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Discussion on: Often neglected skills new devs should learn?

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Sten • Edited

In a previous job we thought a lot about adding the acronym SFTU to the list of core values of companies.

SFTU stands for Seek First To Understand which is something that we found to benefit not only new devs but also old timers.

There's often a knee-jerk reaction when looking at some old code, a feature, a product and point at what's missing or what could have been done better. But more often than not there are several reasons for why it's done the way it is, even if it looks horrendous: it could be MVP code done under pressure to keep the project afloat, it could be that the team had a different focus at the time, it could be that the customer requirements changed, it could be that the team was not well versed in a specific technology... The point that it rarely is because someone wanted to do a sh*t job and it's important to try to understand context. This is especially true, and hard in software development as it's a form of async collaboration that can be happening through many years.

It's quite fitting that the acronym is a permutation away from teaching us to listen to others :)