I am a web developer, and we could be the most complicated and strange people you have or ever will interact with.
We grew up building LEGO models asking ourselves the question “How can I make this bigger?” We played videos games thinking “How can I build this”, We were a fan of both Star Trek and Star Wars, because we knew the only thing they remotely had in common was the word “Star”. We wore bow-ties before the Doctor said they were cool.
Now we work in the dark corner of the office ruling over the kingdom that is our code. We take other people’s ideas, bring them to life and lack the ability to explain how it works. We find it difficult to integrate with our co-workers because our interests are typically polar opposites. We try socialize, but it usually ends in awkward situations.
We use different web browsers and read news from different sources. We see the viral videos before they went viral, we bought the latest tech gadgets before they were announced (and never show it off) and we already know which console will be the best in the next generation.
Our job is hard and thankless. We frequently fix bugs with descriptions of “It’s broken”, and we still somehow manage to find and fix it. We work off of general ideas and play the guessing game instead of working with structured documents telling us what to build. We are left off the ending credits, and we don’t mention it. We celebrate with other developers and brag among ourselves.
We thrive off complex problem solving and we do not have an off switch. We go to sleeping thinking about what problems we left at work and wake up eager to get back to make it better. We fight internal struggles to throw our work out the window and start from scratch to make it perfect. We don’t ask “How can this make more money?” We ask “How can we make this better?” We don’t ask “Why?” We ask “Why not?”
We don’t get always along with other developers. Our code is our art and we think our own art is perfect. Our brains are answering the same questions with different paths to the solution. Some of us code for scale, some for maintainability, and some for complexity. We always feel that our way is the right way. We will bang our head on our desk for hours and not ask for help because we are too proud. We will say “Oh yeah” or “How did I miss that” when someone walks over to us and bravely asks us “Whats up?” or “Can I help?”
Some of us try to get ahead by boasting abilities and using the terms “Ninja”, “Guru” and other technology buzz words. The humble among us know that our work speaks volumes above the words on our LinkedIn profiles. None of us know everything, but all of us are eager to learn as much as we can.
United, developers can do anything. They will build an shopping platform that can be used globally and then build you a social network capable of handling millions of users. We don’t care if it reaches that number, but we do care that it can.
We are here to build what you need, and we patiently wait for the next challenge.
Disclaimer:
My right eye was swollen shut when writing this. Please be sympathetic on spelling and grammar