Customers Do Not Care About Your Fancy Tests! (Until They Do)

We often get into debates about technical practices. Some people get stuck on abstractions, unable to connect them to how they generate money for a business.

I’ve heard the same arguments countless times: “Customers don’t care about clean code!” “The business doesn’t care about your fancy tests!” “Forget TDD, you need to deliver!”

I get where this comes from. To someone outside the engineering bubble, those practices can sound like academic rituals, not business enablers.

But let’s flip the metaphor for a moment.

Imagine the panini shop around the corner. We’re hungry, we want food fast. The most pragmatic view is: quick! Give me any sandwich! Just solve my problem, hunger! Who cares about your process?

Now imagine the same shop, but the boss tells staff: don’t waste time washing your hands, don’t bother with gloves, skip all those checks, just deliver the sandwich.

As customers, would we shrug and say “yeah, fine, I don’t care how you get there”? Or would we look at the staff, the cleanliness, the care, and think: actually, the process matters because I have to put this in my mouth?

This is where the comparison hits home.

Software is not food, but it is something people rely on every day. The apps we use to bank, shop, manage our health, or simply talk to each other—these systems underpin real lives. And the way they are built shapes how safe, reliable, and sustainable they are.

No one expects engineers to spend hours explaining code coverage metrics or refactoring strategies to customers. That’s not the point.

But if customers start sensing that shortcuts are being taken, quality checks skipped, and technical hygiene ignored, trust evaporates fast.

Practices like clean code, automated tests, TDD, or continuous integration aren’t “nice-to-haves” for perfectionist developers. They’re the equivalent of washing hands, wearing gloves, and checking ingredients before serving food.

They aren’t the thing customers ask for—but they directly impact the quality of the thing customers care about.

So next time we hear “the business doesn’t care about your fancy process”, let’s remember: customers don’t care about the details, true. But they absolutely care about the consequences of us not caring.

The process behind the product is invisible until it isn’t. Customers don’t care about software quality… until they do. And when they do, it won’t be a complaint, it’ll be silence. They won’t tell us off, they’ll just leave.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.