🛰️ Signal Boost

Understanding Value as a Developer: A Career Superpower

When you’re just starting out as a developer, it’s easy to think your job is simply to write good code and complete tickets. You focus on learning the tools, the frameworks, and the best practices. Those things matter, but they’re not what truly make you stand out.

Companies don’t buy code. They buy outcomes.

If you want to grow beyond being “just another engineer,” you need to understand the value behind what you build. Value is about connecting your work to what the business and the customer actually need.

Why This Matters Early in Your Career

Many developers think conversations about “business value” are for managers or product owners. But the developers who stand out are the ones who understand how their work impacts customers, revenue, and the company’s goals.

When you understand value, you can:

• Prioritize work more effectively because you know which tasks have the biggest impact.

• Push back on low-value requests and advocate for high-impact improvements.

• Communicate better with stakeholders by tying your work to outcomes that matter to them.

It’s the difference between saying “I built a caching layer to improve response times” and “I reduced load times by 40%, which improved checkout completion rates.”

Thinking Like a Problem Solver

Value-oriented developers see themselves as problem solvers, not ticket takers. They ask questions like:

• What problem does this feature solve for the user?

• How does it help the business achieve its goals?

• What tradeoffs should we consider to deliver the most impact quickly?

This mindset is what helps engineers grow into trusted voices in their teams. They get pulled into more interesting projects, relied on for input, and promoted faster because they’re aligned with the company’s success.

The Career Superpower

Technical skills will get your foot in the door. But understanding value is what accelerates your growth. When you can consistently connect what you do to why it matters, you stop just “doing tasks” and start driving outcomes.

This isn’t just about impressing your boss. It’s about making your work more meaningful. Seeing the impact of your contributions is deeply motivating, and it builds a sense of ownership that helps you thrive long-term.

🔗 Lead Link

One standout article from the web that delivers signal, not noise.

Business value is definitely your job as a software engineer — Daniele Scillia

Why this matters:

It confronts a dangerous mindset head-on: the notion that software engineers are only responsible for technical correctness, not business impact. Scillia argues that developers should understand customer value, cost trade-offs, and the larger context in which their code lives. It reinforces our core message: connecting your work to meaningful outcomes makes you a more valuable and trusted engineer.

🛠️ Tactical Byte

A quick tip or tactic you can try this week.

Next time you pick up a ticket, ask yourself four questions before you start writing any code:

1. Who benefits from this work?

   Is it the end user, the business, or both? Be clear about the “customer” of the work.

2. What outcome are we aiming for?

   Instead of “finish the feature,” think in terms of the measurable impact: faster performance, higher conversion, fewer errors, better retention.

3. How will we know if we succeeded?

   Agree on a way to measure success. It could be a specific metric, a user behavior, or even qualitative feedback from stakeholders.

4. Is there a simpler or faster way to achieve that outcome?

   Sometimes the best solution isn’t the one with the cleanest architecture but the one that delivers value the fastest without creating long-term pain.

By doing this, you’ll start building the habit of thinking in terms of value and outcomes, not just deliverables. It only takes a few extra minutes per task, but over time, it changes how you approach your work and how others see you.

🎙️ From the Field

An insight, quote, or story from an experienced tech leader.

The Questions That Made Him Irreplaceable

A number of years ago, I accidentally hired my replacement.

He was a curious, driven developer taking his first job out of a coding bootcamp. At first, he did exactly what you'd expect: focused on learning the tech stack, getting comfortable with our processes, and shipping his first few features without breaking anything.

But within a couple of months, something shifted. What set him apart wasn't just his technical growth. It was the questions he started asking.

Beyond the Ticket

Instead of taking requirements at face value, he would dig deeper: "What's the actual goal for the user here?" or "How will we know if this change solves the problem?"

Most junior developers ask "How do I build this?" He was asking "Why are we building this?" and "What does success look like?"

Those questions changed everything. Over time, he became more aligned with the end user than many senior engineers I'd worked with. He understood not just what the product manager was asking for, but what they were trying to accomplish—and often spotted gaps between the two.

The Insight Advantage

He began surfacing complexities and tradeoffs that no one expected from someone with only a few months on the job. When a feature request came in, he'd raise his hand: "This solves the immediate problem, but what about users who...?" or "I can build this, but it might conflict with the direction we discussed last quarter."

Those insights made him an indispensable partner to both engineering and product. People started coming to him not just for implementation, but for perspective.

The Inevitable Outcome

Within 15 months, he had become the lead developer for that product, essentially stepping into the role I had previously filled. Not because he was the most senior or had the deepest technical knowledge, but because he had become the person who best understood the intersection of user needs, business goals, and technical constraints.

He didn't just write good code. He wrote the right code.

What Curiosity Really Builds

Looking back, I realize what I witnessed wasn't just someone getting good at their job. It was someone developing the most valuable skill in engineering: the ability to ask questions that align technical work with business impact.

Curiosity about outcomes, not just implementation, is what turns good developers into great ones. It's what transforms ticket-takers into problem-solvers, and problem-solvers into leaders.

The best engineers I know aren't just curious about how things work. They're curious about whether things should work that way at all.

💬 Open Threads

Something to chew on, debate, or share back—open questions for curious minds.

• When you first started your career, what helped you understand how your work created value for the company?

• If you’re mentoring junior developers, how do you teach them to connect their tasks to business outcomes?

• What’s one question you wish more developers asked about the why behind their work?

• Have you ever seen a developer stand out early in their career by focusing on value over output? What did they do differently?