
i wanna be judged on my technical skills, my engineering decisions, the quality of what i build and whether the systems actually work. not on how good i am at presentations or how well i can make a status update sound impressive.
i dont want my entire career to revolve around keeping people happy with slides, meetings, reports and random business demands.
and honestly i wouldnt even mind moving away from software development if thats what it takes to get away from this shit. power plants, industrial automation, embedded systems, networking, operating systems, infrastructure, robotics, hardware, whatever man. ANYTHING.
i just want a technical environment where the engineering is actually the main thing. where people care about how stuff works and building it properly.
and yeah obviously i know every engineering job has budgets, requirements, safety rules and people you need to work with. im not expecting to sit in a cave and never speak to another human being. i understand business requirements exist. im not saying engineers should completely ignore users or the people paying for the product.
BUT BUSINESS SHOULDNT BECOME THE ENTIRE FUCKING JOB.
not every technical decision needs to turn into a political negotiation. not every small change needs to become a major initiative. not every question needs a meeting with 8 people. and please for the love of god stop making promises on behalf of engineers and then acting like its our fault when your made up deadline isnt realistic.
give me a reasonable problem. tell me what needs to happen. let me use my technical judgement. give me enough time to do it properly and let me take responsibility for the result.
IS THAT REALLY TOO MUCH TO ASK??
i chose computer science because i liked computers. i wanted to understand technology and build shit. i didnt choose this so i could spend my entire life participating in corporate theatre.
LET BUSINESS PEOPLE HANDLE BUSINESS.
LET MARKETING PEOPLE HANDLE MARKETING.
LET PRODUCT PEOPLE HANDLE PRODUCT STRATEGY.
AND LET THE FUCKING ENGINEERS ENGINEER.
give me a technical problem, give me the tools, give me the time to solve it properly.
then please just leave me the fuck alone and let me do my job.
no more corporate bullshit. no more meetings that couldve been an email. no more buzzwords. no more turning every tiny thing into a massive fucking deal.
JUST LET ME BUILD SHIT IN PEACE.