I am not sure what the issue is with the perception of the leaders orchestrating these layoffs. Somehow it gets lost that developers produce the product in the end. I see meetings where it’s like 15 people. 12 will be managers and stakeholder types. Those 12 are dreaming up work that could take months to produce and iron out. The other 3 are the one’s that will then go build it. How did we get so lopsided in this ratio? 12:3 so 4:1 stakeholder:developer. And we wonder why the systems here are lacking? What’s to wonder?
Yet over the past years developer head count has taken huge cuts. Stakeholders have too don’t get me wrong! I’m simply saying it was 4:1 stakeholder:developer in 2020 and it’s 4:1 stakeholder:developer in 2026. I think this should be fixed.
Also the stakeholders are not particularly good in my experience. Some are phenomenal. However the majority do not even have access to the production and uat environments for the product they are supposed to own. They do not interface with the users of those products. All of that is also placed on the developers. GTS does far more user sessions than stakeholders. However GTS also has to go figure out how to build what needs to be built. Our stakeholders do not hold water much in regards to helping us define, document, plan the work.
If developers are outnumbered 4:1. And also expected to design, architect, take user issues, and test the code on their system, in UAT, and in production. Also deploy the code overnight. Why are we so surprised that our technology is not returning the results we desire?