Tech projects a mythos that it exists to solve customer problems. Its raison d’être is to elevate them to a higher level of productivity, happiness, and general success. Tech claims it’s helping the customers move ‘up and to the right’ through whatever their axes are. But, really, once a tech organisation has achieved success, it will end up solving the problems it has created for itself. Not customer problems, but those that matter to the organisation. They take many forms, some more insidious than others:

• Refactoring code, to make it ‘better’. Better for whom? The customer? Or engineering?
• “Cost Efficiency”, without the expectation of passing any savings on to customers
• Increasing customer usage for no other reason than to increase revenue (either because you bill based on usage, or because ads pay for everything. Or the really ambiguous ‘if they use it more, they’re less likely to cancel’)
• Contorting your changes & features because your business team made long-term commitments related to maintaining status-quo to lock-in a deal (E.g., supporting legacy UI because the contract said that this must be maintained)
• Focusing solely on driving a business metric up-and-to-the-right while actively harming the customers’ experience & value, but makes the organisation feel successful.

These ideas infect your tech organisation driving you to make unnatural decisions that are in direct competition with the “right thing” for your customers. Look at 90% of successful tech organisations and really think about why they behave the way they do. You’ll see this lurking right behind the thin veneer of ‘we love our customers’.

We’re not altruistic. We’re mercenary.