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The Cost of Caring: When Being Good at UX Creates More Work

“The ironic thing about being good at what you do — and caring about UX — is that it creates more work for yourself.”

This started as a throwaway comment. But the more I thought about it, the more it hit.

Caring Is a Multiplier​

When you care about the product — not just the code — you become aware of all the things that should exist but don’t:

  • That a user might have hundreds of objects and shouldn’t have to click “approve” 100 times.
  • That a batch action or a template system — something entirely out of scope — might be necessary just to avoid putting users through pain.
  • That a certain workflow might technically work, but would make a real person say “ugh” five seconds in.

No one asked you to fix these things. But once you see them, you have to.

Because now you know better. And that means if you ship it as-is, you’re not just implementing the spec — you’re enabling the pain.

Devs Should Own Design Too​

This is the real root of it.

Developers shouldn’t just be code monkeys implementing tickets.
They should own both design and implementation — not necessarily in the aesthetic sense, but in the logic, flow, and user interaction sense.

If the dev sees a UX design and knows it will lead to user confusion, frustration, or inefficiency — and can articulate why — then they shouldn’t be expected to build it.

There’s no virtue in knowingly building a bad experience just because it was "specced that way."

In fact, the best teams I’ve worked on treat developer feedback as design feedback, because devs:

  • Know what’s technically possible
  • See the edge cases early
  • Understand how a user interacts in the real world (not just the happy path)

The Work You Create for Yourself​

Here’s the trap: when you care, you start solving problems no one else saw.

You end up building:

  • Batch actions
  • Import tools
  • UX enhancements for power users
  • Clean fallback states
  • Clear validation flows

Not because they were scoped, but because they were necessary.

Sometimes, it’s polish. But often, it’s an entirely new feature — one that was never discussed, but becomes essential once someone asks,
“Wait, what happens if the user has 300 of these?”

You invent the work — and then you take it on — because you’re trying to protect the user from the thing you were about to ship.

You do it because you care.

No PM Needed​

This isn’t about working with bad PMs. In fact, there may not even be a PM on the project at all.

It’s about internal standards — the kind that only kick in when you’ve done this long enough to know where pain hides.

You’re not just following specs — you’re translating real-world needs into code. And that means sometimes, you have to push back, say no, or invent a better path.

Why It’s Worth It — But Also, Why It Needs to Be Worth It​

Yes, it creates more work.

Yes, you could have clocked out sooner.

Yes, nobody may even notice the feature you just added.

But one day, a user selects 100 items, clicks once, and the system just does the right thing.

They smile. Or they don’t even notice — because it just works.

And that’s the highest compliment your work can get.

But here's the thing:

Doing great work because you care is noble.
Doing it repeatedly without support, recognition, or reward? That's burnout waiting to happen.

This mindset has many names:

  • “Founder mode”
  • “Customer obsession”
  • “Craftsmanship”
  • “Taking ownership”

But whatever you call it, it’s value creation. You’re generating product value that wasn’t scoped, wasn't promised, and may not even be measured — but it matters.

That’s why alignment matters too.

When a company gives you equity, options, profit-sharing — it’s not just compensation. It’s a signal:

We see what you're doing, and we're betting you'll make the product better than we imagined.

Without that alignment, the risk is you build a great product that someone else gets rich off of — while you just quietly carry the weight of caring.

So yes, do the work that matters.
Yes, take pride in it.
But also — make sure you’re in a place where that pride pays dividends, not just dopamine.

Being good means your standards rise faster than your deadlines can accommodate.
Caring means you voluntarily take on work others don't even notice.
But doing both?
That’s how you build something worth using — and why you should be rewarded for it.