My opinions
During college, I was exposed to smart peers and I learnt more from them than my professors. I had lots of fun discussing different topics with them.
But after working in the industry, I realized that I had made multiple assumptions. Many of the things that I had assumed to be true were just my opinions with limited experience.
I thought it would be a good idea to document my current opinions as well.
You need to have an eye on your income / business model
Software developers would like to sit before a computer and not worry about money problems. But it is very hard to ignore it. I don't mean that you have to chase money. But that doesn't mean you can ignore it either.
I feel that if you are very smart and/or successful or have bandwidth to work on open source / free software projects during your free time, then you can focus on purely technical problems and not get distracted by monetary problems.
But most people lie somewhere within the spectrum and not at the extremes. Therefore, it is pragmatic to let your career and thereby your technical choices be influenced by money.
Non-developers play an important role just like developers do.
I have observed friction between technical and non-technical people due to mismatch of expectations and ideologies.
If you are somewhere in the spectrum of the previous point, then you can't ignore anything that has a direct/indirect impact on revenue.
Assuming most people are professional, they need to be able to justify their cost to the organization by directly/indirectly generating revenue to that organization. This means working together as a team and not creating a hostile atmosphere.
Communication is important
Since I have established that you need to work as a team, you need to communicate well within that team. Which means communicating well with both groups, developers and non-developers.
For this, top-down communication is important.
I will try my best to make this blog meaningful even if you are not a developer (with sufficient links to previous topics).