Where do <s>babies</s> feature requests come from?
An engineer on my team made a fascinating observation the other day.
I don’t like feature requests from Theo* because he’s making them for himself and not on behalf of others
*Name changed to protect the innocent
I’ve never thought of it that way. Most feature requests that make it to my team are people advocating on behalf of others:
The head of support wants us to fix the underlying problem that causes the plurality of support cases for our users
Our friendly neighborhood product manager wants us to improve the search experience on the site so our users can find what they’re looking for more easily
The eager engineer on my team wants to speed up a page on the site because they’re annoyed at how slowly it loads
Occasionally we do get requests for other features that the requester more directly benefits from:
Our content creators lobby for better tools to help them do their jobs
Our marketing folks want specific product changes so their marketing campaigns have higher conversion rates
And yes, Theo asks for features that help his program go more smoothly which may lead to him getting promoted
More generally, you could even say that people get rewarded when they do a good job and getting engineering to fix a problem they care about makes them personally look good too.
But are people in the second category really that hedonistic? Do our content creators really want better tools so they can finish their work early and devote more hours to the sacred art of mindlessly scrolling through TikTok?
Is Theo just here for that promotion? Really? And even if he was, is that such a bad thing? To this engineer, the answers to those questions are “Absolutely yes, yes, and most assuredly yes.”
I respectfully dissent. I think Theo’s larger program is actually really important. Perhaps he hasn’t done a great job of convincing the broader organization of that. Or perhaps he’s convinced other stakeholders but mistakenly skipped engineering on his roadshow espousing the virtues of keeping him employed.
This engineer has no idea that Theo’s program keeps us employed. It actually keeps a whole bunch of folks across our organization employed from all of the money it indirectly helps bring in. I’d even say the users who interact with this program do a tiny bit better because of it. If I had to stack rank the various initiatives happening on our platform, I’d say this one comfortably ranks in the top five.
The next time someone suggests something to you and you think it’s self-serving or unimportant or plain bad, take a moment to ask yourself why. Do you think the requester is genuinely unintelligent? Do you think their program is unimportant despite being endorsed by senior management? Do you think you’re having a bad day?
Rather than saying “no” and venting about it to anyone in earshot, think about asking some clarifying questions and sleeping on the answers. What you find may surprise you.