Can you bargain for your craft ?
The world of techies is full of ideals . They have “design patterns” that are “proven” . Architectural “styles” that “fit” the domain. “Best Practices” that absolutely everyone needs to follow. And of course all the code and designs need to be “proper” , “standard” , “clean” .
If you see all of these terms you realize they are qualitative. Not everyone in them understands them the same . In fact the world of techies come crashing down when “they” come to meeting .They just don’t get it .
This they is an interesting tribe. They only speak in terms of dates , completions , estimations ,schedule , priority , severity , escalations , showstoppers ,budget . Everything They have is urgent and there is no time for “idealism” here .Things have to happen ASAP so all we need is “just this/that”.
If you see all these terms you realize they are quantitative .It might be made up ,in some cases ,but they are numerically relatable .Human understandable , as we say .It no wonder that when the time comes for our Techies to bargain with They ,most often it results in some sort of frustration for techies .
Whenever I train my folks for Architect roles my first question to them is “Can you bargain for your craft ?” .It makes them uneasy. Most of them believe that there are some other roles that exist for this .Some believe that there are processes for this .Some say it is part of good tech culture that such questions shouldn’t be asked to techies . Fact is all of these are right point .But fact is also that human discussions don’t happen in a linear , boxed manner .
So our techies cant escape bargaining for their craft. That’s a minimum; techies need .
How do you negotiate for a proper design with your Product/Manager/Support/Test/They is how emotionally contentful your work and work experience will be .