Communicate or be micromanaged

Nobody likes being micromanaged. In an ideal world, people would trust you to deliver, and you’d be left in peace to do your work. But in reality, software development is a black box for many. To them, engineers look like magicians, and the magic seems slow and expensive. Founders and managers without a technical background naturally start asking: “What are they doing?” and “Why is this taking so long?”.

The hype around AI and vibe coding fuels this. They see posts about AI agents building websites in hours or launching mobile apps in a day, and suddenly, your work feels even harder to justify.

As an engineer, you have a choice. If you don’t communicate, people will fill the void with questions. When they can’t see what’s happening while paying the bills, they’ll lean in closer. If a feature takes time, they’ll ask for updates more often. Before you know it, they’ve invented their own daily standup. Just to micromanage you.

The solution is simple: communicate before they have to ask. Overcommunicate. If you think you’re giving enough updates, you probably aren’t. Make it a habit to share short, async updates every day. And remember your audience, skip the jargon. Saying, "I refactored a repository class to handle password encryption" is meaningless to a non-technical person. Instead, say: "I’m working on letting administrators reset user passwords. To make that possible, I need to adjust how passwords are stored in our database." Same progress, different language.

And don’t go quiet when things go wrong. Bad news doesn’t get better by waiting. If you hide problems, people will stop trusting you. Software development is hard. There are always unexpected issues. Non-technical people don’t need a sugar-coated version; they need to understand the reality.

The more you share, the less they’ll feel the need to look over your shoulder. Communicate, or be micromanaged.