In his role as Principal Software Engineer at ITX, John Roets knows the value engineers bring to the table and describes it in the blog below. Leaning on content curated from thought leaders like Amazon’s Jesse Watson, SVPG’s Marty Cagan, and others, John offers words of caution and support to his fellow engineers and their teammates: “If you fail to see beyond technical skill as what makes developers valuable, you’ve got it wrong.”

My new favorite article is The Hard Thing About Software Development, from Jesse Watson, a software development manager at Amazon. I discovered it through James Coplien, an Agile influencer, who has labeled the article as ‘profound.’

The article itself isn’t new – it was written in 2017 – but its message is as relevant as ever.

In the article, Jesse is responding to an independent remote developer – a freelancer, gig worker – who is lamenting the fact that gigs don’t pay well.

On the surface, this seems contradictory. After all, developers are in high demand and are paid well. Right? What’s going on here?