I was putting the finishing touches on wiring up the form for submitting my API pulse to the API behind it last night. I had an hour before I quit working and figured I’d take care of administrative work which involves documenting the daily harassment I receive on LinkedIn from a very troubled man. I literally had just stopped working on adding the JSON Schema validation, administrative emailing, and logging for my API Pulse API, and switched to screenshottiing and logging comments about how I don’t have any evidence that I know how to code APIs. I’ve long stopped publishing code publicly because of my stalker, but as I wake up this morning and see a fresh wave of hateful comments on every single LinkedIn post, so I do what I do best, write my way through what I am seeing and experiencing.
Every job and project I’ve had has someone or a group of someones who make it their business to disrupt the important work on APIs with some manufactured insanity because they don’t like you or what you are doing, and are insecure about their place in the world. I mean, anyone who posts API EXPERT in all caps in their social media profiles is struggling with where they fit into the world. I remember a guy at F5 Networks who took it upon himself to come to every one of my workshops to argue with me that JSON and YAML were NOT the same thing. I remember a guy at Postman who took pride in the fact that the process for committing code to a core API was not clearly documented, riddled with challenges in onboarding—he didn’t care, you had to be smart and tough to work your way through onboarding. I remember a guy at Bloomberg who took pride in never showing up to any governance meeting, but cherished reporting me to leadership so that I’d get my chain yanked about governance being a blocker.
My point is, the world is full of people who are just looking for any way possible to disrupt the meaningful work you are doing on APIs with some sort of manufactured friction or struggle. These are always people who are threatened and insecure. You can imagine a pretty sad and unfulfilling life behind their daily existence. I mean who has so much time to just focus on causing problems for other people. It means you don’t have anyone at home loving you, caring for you, or giving you a purpose. It means that your work is so unfulfilling that you have to spend your day paying attention to what someone else is doing, rather than your own work. There clearly is a lot of pain and suffering involved to set the stage for someone spending their day just trying to tear down what others are building, but it is the technological fueled culture we’ve built online, and have baked into our enterprises. So how do you cope? Well enterprises tend to create bureaucracy to address these problems, but I write and share stories to help illuminate, educate, and foster more awareness and discussion.
Problem people exist. We can’t always get rid of them. So what do you do? Well, you document and write down what is happening. You utilize architectural decision records and leverage Git so that there is a record. 85% of problem people will not go on the record via GitHub or other mechanisms. This is why they prefer meetings and in-person conversations. However, the 15% of problems who will go on the record knowing the system will not punish them, but keep documenting and telling the story. It is an opportunity for you to educate people. Don’t focus on just the problem or the problem person. Focus on keeping yourself in a balanced state, and doing what you need to get through your day. Then find ways you can share your stories with others, publicly or privately. If your problem people have learned to game the system you find other ways to build a whisper network that keep people educated, safe, and showing up and contributing. Remember, the machine wants you to fail and give up, and so do those problematic men who worship the machine.
I feel like I live in some purgatory Groundhog Day with my stalker, but I know that his world sucks way more than mine. I have a fulfilling career and people around me who love me. I have an audience who read more stories and show up to engage with conversations. Your success is what scares them the most so you make sure to invest in that success. Do whatever it takes for you to succeed each day. Talk to people. Find meaning and purpose in your work, despite the haters. The fact that you have haters means that you are being successful at a level that challenges others. If you can, move companies, move social networks, if you can’t, then own it, dominate what you do. Do it with care. Do it with purpose. Don’t do it for vengeance. Be the best version of yourself in whatever you do. Even be theatrical and flamboyant. You do you! Don’t back down. Don’t give any ground. Publish your stories. Keep a log. Orient yourself in your work, not the harassment you face each day or week. Remember why you are doing what you do. That is what matters. You matter.
