# Ultimately, when you’re in a business context, you need to please the people
above you in the…

I’d like it if everybody who works on Electron against their will (or uses
stuff like XML or Java against their will, or is pushed into…

* * *

Ultimately, when you’re in a business context, you need to please the people
above you in the hierarchy. That often means making technical decisions you
know are bad for historical or political reasons. For instance, if everybody
working under you only knows about the web stack, you’re going to need to
convince a non-technical manager at some point that broadening their horizons
& shifting focus is justifiable in terms of short term return on investment (a
hard sell) or you’re going to need to put up with it. We don’t always have the
resources necessary to stand firm on this stuff, and we have to pick our
battles.

I’d like it if everybody who works on Electron against their will (or uses
stuff like XML or Java against their will, or is pushed into using Hadoop to
do what could be done faster on a single machine in a single thread) stood up
and said “I’d rather be fired than make our customers and coworkers pay for
this obvious mistake”, but the truth is a lot of them would get fired if they
did that (or at least get shortlisted for layoffs or get a couple black marks
on their record) and while software engineers are more capable of absorbing
that risk than many other occupations, I understand why people would be
nervous.

(Software engineers aren’t really unionized, and even if we were, unions
rarely strike over treatment of _customers_.)

By [John Ohno](https://medium.com/@enkiv2) on [May 2,
2018](https://medium.com/p/378df601fe8c).

[Canonical link](https://medium.com/@enkiv2/ultimately-when-youre-in-a-
business-context-you-need-to-please-the-people-above-you-in-the-378df601fe8c)

Exported from [Medium](https://medium.com) on September 18, 2020.