At my previous employer I wasn’t always sure what the management where thinking, or exactly how much they valued my contribution. I received an award or two for sure, but somehow the other promises they made were never realized and effectively made me decide to leave them. At the moment I am still getting phone calls from them asking me how certain things work, bleh. That being said, I got some good news today from my current employer about a component I developed and that it is working perfectly. I am so happy about that, because I feel that at last I am contributing to the profitability of the company. Its important as a developer to know that your efforts are appreciated, firstly, and secondly that your efforts are making a difference and contributes to the success of the company in financial terms.
Today I also thought about the way Microsoft extends its product reach through developers and how, to me at least, it seems like a strategy for them to market to developers. Why? Because developers tend to influence people, and they tend to be decision makers and consultants. People will generally follow the advice of a developer and in many cases this will mean that if a developer recommends a technology solution, that solution will be adopted. Strange how that works different to other scenarios where the user buys the technology for themselves. Still not clear? Well lets take your average home user that buys a brand new PC versus the user that buys that PC in a business context because it was a recommendation from a developer or a group of developers. I’m not saying developers are always right, but they do tend to carry some influence.
