--- title: "The letter you wanted to write" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/23/the-letter-you-wanted-to-write.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/3/23/the-letter-you-wanted-to-write.html" published: "2003-03-23T17:44:00" updated: "2003-03-23T17:44:00" tags: [] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "I know plenty of people who would write something like this: \"Hi there boss. You probably don't know me. I work in your company. *Your company* which you have founded .You walk past by me when you enter the company at…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # The letter you wanted to write By Roy Osherove March 23, 2003 **Historical article** · Originally published March 23, 2003; technical details may be outdated. I know plenty of people who would write something like this: "Hi there boss. You probably don't know me. I work in your company. \*Your company\* which you have founded .You walk past by me when you enter the company at mid-noon, not even sending a glance or a smile or a small "hey". You walk past us like we were ghosts. We are your developers. We created all this "stuff" that you are desperately trying to sell to other companies. We have to answer to those claims, you know. We work hard. The situation is bad. We work harder, yet you can't even bring yourself to say "good morning" to us, who have worked for you for several years now. Some of us gave up better paying offers because of false promises you have made. We worked like dogs for nights on end in more then one occasion. Never once did you decide to stop and say "good job" or "Keep going. You just go on, with your sealed face and you astronomical salary, leaving us behind, trying to wonder what the hell is going to happen next. In my opinion It's customary to gather the employees once a \* your time frame of choice\* or so and explain the current road map, where we are headed, what is expected, what are the difficulties.  Just to keep people in the loop. Instead, you break off these meetings each and every time, disappearing into the 5.30 shadows as if all is well. Well it's not. We are tired. Tired of this abuse. We won't stand for this much longer. You must understand that people are your most precious asset, and their loyalty is what will help you stay alive. Do you know what is the first thing to happen once the market situation calms down and things will be a little bit more normal? You'll be left with an empty company. Please read this and understand that we both want to succeed. I want to be a good programmer and do the stuff you pay me for, but I also want to advance myself, learn new things, and most importantly, like any person, be appreciated for my efforts. Sincerely, Joe programmer." --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/