Minor knee surgery is still knee surgery

Here’s a dumb idea: imagine you just had a new baby and the startup where you work was recently acquired, which expanded your content team and gave you 20 new products to learn… now throw in elective knee surgery.

It seems crazy in retrospect, but that was me in 2015.

The doctor referred to it as “minor knee surgery.” They didn’t have to go all the way in, but they did knock me all the way out.

This guy had repaired pro basketball knees. I was in good, scalpel-ed hands. He wrote “Yes” across my left leg and we were underway.

At first, my recovery was fine. I walked upstairs that night with full weight on that leg (doc said I could!)

After about 24 hours, when the giant shot from the O.R. wore off, I could barely hobble across the room. When a neighborhood octogenarian brought me crutches, I used a chair as a walker to get me to the door.

Luckily, I improved. By the time of my post-op check-up, my only complaint was a little numbness around the incision.

And it’s the surgeon’s response that should inform our work with developers: “Yes, the nerves probably won’t reconnect, so you’ll always have some numbness there.”

Excuse me?!

😳

I was shocked to hear this after the procedure… and after my tough recovery from what I thought was “minor knee surgery.”

It was still knee surgery. Sure, he does this every day and it was probably his easiest one of the week…

I don’t get knee surgery on the regular, so the surgeon could have better set my expectations.

And that’s exactly what you need to do with developers.

They’re going to ignore you anyway if you say something is “easy” or “simple.” Even if it genuinely is, the Developer B.S. detector will go off.

They’ll avoid adding your “one-liner” to their codebase until they’ve been able to fully understand it elsewhere.

Don’t shy away from that skepticism. Embrace it. Help them see—and mitigate—the risks.

And, like a good marketer, remind them of the benefits.

Before and after my procedure, the surgeon could have reminded me of the radiating pain from that knee. A little numbness is a good trade.

Don’t promote a magic bullet to developers. You’ll gain trust and better educate them if you uncover some of the real work ahead of them.

Obviously, I won’t tell you it’s easy. If you want some help, reach out to the EveryDeveloper team.