Once upon a time, you learned to walk.

No, really — think about it.
You didn’t analyze walking and do a scrum.
You didn’t architect a walking roadmap with bar graphs and pie charts.
You didn't bootstrap a sprint backlog and b-line to your mother.
You just... stood up. Wobbled about. Fell down. Got cheered on with "Toto, toto! Toto, toto!"
Your mom dropped the sufuria she was stirring. Your dad abandoned his very serious newspaper.
The entire family committee turned into your biggest fans and cheering squad waving you on.

And what you gained wasn’t just balance — you gained confidence.

Look, I’m not saying developers are babies — relax the body. What I’m talking about is the thinking we all had back when we were tiny humans with oversized heads and zero chill. See, when you learned to walk, it wasn’t your ability to balance that made you unstoppable. No, it was something way better: pure, unfiltered confidence. The wild belief that even if you fell flat on your face, you’d just get up, drool a little, and keep it moving. That’s the same mindset we need now — not endless overthinking, not a fear of falling, just the sheer toddler-level audacity to stand up, wobble, and keep marching forward like the baby boss you always knew you were.

Fast forward: you're a developer now.
Except now, every time you try to stand up and build something, someone in a suit or skirt or dress — armed with "non-technical but extremely strategic thinking" energy — slides in sideways like an overambitious midfielder who thinks the ball is a LinkedIn endorsement. Or worse, they salsa-dance into your project plan like they just finished a night class called “Disruptive Innovation for Beginners.” Honestly, the only thing more active at night than these people are cats doing 3AM parkour across your roof while you’re just trying to get five hours of sleep before another "re-alignment meeting on discord, why is it the Americans do not work at night? Thier night not ours, don't they have electricity like us?"

Back to the main theme, suddenly:

• Your product is pivoted three times before it even breathes.

• Your clean, elegant code is hidden behind a layer of "engagement synergy experiences."

• You're attending "alignment meetings" instead of solving real problems.

• You're the toddler again — but now no one is shouting "Toto-toto!" They're asking if you’ve filled out your timesheet and other non-development things.

Silicon Savannah, We Have a Developer Problem

The tech industry is dangerously close to forgetting the real builders — the ones who actually know how to walk, fall, faceplant, and somehow still invent a new app while lying there. These are the true warriors who don’t sleep, survive on coffee and stubbornness, and have even invented new greetings like “GM” — because apparently typing out “Good Morning” was slowing down innovation. GM, GM forever. Sleep? Never heard of her.

Instead of another “foundation,” “lab,” or “initiative,” we propose something wild, crazy, and long overdue:

👉 A Developer Collective.

Think of it like the NBA but for devs:

• Fund a problem you like and solve it.

• First dibs on community opensource projects.

• Freedom to build solutions, not buzzwords.

• Focus on income generation, because pizza and Red Bull don’t pay rent and can lead to malnutrition.

The Developer Collective stays focused on real-world impact, solving real-world problems, with real-world tech.

Why a Collective, Not a Cult?

Because when developers are collectively rewarded and protected,

• They build faster.

• They build better.

• They build for people, not just for OKRs and fancy decks.

Sure, I might’ve climbed the ranks and now sit somewhere between mid-level and top-level thuti but deep down, I’ll always be a builder at heart. And honestly? It breaks my spirit a little every time I hear another horror story: developers unpaid, ghosted, burned out like a cheap candle at a blackout party — and it's not just Web3, Web2 is right there wilding out too. Worst part? These so-called “partners” show up with big dreams and zero sales skills, convince you to build their tech baby, then either fail gloriously or sprint away with the code like it's a Black Friday deal. We need a chama — not for money-raising this time — but a Developer Hustle Chama™️, where we teach each other how to play the business game, lose less money, and actually keep what’s ours before someone tries to pay us in "exposure and non-launched tokens" again.

Developers gotta eat too, dammit. We can’t survive on vibes, coffee, and "equity promises" alone. You can’t tell someone to build the future and then hand them a thank-you email and half a samosa. Pay the coders — we like food, we like rent, and we like pretending we’ll save our paychecks before spending it all on gadgets we absolutely don’t need or need.

And maybe — just maybe — we’ll finally stop losing brilliant minds to "founder fatigue," "silent quitting," and the classic "I'm moving to a cabin in the woods to raise goats and rethink my life choices." Maybe, just maybe, we can reduce the number of tragic stories that start with "I’m a developer... and I’m broke," and end with tragedy. "

Technology and work are changing — and so should the builders. Because if we keep living like this, pretty soon developers will be coding from under a bridge, trading bug fixes for Wi-Fi passwords and/or leftover pizza. It’s time to upgrade the lives of developers, secure their payments and we can do all this with the technologies we have at hand.

Part Two: The How to

https://paragraph.com/@fabiancreative-operations.group/why-developers-need-a-collective-v2