> As a senior dev preventing business from bad decisions and preventing code that should never be written is more valuable.
Except, this could be done better and cheaper by a literal rock with letters spelling "NO" written on it with a sharpie.
If a software company doesn't write any code, what exactly is it doing? And speaking of bad decisions, surely some have been made already, since everyone is doing the job they're the least qualified for.
> If a software company doesn't write any code, what exactly is it doing
Not all companies are “software companies” and it still takes level of maturity to know when to write code and when to outsource.
At the interview for my n-2 job, I was interviewing with the director of IT and a junior to mid level dev.
The mid level dev asked me how I would write an address validation module.
My answer was that I wouldn’t and went into details all of the complications of validating addresses and that I would use 3rd party CASS software. I went on to explain that from what I know about the core business it wouldn’t be a competitive advantage and that “it wouldn’t make the beer taste better”.
The software dev wasn’t impressed, the director was.
I was hired as a senior dev and I was ruthless about using third party software from reputable companies instead of writing code internally. This company has no desire to hire a bunch of devs.
We had specialized consultants for Salesforce, Workday, our data capture system, learning management systems, AWS and everything else.
In about a year and a half, I put myself out of a job, they went public and are running smoothly seven years later from what I can tell talking to former coworkers.
But I sure did have a great story to tell interviewing for my current position working in the consulting department at BigTech.
There's not much more I can add, but there's something I must pick on, in the name of countless users who suffer because of this:
> My answer was that I wouldn’t and went into details all of the complications of validating addresses
So far, so good...
> and that I would use 3rd party CASS software.
Why? The correct answer almost universally is: "I would not do that thing, period, because it's a lose-lose idea that hurts both you and your customers". Same with validating people's names.
EDIT: Since downthread you mention it was a system "for a health care company that sent at home nurses to special needs kids", part of which involved said nurses doing data entry... I wonder how much those nurses loved the address validation "feature" and how many serious issues (as in, with actual consequences to someone's health) it caused.
> Why? The correct answer almost universally is: "I would not do that thing, period, because it's a lose-lose idea that hurts both you and your customers". Same with validating people's names.
For a lot of industries, bulk address verification is a requirement to get a cheaper mailing rate. I first started using it when I was working for a SaaS company that printed and mailed bills and statements to customers.
It made no sense for a health care company that sent at home nurses to special needs kids to write their own in house EMS/EHS system. And they had an in house one that they had been depending on in 2015. It was built using PowerBuilder from 1999 and running SQL Server 2000. They were “locked into” supporting an old PowerBuilder app.
It also wouldn’t have made sense to hire a bunch of mobile developers to write a data capture system written for Android devices for their nurses. I had been there done that eight years prior when I did work for a company that wrote field service software for ruggedized Windows CE devices and 5 years prior when I did something similar for rail car repairmen.
It also wouldn’t make sense for them to write anything that could be done with Salesforce or a third party LMS.
Software developers are a cost center to a non software company.
Except, this could be done better and cheaper by a literal rock with letters spelling "NO" written on it with a sharpie.
If a software company doesn't write any code, what exactly is it doing? And speaking of bad decisions, surely some have been made already, since everyone is doing the job they're the least qualified for.