Vanishingly Few Developers Can Build an Entire App From Start to Finish — Are You One of Them?

Yep, I’m dropping truth bombs!

Courtesy of Black Forest Labs FLUX 1.1: “A 2D high-res digital art of a very confused software engineer, sweating, and in panic, having no idea what he is doing.”

I’ve gone in and out of big industrial companies, small startups, and small companies throughout my decade-long career (yikes — can’t believe it’s been that long), and I’ve encountered probably somewhere upwards of 200 developers / software “engineers”…

and I’ve arrived at a somewhat shocking conclusion:

The vast majority of software developers cannot build an entire product from start to finish by themselves.

Surprised? Don’t worry — this is not the only conclusion I’ve come up with over the years of writing software — there are many, many more, but those are different blog posts for a different time ;)

Sure, the typical memes by software engineers on the internet are to make fun of product owners / product managers... most having the tone that these folks don’t “do” anything, are lazy, etc…. But let’s be honest, the ‘average’ developer couldn’t get anything done without them!

That’s right. Did I stutter? Indeed, I’m stirring the pot on this post. Why do you think I’ve put this post behind the Medium paywall, anyway?! Most of the paid-for Medium posts are clickbait garbage anyway!