You're not (just) a Programmer

At least, you shouldn't consider yourself one.

The other day, I was getting my oil changed in Jefferson Park and having a conversation with a fellow client who had come by to get lubed. While discussing the lockdown and general WFH malaise, she asked me what I did for work.

"I'm a programmer," I said, and immediately regretted it. Of course, it's easier and faster to say than 'DevOps Engineer,' which always requires a minimum 180-second explanation as to what Dev, Ops, and Engineering are. I think it generally produces an image of James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott onboard the USS Enterprise.

But the fact of the matter is, I don't 'program,' not exactly. Sure, I write down functions that high-level languages like Python or Java can pick up and run with. I push them to Git and manage infrastructure life-cycles. But, more than anything else, I try to convince people that I can make them money.

I got the idea from this blog post. And I feel that it's really accurate, specifically in this lower quote:

Your most important professional skill is communication: Remember engineers are not hired to create programs and how they are hired to create business value?  The dominant quality which gets you jobs is the ability to give people the perception that you will create value.  This is not necessarily coextensive with ability to create value.

In my brief, brutal, and interesting existence in the realm of Creating Value for Corporations With Money, the buck ultimately stops with the Guy (and it's almost always a white, male, cis guy) who Perceives whom and what is creating the Value.

Value can be reflected as a lot of different things. Maybe you're a member of a support team with an excellent internal wiki, cross-team communication and killer eloquence. You answer calls fast, resolve technical issues for the long haul, and give frank advice on how systems can be improved upon. At the end of the day, you're a smooth operator, part of a posse of technological regulators, and you know how everything works. Obviously, your team generates value.

At least, that's how you perceive it.

The Guy may see it differently. Maybe the business model that seemed so sturdy 9 months ago has only grown in cost while generating no pecuniary value - your brilliance is actually putting the overall org into the red without your realizing it. Maybe something else is going sideways. Could just be they don't like your face.

That's where communication comes in, specifically in terms of the capacity to control what is being perceived. Most people who would define themselves as engineers exclusively are doomed to extinction in the field. If you want to keep doing what you do and doing it well, you've got to become a communicator.

Talk to your colleagues. Talk to your boss. Talk to other people in your company, field, and neighborhood. Obviously wear a mask until Delta is burned out, but unless you can learn to make yourself an individual that people want to talk with, you're going to find yourself turning into an individual with some impressive subject matter expertise in an obsolete field.

As I like to say, students of Yiddish only learn Yiddish to impress other Yiddishists. But there's a big world out there, and if you don't get to know what non-students want, you won't know how to sell yourself to them.