Technology. Some grew up breathing it. Others had to catch up later. Either way—we're all in now.
Then, a few years into that shiny tech career, you freeze. A stranger—or worse, 🧐 your own family—asks: "So... what do you actually do to justify that salary? Double or triple mine, eh?"
🚩 Why can't we answer?
We mumble something like: "It’s complicated. I make sure when you click that button, some dude gets his report by year-end."
Because what we build is invisible. And invisibility is damn hard to explain, let alone glorify.
Technology today is infrastructure. It’s plumbing. It’s the scaffolding behind every tap, swipe, and click. But unlike a bridge, a building, or a cured patient, our impact isn't tangible. Outsiders don't see:
- The 3 AM debugging sessions hunting race conditions.
- The architectural choices preventing catastrophic outages.
- The automation saving millions, silently.
- The security patches averting unseen disasters. 👇️
They don't see it. And crucially, often we don't either.
We're buried in the weeds: shipping, fixing, learning. We speak a language of precision, not storytelling. So when asked "What do you do?", we vomit technical jargon. The conversation flatlines.
But that's not why we get paid. That's not the real answer.
Here's what is:
🎤 I make sure software works for more than one user.
This isn't just your elevator pitch. It's your North Star.
Embrace this as your core principle, regardless of your career stage. Why?
- It Forces Better Code: Thinking beyond "it works on my machine" exposes concurrency bugs, resource leaks, and scalability cliffs early. You design APIs that don't shatter under load. You choose databases that scale predictably.
- It Cultivates Systems Thinking: You stop seeing isolated code. You start seeing flows, dependencies, and failure domains – the living system as a whole. How does this service impact that user when 10,000 others hit it simultaneously? Where are the bottlenecks? The single points of failure?
- It Reveals True Value: Your work isn't the clever algorithm (though that might be part of it). Your value is enabling reliable, simultaneous use by many. That's the magic justifying the paycheck – transforming a tool into resilient infrastructure.
- It Clarifies Priorities: Does this refactor make the system more reliable for more users? Does this feature handle edge cases gracefully under load? Does this observability tool actually help us prevent widespread outages? If not, why prioritize it?
"Works for one" is a prototype. "Works for many" is a product. "Works for millions" is an empire.
Start building like it matters — because it does.