On finding passion in devising developer experiences

What am I professionally? I don’t have a clear answer. I used to say I was an iOS developer with a passion for Swift, but that’s no longer true. Shopify turned me into a more generalist developer and, more importantly, helped me see technology as an implementation detail. I’m no longer as excited about a particular technology as I am about finding the best solution to a problem. But not any problem domain; I love the developer tooling space. It feels fantastic building developer experiences because I can scratch my own itches.

Moreover, I think I’ve developed a good sense for building great experiences through projects like Tuist, Gestalt, and a lot of inspiration from Ruby and Rails. Devising developer experiences is more of a product role, but I’m not a product designer. Should I dive into what it entails to be a product designer and apply it to the developer tooling domain?

It feels odd that product and development is a binary distinction in companies. It causes me a lot of impostor syndrome and a lack of identity. It’d be great if the gap between product and development was a spectrum, and you could grow within it too. Imagine one day wearing a technical hat because there’s a problem you want to go really deep into solving because you think it’ll positively impact DX. But the next day, you build prototypes around new workflows that you think users will love.

The reason why I love open source so much is that it’s not who I am but about what experiences I want to create. I feel highly empowered when I free any labels and can navigate domains.