“Build for the Customer, Not for Yourself” - My First Career Lesson

It was a warm March afternoon of 1991. I was five months into my first job as a software engineer. I must admit I had a smooth start to my career. However, on that particular day, I was very nervous. I was going to demonstrate the first application that I developed to my boss. Though I did a couple of utilities for other departments, this was the first application that I…