Today I had a phone conversation with my ex-colleague Alex. Alex works as a software developer in a fast-growing international organization. Me: “How are things going?” Alex: “My company is searching for a principal developer.” Me: “Did you apply for that position?” Alex: “I did, but my application has been rejected. CTO believes that I am not qualified for that role. He is searching for a better candidate.” Me: “Do you think that you are good enough?” Alex: “Of course! I have been writing code and solving intricate technology problems for more than seven years. I write clean code, proactively fix the technical debt and cut through JIRA tasks like a ninja. I am faster and better than other teammates”. Me: “I guess this is the exact reason why you don’t qualify.” Alex wasn’t happy to hear that, so we quickly wrapped up our conversation. I felt good because I hit the target. © Moneyball (2011) by Bennett Miller

We love job promotion. The promotion gives us a sense of career progress: junior developer → developer → senior developer → principal developer → architect → senior architect → chief architect → CTO → CIO (Career Is Over). With every unlocked achievement, we earn more $, and our social status grows. We are moving towards our dream. We are happy, and life is good. But job promotion is a tool that employers use, to make us stay at the company longer.

We are developers. We need to stay up to date with technology. Every day, we learn programming languages, frameworks, and libraries. The more modern tools we know — the better. Keeping up to date with Angular, React, Vue, Riot, Ember, Knockout is fun. But we are wasting our time.

When I became a developer, I thought that my job is to write software. When my customer had a problem, I was ready to write software that solves that problem. I was taught to write software. But what customers need is not software. They need a solution to their problem. Your job is to find the most cost-effective solution, what software often is not.