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That's an interesting experience and a valuable info. But I wonder what would be the CEO's side of the story. I'm sure his behavior was bad, I'm not pretending the opposite. But maybe he also had reasons (misguided reasons, sure, but still reasons) to act as he did. Or maybe he did not have any reasons, it's also possible. I've observed cases where indeed people were disturbing too much software developers. But I've also observed cases where software developers were not enough aligned with the business side, despite them being 100% sure they were. It's a tricky situation: being in the team means that you are not impartial, you don't have a remote view, you are only seeing one side of the story. I had situations where I've observed some non-dev team explaining their needs, then the software team went away, and then came back with something that was not what the non-dev team asked. Not only the non-dev team was indeed not satisfied, but I was agreeing to them: it was not what they explained, I was there, I understood what they said at the time. Worst, in the majority of the cases, the non-devs don't just say "no, it's incorrect", they try to find a compromise. Usually, it comes from the fact they have no idea what is possible or not, and just assume that if the devs did not do what they were expected, it means there are good reasons for that (either it is not possible, or that there were others things they did not know about, such as other requests from other part of the business). As someone with a lot of developing experience, I was able to see that the problem was that the devs just underestimated the need to fully understand the business side. It's very tricky, because for a dev (or a dev-side person), it is very easy to just ignore that. If they ask for adjustment, it's "they don't know what they want". If they point at some requirements and underline that it does not mean what the devs thought it meant, it's "these requirements were badly written". And in the majority of the case, the business-side just makes do with the sub-optimal solution and the dev-side is considering that they successfully delivered. And similarly, I've also seen some devs being happy to be very productive, going very fast in developing something ... that the business did not need at all. When not adopted, it was again blamed on the business-side for not using the solution they've developed, rather than to wonder if what they have done was indeed productive or not. |
Why is it hard to accept that maybe being a CEO doesn't mean you're good at your job?