Introduction
This chapter is a bit like the Roman god, Janus. Janus was the gatekeeper of heaven and had two faces. One of Janus' faces looked forward and the other backward; his name survives in the month January – looking forward to the new year and backward to the year that has passed.
This chapter similarly has two faces: one looks outward, from the perspective of a developer to the business that this person finds themselves interacting with; the other looks inward, from the perspective of the business to the developer. To keep things exciting, the narrative changes between these positions more than once.
"But I'm self-employed," I hear some of you saying. You still engage in business activities. You might have to justify your work to your client rather than your manager, but the concepts remain the same.
Even if you're a junior developer with plenty of levels of management above you, it still pays to understand the business you're in and how your work...