For the sake of imagining someone working at an employer where they have no real control over the direction of the product, what value do they bring other than their technical skill set and analytical ability? Presumably the value most developers out there deliver is producing a coded up version of someone else's specification. Outside of having enough business acumen to know when to shut up before the management threatens your employment (if remaining employed is important enough to you), what else is there?
"...they have no real control over the direction of the product..."
Not my experience. I (and almost every other programmer I have ever met) have had some control over everything I've ever worked on. Perhaps this is a self fulfilling prophecy: if you don't think you have any control, then you don't.
"Presumably the value most developers out there deliver is producing a coded up version of someone else's specification."
Not my experience either. At least on this planet.
If anyone else ever produced a specification rigorous enough for me to code from, I could die happy.
"if you don't think you have any control, then you don't."
Or you've tried to get some control, and have had your hand slapped away. And then realize the part that you don't have control over is the crux of the product's value proposition, and that it is a bad value proposition. Having control of the how isn't going to make it valuable enough, because it doesn't solve the right root problem. If you've ever tried to push a certain direction, only to have people respond "that is management's decision, not yours," that's what I am referring to. Perhaps you have never experienced that.
"If anyone else ever produced a specification rigorous enough for me to code from, I could die happy."
That's not quite what I meant. My point is that, in a large number of development shops, this is the way people deliver value. Their manager and the organization he represents is the customer, and often times they already know what they want, even if it is the wrong solution. It comes in the form of a specification, even if that is badly written. The value they bring is their technical skill set, such as it is, because most of the other decisions regarding the product have already been made by the time it gets to them.
I'm not ascribing this method of delivering value to you and those you know, nor to I and most of the programmers I know. I'm ascribing this to the people in the stories they and I tell of the other programmers we've met who operate this way: offering technical skills, and otherwise having faith everyone else will figure out the customer value part. Some are getting Darwined, as people find out they don't even provide what they claim to offer, but enough people out there find good value in a cog.
