Yo.
Is it just me, or does it sometimes feel like we're artists... hired to paint by numbers?
You sit down with a blank canvas, full of ideas, ready to create something meaningful, and then someone hands you a color-coded template and says, "Just stay inside the lines. Oh, and the sky has to be green because marketing thinks it'll stand out more."
(I know It's not just me btw)
At first, I thought software development was going to be like architecture with a heartbeat, something structured, sure, but still alive. Something you could feel proud of. And sometimes, it is. But too often, it becomes a process of carrying out instructions from people who don't understand the medium, or worse, don't care to.
I'm not trying to sound bitter. I just want to talk about what it feels like to build things when you care, and what happens when the space to care slowly disappears.
Not just for me. But for a lot of people I know who got into this field to make something real.
The Artist in a Factory
There was a time when painters didn't really get to paint what they wanted. They worked under wealthy patrons (kings, popes, merchants), people who paid well, but also had very specific ideas about how their nose should be shaped in the portrait. You weren't hired to express yourself; you were hired to flatter the client and follow instructions, ideally without too much talking back.
Sometimes, working in tech today feels like that.
You're brought on for your skill, your ability to translate ideas into working systems, but more and more, it feels like the "ideas" part has already been done for you. The blueprint is drawn, the color palette decided, and your job is to fill in the pixels. Quickly. Quietly. Consistently.
We like to say that building software is creative work, and on a good day, it really is. But a lot of the time, it feels more like assembling furniture with someone else's instructions, except the instructions are vague, incomplete, and being rewritten mid-build by someone who's never actually put furniture together.
It's not that we don't want to collaborate. We do. But there's a difference between working with someone and working for someone in the "just do what I say" sense. Most developers I know didn't get into this to be efficient hands, they got into it to build things that matter.
The Role of the Founder (and the Power of Care)
If you're trying to build a good product, there's one thing that matters more than any framework, process, or project management tool: whether the people building it actually care.
And here's the strange part: most of them want to. Most developers I know want to feel proud of what they're building. They want to get in flow, to push something forward, to make it good. But that only happens when they're given the room to care in the first place.
That's where leadership comes in.
I'm not talking about Gantt charts or sprint velocity, I'm talking about something simpler: creating the conditions for care. If you're a founder, a lead, a client, that's basically your main job. Not to micromanage every step, not to control every outcome, but to build an environment where people want to do their best work.
And if you don't trust them to do that…
well, maybe the honest move is to learn to code and build it yourself.
Because otherwise, what are we doing here? Hiring talented people just to override them at every turn feels less like leadership and more like ego with a budget.
Chasing the Right Kind of Win
There's this idea floating around that the whole point of building something (especially a product) is to win. To scale, to raise, to exit. To hit the charts, the KPIs, the milestone deck your investors clap for.
And sure, I get it. Success matters. Money keeps the lights on. But when that becomes the main thing, the actual reason you're doing this, it starts to feel like you're playing a different game entirely.
Some people build like gamblers.
They watch the market, make their bets, optimize for attention, and hope the numbers line up. And sometimes, they win. Fast. Big. Loud.
But I don't want to play that game.
For me, it's more like cooking for someone you love.
Not a plate you're trying to sell to a million people. Just one you care about. You pick the ingredients. You burn a few. You taste as you go. And when someone takes a bite and says, "Damn, this is exactly what I needed"—that hits different. That's the kind of win that lingers.
It's not about ignoring results. It's about asking which results matter.
Chasing money might get you a quick win.
Chasing meaning builds things that actually last.
On Passion (Without Saying 'Passion')
The word passion gets tossed around a lot. So much that it barely means anything anymore. It shows up in job postings and startup manifestos like parsley on a plate—decorative, expected, mostly ignored.
But when you've actually felt it, you know it's not fluff. It's fuel.
When I care about what I'm building (not just the outcome, but the process), I don't work harder because I'm told to. I work harder because I want to. I think clearer. I solve faster. I obsess in a good way. I come up with ideas in the shower, on walks, while brushing my teeth. It's not a grind, it's a hum in the back of your mind that says, this matters.
And I know not everyone gets that feeling every day. Life's messy, work is work. But when you do get it (even once) you remember why you got into this in the first place.
It's not about being "motivated." It's about being connected. About building something you're not just getting paid for, but actually believe in (even a little). That belief is worth more than ten checklists and a roadmap. Because that's where the real velocity comes from, not pressure, not deadlines, care.
The Myth of Roles and the Power of Human Wholeness
Sometimes people ask, "So what's your role on the project?"
And honestly, I don't want one.
Not because I'm trying to be difficult, or special, or some "multidisciplinary visionary" or whatever. I just think roles are often a polite way of saying "stay in your lane." And I've never met a great product that was built by people staying in their lanes.
I don't want to just write code.
I want to shape the idea, question the assumptions, care about the details, collaborate on the design, debug the emotion in a moment, not just the logic. And I think most people (if you let them) want that too.
We're not machines with clean-cut inputs and outputs. We're messy, curious, intuitive people. And the best products I've ever seen didn't come from a process, they came from people who were allowed to show up fully. People whose personal instincts, weird quirks, random late-night thoughts, and gut feelings made it in.
That's where richness comes from.
Not from role clarity, but from human overlap. From the places where our perspectives collide and blend and sharpen each other. That's where the soul of a product starts to form.
I don't want a title.
I want to be part of something that feels like it matters.
On Chaos (and Why I Don't Fear It)
One of the most common pushbacks to everything I've said is some version of:
"But you can't just let people run around doing whatever they want. It'll be chaos."
And yeah, it might.
But not the kind of chaos people are afraid of.
When people say "chaos," they usually mean lack of control. Disorganization. Delays. Waste. But I don't think that's real chaos. I think real chaos is when you have a team of people who've stopped caring, who are just following instructions, staying in their lanes, hitting the metrics, and checking out mentally the moment their part is done. It might look neat on the outside. But on the inside? It's dead.
The good kind of chaos (the human kind) comes from people actually bringing their full selves to the table. It's a little noisy. It's full of ideas, experiments, wrong turns, and weird brilliance. It's harder to manage on paper. But it's how great things happen.
And the best way to navigate that chaos isn't with stricter rules or more oversight.
It's with trust. With shared goals. With a team that actually likes each other.
When you're building something alongside people you respect and care about, you don't need to be watched. You want it to work. You self-correct. You collaborate. You clean up after yourselves, not because someone told you to, but because it matters to you.
That kind of harmony doesn't come from modern management frameworks. It comes from letting people be people, and trusting that if the goal is clear and the culture is right, they'll do more than you ever could by forcing it.
Closing – A Quiet Note
I don't have a grand solution. I'm not claiming to know the one right way to build software, or teams, or companies. I just know what it feels like to care deeply about the work—and how rare it is to be in an environment that actually allows for that.
Most of the time, it's the opposite.
You care, and the system shrugs. You try, and the process trims your edges. You want to make something real, but the layers between you and the thing keep getting thicker.
And still, I don't think it has to be this way.
I've seen moments (rare, but unmistakable) when it works.
When a group of people trust each other enough to be honest, to push each other, to share the weight and the weirdness of building something from nothing.
When care isn't micromanaged or incentivized, it's just there, because the people are.
And that's all I'm really saying.
That maybe we don't need more control. Maybe we need more belief, in the work, in the people doing it, and in the strange, unpredictable, beautiful things that can happen when you stop painting by numbers... and finally let the brush breathe.
Just maybe. ❤️
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