There's an element of truth to this! I alluded to this (and Adam totally reasonably cut even more of it for time) but I definitely was not as effective organizationally as I could have been; that is one of the major things I learned from my time at LinkedIn. The biggest challenge for DX teams remains figuring out how to (a) communicate but more importantly (b) align their work with the key priorities of the business. I got to be okay at (a) but never particularly succeeded at (b) in my time at LinkedIn. Some of that is on me! Some of it… is on LinkedIn.
That said, in this case, the person telling me “You’re too idealistic” literally meant it in the sense of “You should not care about anything unless it directly moves the bottom line,” and I reject that to my bones. The bottom line matters. So, though, do things like user experience, developer experience, and for that matter just basic ethics about what we build (though happily the latter wasn’t in view here).
> “You should not care about anything unless it directly moves the bottom line,” and I reject that to my bones
I have a lot of empathy for that feeling. I've come across this often in my career and I have not enjoyed it. I enjoy building software that I'm proud off. Thank you for sharing your story!
That said, in this case, the person telling me “You’re too idealistic” literally meant it in the sense of “You should not care about anything unless it directly moves the bottom line,” and I reject that to my bones. The bottom line matters. So, though, do things like user experience, developer experience, and for that matter just basic ethics about what we build (though happily the latter wasn’t in view here).