As developers we love to build cool stuff. It is like building legos. We love putting the blocks together to form something amazing. Often though, we tend to not think about the larger implications. We don’t ask ourselves if this is what is needed? Is it even useful? We often have the opinion of “we build it because we can”.
This may very well work for you in your own personal time. However, if you’re trying to make a difference, be it the world around you or at your workplace, you have to stop just doing stuff. We shouldn’t just leave the task of rationalising the need for something to people in the marketing department. We have the chance to get down and dirty with a product and really mould it. To do that, we should really question its purpose carefully.
There’s so much time and money wasted in the tech industry where people build things that aren’t needed. We should try to break away and use new techniques like The Lean Startup to make useful things. “Build it and they will come” is not a thing.
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