While I generally agree with this, I’d add one thing: to understand what your managers want, you really need to understand the business. At the highest level, how does your company make money, or at least think it’s going to make money? What other things does the company value? It’s surprising how often I find developers who don’t know, either because they aren’t curious, are too busy to learn, or (surprisingly common) think it’s somebody else’s job to make money…they’re just doing what they’re told. My advice is to actively try to meet upper managers, sales and support people, marketing people, and ideally customers. You almost always learn something you can apply. In big tech it is way too easy to be insulated from what the output of your job actually is. This applies even if you work on internal systems—-somewhere those systems either add value or protect the company, and understanding that helps get your job done. And if it turns out your group doesn’t add value, or you can’t figure out how it does, then start looking at what groups do add value and whether you can move there. I did a few jobs that were not clearly aligned with the company needs and those always turned out to be a mistake. The valued work not only pays better is (usually) more satisfying.
I think it's fair to think of yourself as a carpenter. Devs talk a lot about this being a craft. You build to spec but point out problems when the spec is not possible or silly.
It's the business's jobs to know how to explain the business and their needs. If they can't explain it, they probably don't understand it. If they do understand it but can't explain it, they probably need to work on their soft skills. You're also going to learn the business implicitly if they're explaining it well.
You could be a developer that also knows the business, but where's the compensation for going the extra mile? Especially when the layoffs come around. Another perspective is if you have time to work the business side, what could you have been working on technically to improve things? So there's potentially an opportunity cost too unless everything is currently as optimal as it can be.
It just happens that two of my good friends are carpenters. And they are highly aware of the business. They have to be in order to ensure they have work as construction and remodeling and other types of work ebb and flow. It’s precisely when the layoffs come that it is valuable to understand the business. You are absolutely right that ideally the business people understand and explain the business, but are you really going to trust your livelihood so completely on that? Sometimes their job is to keep you working, fixing bugs, adding features, until they reach the point they can lay you all off (this pretty much happened to a bunch of my friends at an early job).
Furthermore, just building to spec suffers from the Henry Ford problem of the customer asking for faster horses. Unless your business people understand the tech as well or better than you do, it is very likely you can improve the product more if you understand the business than if you just do what you’re told. This does not have to be very time-consuming, and ideally your manager helps, but just paying a little attention, spending some time with people in other disciplines, can have huge payoffs.
True. And it’s really good if you can figure out if they do or not. This is one of the questions I always ask hiring managers when I’m interviewing: “How does your group make money?” (Or contribute to company goals or whatever as appropriate). It’s a red flag if they don’t know.
