Remember when you wanted your code to be a work of art?
I do. I remember my early years as a developer perfectly. I spent my nights reading about Clean Architecture, incredibly complex design patterns, and how to apply SOLID to even the smallest React component. In my head, if the code wasn't academically perfect, I felt like I was failing as a professional. I was obsessed with that elegant abstraction that, in my mind, would allow the software to scale infinitely without friction. But reality—the kind that doesn't show up in architecture books—ended up giving me a much-needed reality check.
My experience with overengineering
A few years ago, I was working at a startup that needed to launch an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in record time. What did the Roberto of back then do? Instead of focusing on what the user needed to see on the screen, I locked myself away for three weeks to design an ultra-generic state management system and a service layer that looked like it came from NASA. I was proud. The code was beautiful, the interfaces were flawless, and everything was decoupled to the extreme.
The result? We were late. When we finally presented the feature, the market had changed, user feedback was totally different from what we expected, and we had to delete 80% of that perfect code I'd spent so much time writing. That's when it hurt. I realized I had wasted the company's time and money solving technical problems that didn't even exist, while neglecting the real problem the business was trying to solve. It was a brutal turning point in my career.
Why I care more about the business now
Look, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I write spaghetti code now or that I don't care about quality. It's just that my definition of quality has changed. Before, quality meant following every pattern in Uncle Bob's book. Today, quality is delivering a robust solution that helps the user today, not six months from now. Code is a means to an end, not the end itself.
I've learned that code has a maintenance cost. Every line we write is another responsibility. If I create a complex abstraction for something that might never change, I'm adding unnecessary cognitive load for my teammates (and my future self). The business needs agility. It needs to test hypotheses fast. If my architecture is so rigid or complex that it takes weeks to move a button, then my architecture is bad, no matter how clean it looks on a diagram.
What I've learned along the way
Now I apply a very simple mental rule: YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It). If I don't have a compelling reason to abstract something today, I don't do it. I'd rather repeat code three times than create a premature abstraction that boxes us in. I've learned to love simplicity, even if it means the code doesn't look as "smart" at first glance.
Another important lesson has been understanding technical debt as a financial tool. Sometimes, it makes sense to take out a technical debt "loan" to hit a tech conference deadline or close an investment round. The key isn't having zero debt, but knowing you have it and having a plan to pay it back once the business is validated. It's not laziness, it's strategy.
I often find myself in technical discussions where someone proposes an incredibly complex solution for an edge case that happens 0.1% of the time. My response is usually: How does this affect the value we deliver to the customer? If the answer is little or nothing, I prefer the simple solution, even if it's not the most elegant from a pure engineering standpoint.
Final thoughts
If you're like me and you love the technical side, it's easy to fall into the trap of building cathedrals when the client just needs a shelter from the rain. My advice, after many mistakes, is to talk more with product people, understand why the user uses your tool, and what their actual pain points are. At the end of the day, no one cares if you use Hexagonal Architecture or if your folder structure is perfect if the app doesn't work or doesn't provide value. The best code is the one that helps the business thrive, the one that can be easily changed, and above all, the one that reaches production on time.