on metaphors (and client relationships)

There’s a saying that “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”

This applies to metaphors too.

Metaphors are dangerous things. Taken too far, they can lead to incorrect conclusions.

Take, for example, the metaphor of marriage applied to a client/service provider relationship.

It works on a few levels.

All relationships benefit from intentional reflection and corresponding action. No friendship thrives under neglect. No marriage thrives under complacency.

The word “intentional” is doing a lot of work here. It’s easy to buy jewellery. If your wife is a jewellery person, the occasional gift of earrings will probably make her feel appricated and subsequently improve your marriage. But if your wife (or husband, substitute power tools for jewellery here to maintain the blatant stereotype) isn’t a jewellery person, you can only buy her so many earrings before the gesture starts to have the opposite effect. It reveals to her that you haven’t taken the time to reflect on what she would actually appreciate in a gift. That the gesture is just a gesture. A rote and performative action. It will increasingly feel like an insult.

The same thing applies to how you deliver to your client. If you’re consistently delivering high quality, well-engineered code… but only demoing it every 2 weeks and releasing at a cadence that leaves the customer behind their competitors, you’re not actually doing what your client is paying you to do.

It’s a useful metaphor for understanding how easy it is to assume you’re doing the right thing for someone if you don’t intentionally reflect on what they might actually want.

BUT

Dev shops aren’t giving their customers gifts. They’re delivering on a paid service. The metaphor only works in the narrow scope of your duty to understand your customer’s motivation.

Taking the metaphor too far, you might start to apply it to how that scenario would play out: your wife might tell you that your gifts are actually hurtful and give you an opportunity to make it right. A client… might just fire you.

Resist the temptation to carry metaphors further than they’re intended to go.