A Betrayed Developer Will Not Return

I had a dream in which my place in life was taken by my double. By many doubles - at home, in the office, everywhere.

People thought that these doubles were me.

I tried to prove that I was better than these doubles in all aspects, but nobody seemed to understand the difference.

These zombie doubles were better in one single aspect - pretending they were me.

I failed at proving worthy.

And then I woke up.

Once I knew a sharp young lady working on a project. She was responsible for SEO. She had done really great work over the years - the website had many visitors with lots of conversions while she was in charge.

She did all the work by herself.

Later, the customer decided to extend the marketing team. They hired a big-mouth SEO expert and a whole lot of other specialists.

Finally, they fired the girl who had been successfully doing work over many years.

I talked to her some time later and she was absolutely furious about the situation.

She said, ‘This is the first time in my life when I am just thrown away after that much effort and dedicated work!’

She never came back. Even after a couple of years that were years of decay. I personally asked her to return.

She only asked, ‘So, how’s the site? Is it already done or still holding on?’

She would rather struggle in an unfriendly environment.

She left me frustrated because by the time all the bright specialists were long gone and I had to fight with never ending challenges myself without any support.

But I understood the feeling.

I used to feel the same.

There were times in my life when I worked for a customer and dedicated too much. I would put my time, my life, my soul in the project because I really wanted to help. Because I really liked the customer.

And then, I would be abandoned and replaced with one-celled people whose bragging about their skills was better than mine.

Or they were local people. Or whatever.

And I would be thrown away.

Would the project start to decay? Of course. I am good at what I do. You can’t just find a replacement for me - especially if you want to replace me with an army of arrogant pretenders that don’t recognize the word “class” in the code.

An army of faceless clones will never replace one good engineer. It’s awfully weird that some managers try to build upon that kind of structure.

The army of pretenders will disappear after your budget is over. They don’t care if you lose money.

So you might need help from someone who can actually do the job. Again.

But the betrayed developer will not return.

Because you don’t deserve one.

Well, let’s be positive! Maybe life is not that bad and you deserve to have great developers in your project.

Then do your best to find them. And once you find them - keep them!