I stood in front of a room full of leaders and told the truth: our developer experience was broken. I gave an honest look at how painful our tooling and processes had become: how the platforms that were supposed to enable developers had turned into something that actively slowed them down instead.
We’d lost sight of the goal, and I wanted to raise the alarm that we had. Instead of helping teams move fast and build safely, we were optimizing for everything except the developer experience: Security, Compliance, Governance, Cost. Oh, sure, those are all very important, but we were doing it at the expense of the very folks that we needed to empower. Dev was frustrated. Ops was frustrated. Projects were delayed, and it was all just accepted as "the cost of doing business".
I made my case, and even made a couple suggestions on practical first steps that could help to fix it.
What happened next was... telling
Without exception, everyone who knew me well and worked directly with me gave me glowing feedback. I heard repeatedly that I was giving voice to thoughts that were shared by many of my peers across the organization. And by many, I mean many... not just one or two giving platitudes.
Then leadership broke their silence. I was pulled aside and told I needed to be more careful about how I expressed myself. That my tone might upset people. That I should think about how it sounded to management. "Consider the optics," I was told; "There are important folks who will struggle with this message." And the power moves abounded... I got called into a VP's office who wasn't even in my chain of command to talk about why I made the presentation, as if the act of raising concerns meant I must be off-track or out of step.
I’d pointed out how developers were being ignored and/or hindered. In response, I was told that my discomfort (and that of all of our engineers) was less important than avoiding discomfort for others— particularly, "some people" (conveniently nameless) with authority. It didn’t matter that the goal was to help. It didn’t matter that it reflected what many engineers were feeling but weren't saying out loud.
If you ever wanted to know what a lack of psychological safety looks like... that was it.
When feedback feels dangerous
Psychological safety isn’t about making everyone feel good all the time. It’s about making it safe to speak up, especially when something’s wrong. Without it, teams don’t get better... they just get quieter.
When engineers are afraid to point out what’s broken, you know what they'll do? They'll stop reporting friction. They stop challenging assumptions. They stop trying to make things better. Because they learned their lesson: management's feelings are more important than improvements.
And that silence? It’s expensive.
Your innovation pipeline dries up. Your staff starts doing just what they're told, and not a bit more. "Sprints" become "Trudges".
Developer experience is not a luxury
Too often, developer experience is treated like a nice-to-have. Something to focus on after the “serious” priorities are handled. But good developer experience is a force multiplier. It shortens feedback loops. It prevents bugs. It speeds up delivery. And it attracts and retains great engineers. It builds goodwill.
But you can’t improve what you can’t talk about. 😐
If engineers are afraid that raising concerns will get them labeled as difficult, ungrateful, or negative, then the whole system becomes less honest... and worse over time.
In my story... it marked the beginning of the end for me. Not because I changed my mind about how things were. Not even because I was afraid for my job. But I had learned that giving feedback and working to improve the process was less important, less valuable, than protecting the feelings of "important people". I stopped because I realized my efforts to make things better were not appreciated. Ultimately, I left that organization altogether in search of someplace where different ideas were welcomed.
🤔 How many in your organization have stopped trying? 🤔
B-T-Dubs: Softening the message is a bad move
Sometimes, in the name of professionalism, or diplomacy, or something like that, we water down feedback to avoid offending the people who need to hear it. "Can't you just focus on the potential benefits of changing instead of pointing out the failure?" But in doing so, we create another problem: we make things sound better than they are.
For example... and I know this might be a Trigger Warning for some, but it's really stayed with me so hear me out...
When my Mom's doctor came into the room and told her the extent of the cancer that ultimately took her life, he could've tried to make it softer news... "some people live with this for a couple of years, nothing is certain, just take it easy for a few weeks and we'll see how things look".
But the truth was that she had less than 3 months to live, and he didn't shy away from that. He said "in this particular situation, we don't have any recourse and you need to prepare."
That led to nine weeks for our family to love on each other, to celebrate her life with her, and to savor every moment before she was gone. None of that would've happened with a "softened" diagnosis... we'd have all gone back to our normal lives and then been surprised when we lost her so quickly.
In hindsight, I am incredibly grateful for the blunt diagnosis. The cost of denial would be HIGH.
Here's the reality of it all: a harsh truth, softened for comfort, stops sounding like a real problem. The urgency gets lost. People walk away thinking they're dealing with a squeaky hinge when it’s actually a collapsed beam.
The risk isn’t just miscommunication: It’s misprioritization. Problems don’t get solved when their size is misunderstood. Sometimes true love, legitimate empathy, has to take the shape of "real talk"... of raw honesty.
What safety actually looks like
Imagine a different reaction to my opening story, one where someone said:
“Blink, This raises some hard truths. Let’s unpack them together. Bring in some other folks who can share various perspectives on these problems, and let’s figure out where the real pain is and what we can work on first.”
Responding like that doesn’t just improve the platform efficiency. It improves the entire culture by showing that feedback is welcomed, even when it’s uncomfortable. Maybe especially when it’s uncomfortable.
If your team only feels safe saying things you already agree with, that’s not Safety. That’s Compliance.
A Final Thought
If you want to improve anything— start by making it safe to talk about what isn’t working. Make EGO the only thing that's unwelcome at the table.
The next time someone challenges the status quo in an effort to help, ask yourself:
Am I making it safer for them to speak next time?
Or am I just making it safer for myself... to not be challenged?
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