Hah I got the exact opposite realization actually.
Yes if you boil it down to it’s essentials you are right the customer is the one with the money, so satisfying his needs/desires is what matters.
But, and thats a big but, we as devs are also humans, we also have desires and needs, and in the long run companies that successfully balance the needs of its users with the needs of its workforce get the best workers, which solve the problems of their users better/cheaper/faster.
So it’s more of an equilibrium kinda thing. If you stray too much in any direction the organization tanks - either the users loose faith, or the people satisfying theirs needs do, which leads to failure just as much.
The complexity with balancing this usually stems from the fact that both of those variables are subjective to their respective environment - users can tolerate bad solutions if there are no alternatives available, same with devs.
And that is also a subject to information availability - devs can be ok with their situation because they don’t know what salaries are at that other place for example.
Yes if you boil it down to it’s essentials you are right the customer is the one with the money, so satisfying his needs/desires is what matters.
But, and thats a big but, we as devs are also humans, we also have desires and needs, and in the long run companies that successfully balance the needs of its users with the needs of its workforce get the best workers, which solve the problems of their users better/cheaper/faster.
So it’s more of an equilibrium kinda thing. If you stray too much in any direction the organization tanks - either the users loose faith, or the people satisfying theirs needs do, which leads to failure just as much.
The complexity with balancing this usually stems from the fact that both of those variables are subjective to their respective environment - users can tolerate bad solutions if there are no alternatives available, same with devs.
And that is also a subject to information availability - devs can be ok with their situation because they don’t know what salaries are at that other place for example.