It’s easy to start ranting about an awful client. But remember, this problem is not uniquely ours. In fact, we have it easy compared to some others.

When an architect designs a house, the homeowner sees only what’s easily visible. She sees the obvious qualities of the home—the granite countertops, hardwood floors, and crown molding—not the subtle nature of a floor plan that the architect may have anguished over for months.

When a chef cooks a meal that’s off by a salt grain, a picky critic delights in sending it back. The chef’s work, completely nullified, is tossed away. I once saw a rather pretentious family’s entire set of orders sent back to the kitchen because their teenage son lost his appetite over a hairy bug in his meal. The work of an entire staff of laboring cooks was thrown out because a customer mistook a fibrous piece of ginger for a cockroach.

We’ve all been the client at some point. Clients rarely appreciate the delicate, intricate, advanced thought that goes into the products they consume. And that is the cruel irony of it all. When I hire a plumber to fix the low water pressure in my shower, I simply want it fixed. I don’t care if it’s because of the main line, the flow constrictor, or a clogged shower head. A cheap bill and a revitalizing shower will do just fine, thank you.

In just the same way, when we build software for the consumer or client, the people we work with likely can’t tell that we programmed the application with such elegance and cunningness.

What does this mean? No one we work for cares about our code, at least not immediately. It also means that, when they want to change our software, they haven’t the slightest clue whether that change in code is easy, hard, impossible, or annoying. They don’t know if their one would-be-nice-to-have request is really a would-be-awful-to-build one as well.

It’s frustrating, yes. But don’t pity yourself. You are not alone.