The user doesn't care, but you should | Hacker News Reader

The user doesn't care, but you should

lewiscampbell.tech

29 pointskugurerdem6 comments

Definitely true, but the generous interpretation which is sometimes true, is that some engineers think a lot of things will have second order effects that matter and they won't or they don't even think about the actual effect that's going to have business value and connect it to what they're doing, or are doing so without evidence.

I've been saying this for forever. Not only isn't it, broadly speaking, true that "users don't care if/how/why…" with regard to how products & services are made, but furthermore: it's our job as craftspeople to make people care! We should be open about the tools and processes we use to make things. Even if it's less obviously artistic than, say, a John Wick movie (where it's undeniable just how much people DO care about the creative process behind it).

Actually we comprehend some of the phrases. Users does not care ... because they do not know the real effect of this. The customer or end user only deals with the business output. If you ask a customer that you can deliver a product in 3 months without unit tests and in 4 with unit tests all of them would choose 3 months delivery unless you tell them the importance of the unit tests in the long run. Or if you ask a customer whether to use VPS or cloud they would just want to go with the cheapest alternative. One thing that IT professionals do not get is we tend to think everyone is IT literate about most of the concepts.

On the other hand a purely technical may lead an overthinking about some aspects. The real challenge is to optimize the roadmap so that it includes all the technical must haves along with prioritising business outputs.

> It's profoundly facile to think that only first order effects matter. Yet this is an incredibly popular folk belief in software. Why?

> So I think partly it's an ego defence mechanism.

I don’t subscribe to the idea that it’s a folk belief, or that it has to do with ego.

I don’t think anyone truly believes “the user doesn’t care” is sufficient justification for anything. It’s about accountability. “The user doesn’t care” is shorthand for “On this team, we’re held accountable for not delivering, not for the results of decisions that only materialize a month or two down the road. We don’t pay attention to how we got to where we are, we fight fires as they pop up.”

Unfortunately too many people make „tradecraft” into slacking excuse.

Too many people procrastinate pondering „what if’s”.

Tradecraft is not about meticulously gold plating everything as yet another huge group of people thinks or at least juniors.

Patients don't care about all of that medical mumbo jumbo, they just want to feel well.

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