My Article Would Have Got Me Fired. Here’s What I Did.
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
The Secret Developer has been writing articles about the world of software development for about 18 months now. Some articles focus on new topics of the day so that they might talk about AI in the workplace. Other articles have a more personal topic like their colleagues or what it is like to be The Secret Developer in 2023.
This led to a problem this week. Despite The Secret Developer being anonymous they postponed an article for fear of being unmasked. Here is what happened, and what it tells us about The Secret Developer and their workplace.
The Situation
The Secret Developer is a software developer who writes daily blogs on Medium. Despite their earning dropping 90% in the last couple of months, they write passionate missives about software engineering. This week, they sailed a little close to the wind.
“I crafted a blog post this week for publication. Oftentimes I write about my own experiences and leave it to my editor to change enough of the details and names of the innocent to ensure I can’t be identified by any colleagues.
This week they pulled up one of my articles and asked, ‘Are you sure’. I agreed and we stopped publication of the article. “
Why The Secret Developer lost their nerve
This is the first time The Secret Developer has stopped the publication of an article. They have noticed something concrete about the disadvantage of their articles being read widely by a technical audience.
“The article features specific details about events that could probably only happen in my own dysfunctional organization. I wanted to publish it as it shows us general lessons about management and how to ask employees to do something a little bit outside the norm.
I have also noticed that one of my colleagues has subscribed to my articles. When I started publishing on Medium for a $ or two I found it fun but thought my fame would never be about to touch my ‘real life’. Now I’m getting 100,000 views on Medium and people are sharing my articles on LinkedIn this has suddenly become scarily real.”
Learnings
Here is what The Secret Developer thinks we should learn from this situation.
“Even if you are not anonymously writing articles on the Internet about software development there are still things you can learn from this situation.
Namely, I’m worried about being unmasked as The Secret Developer because of how my company works. I work in a massive Agile team to such an extreme that someone on the team likely will happen across my blog over time and if it’s too personal they might recognize the author.
Huge teams mean I don’t get much work done for my employer. It also means I’m worried about my blog being too personal.
Massive Agile teams are bad for you. They are bad for me. They aren’t Agile.
That and my editor has made it clear to me that writing about events that only happen in my current company right after them might be something to think about.”
Conclusion
“The more I think about it, the more I conclude that large Agile teams aren’t cool. Especially if they relegate my Medium posts to the ‘drafts’ pile for an indeterminate amount of time.”
Don’t worry The Secret Developer fans. The blog posts will continue to be as personal and unguarded as ever and the post in question will be published in a few weeks (will you be able to spot it?). Although they might take on board that writing about current company events might just need a little nuance if they want to keep their job.