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Asked: 2026-05-12T21:05:06+00:00

I’ve been in the business of developing hardware and software for 19 years now.

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I’ve been in the business of developing hardware and software for 19 years now. In the earlier days the projects and teams I worked on were smaller, much more effective and more fun.

The effect of the input of one single developer to the final product and to its success was evident to everybody. We had direct contact to and feedback from the customers. This was rewarding for our work and a very effective way to improve the product.

With the years the complexity of hard and software increases and more and more people were needed to get things done on time. The downside of the trend to bigger teams for me is that the contribution of a single developer to the project success gets smaller and smaller. And we lose the contact to real world of the users and customers because of growing QA departments more and more.

I always enjoyed my work and kept in touch with latest technologies like OOP, UML, .NET, and whatever. I already worked a few years as a team leader but I didn’t like it very much because I missed developing and coding.

I’m just frustrated about the fact that my piece of the whole “thing” we’re working on gets smaller and smaller and I lose the overview about it and the contact to the ground. Please don’t understand me wrong, I don’t want to cry for the good old days but for me the work on more and more specialized sub modules of a giant system simply gets more and more boring.

I’m wondering if I’m alone feeling like that and maybe if you have some advice how to bring the fun back to my work. And sorry, no, I’m not interested in working on an open source project in my free time. Nine hours a day in front of a computer screen are enough, life is more than coding…

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I also require interaction with and feedback from the customer. However, a customer can be many things. As long as I’m satisfying someone (end user, team leader, big boss, etc.) then that’s enough for me. The interaction itself is the key factor.

    As for the feeling of pride and ownership from having a large impact on the system, again it’s a matter of focus. You are still creating something, even if it’s a smaller piece of the whole.

    I long ago realized that I’m a small fish in a big pond. Learning to feel happy about my place in that pond was the only solution.

    IOW, it’s all relative!

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