> I find I spend more time trying to understand how to explain the value my work has to the business (screenshots, demos, docs) than trying to actually do my work.

I relate to this a lot. I was a product owner for a while and made sure we could always explain the value of what was being delivered to stakeholders in language they would understand and matter to them. We spent a lot of time on preparing the demo, running it through internally, providing feedback, tweaking the wording, gathering metrics, etc. In many cases the developer was really interested in the technicality of a certain function, but we’d push them to shift focus to the value that was being delivered to the people we were presenting to. The last thing we want is for people to tune out, because someone is deep diving into code no one understands or really cares about seeing.

In my view, it doesn’t matter what you do if no one understands what you did or why it matters. If we can tell the story well, we will be valued. As a result, the team got great feedback, was highly valued, and our management felt we were miles ahead of every other team.

Fast-forward to now… I chose to move back to an engineering role. We don’t do demos anymore, despite protests from the team. No one knows what we do. We’ve seen multiple people laid off from the team and our direction is all over the place. It feels like we can never catch up, which is a far cry from the days when my boss was telling me to take a 3 month vacation, because of how far ahead we were.

This small shift in focus and opinions around things like demos has dramatically changed the team, how the work is viewed, and the team’s morale. It’s been very upsetting.