Davide la Locomotive

Speaking up won’t always change the outcome.
But staying quiet when you know better? That changes you.
This is what I’ve learned about staying true—even when it doesn’t work.

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Some developers and product owners act like rockstars.
Not the kind who release masterpieces.
The kind who trash hotel rooms and throw TVs out the window.

I’ve worked as a QA and a Scrum Master. I’ve disagreed with people who wanted to break every rule of common sense.

At one company, they announced—on my first day—that they were pausing Scrum.
“Too much work,” they said. “No time for process.”

And I thought:

If only there were a way to plan and organise all this work in a way that helped us do it really well…

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I don’t want to argue with people.
Arguments don’t usually help.
But silence doesn’t help either.
If you don’t speak up, you end up living with the consequences.
And those consequences tend to multiply.

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I’ve spoken up a lot.
And no, it hasn’t always worked.

Sometimes there was a good reason.
Mostly there wasn’t.

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One time, we were rewriting a tool.
Some developers didn’t want to write tests—because writing tests takes time.
So does fixing broken code, of course.
Their “plan”?
Write all the code first. Write the tests later.

(You already know how that ends.)

I asked the manager if he really believed they’d circle back and write the tests.

He shrugged.

“It is what it is.”

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The tool was broken.
The project was cancelled.
And nobody wanted to take on a big refactor ever again.

I cared about that project. I wanted it to succeed.
But the decisions were so obviously bad, the failure so easily avoidable, that it was maddening.

Sometimes I wanted to shout:

“I’m on your side. Whose side are you on?”

I lost.
And really—we all did.

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But I don’t regret speaking up. Or trying to change things.
Maybe I could have explained it better.
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered.

But I tried. I did what I believed was right.
And I’m proud of that.

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Some people said I was asking “awkward questions.”
But it was only awkward because they didn’t have answers.

The awkwardness was theirs—not mine.

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I’ve always said I’d rather be respected than liked.
I treat people with respect—even when they don’t return it.
I’d prefer to be friends.
But not at the cost of my values.

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Over time, I learned how to explain things better.
Simpler.
Clearer.
No lectures. Just… questions.

What happens if we do it this way?
What happens if we don’t?

That lands. That sticks.

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At one company, I wasn’t even the Scrum Master.
Didn’t matter.
We still did Scrum properly.
Because we chose to.

We had a quiet mantra:

“We will be the change we want to see.”

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I don’t win every time.
I still think about the ones I couldn’t change.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

The regrets I carry are the times I stayed quiet.
Not the times I spoke up.
Not the times I lost.

Because I stayed true to myself.

And that—I don’t regret.

Je ne regrette rien.

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