Developers Don't Develop

When you have conversations with CTOs/Development Managers, I want you to be focussing in on what they think about, so my intentions here are to help you cut through the noise and get a result.

There are some things we know, you know, like the 6 second CV rule thing and the first impressions count and so forth. It’s all a bit trite, now.  

What you maybe know, is that I spend my days and earn my living by identifying who is and is not right for the clients I work with, and the roles they look to fill; I’m not right 100% of the time but I’ll wager I’m right more than I’m wrong.

Now, whilst this isn’t a topic I’ve run a full statistical analysis on, it isn’t anecdotal either. I’ve discussed this topic with Development Managers and CTOs so my research is qualitative more than quantitative but I’m just throwing it out there that Developers don’t develop.

Or at least, developers end goal isn’t the development of software.

You see, the point I’m making, is that if everyone talks the same language, i.e:

“I’m a Software Developer with of five years experience and I use XYZ tools/frameworks or whatever”. Well, there’s not much you can say to differentiate you from the next developer with five years of experience using those tools, right?

What if we started with the end goal? The thing that the business is trying to achieve with the software you develop.

Instead of I am X, I do Y and use Z. What about this:

I/we/the business achieved X, because of Y, by leveraging Z?

So as an example something like:

"We improved our customer retention rate by x%, which was in part due to significantly reduced response times, owed to the rapid response front-end we engineered using React framework and GraphQL."

This demonstrates your ability, not only to engineer the solution but also to understand the business problem you, the team and the business are attempting to solve and the goal you're trying to achieve.

What’s your biggest/latest achievement, and how can you turn it on its head to talk about the goal first?