Roads and railways don’t just get people from A to B - they reshape the land around them. Where they pass, growth follows. Suburbs grow, people start families, small businesses open. They aren’t neutral tools, they bring shape to the world.

If software is eating the world, then the builders of software are the ones shaping the new roads and railways. They’re not just building software.

In healthcare, education, defense, social care and other core industries, it shapes policy, perception and trust. They set precedents. They influence legislation. They affect what people believe it’s possible, and even more, what they fear. When a company does something shady, it's not just that company’s reputation at stake. It erodes public trust in the entire system.

This isn’t abstract. In the UK, the Post Office's Horizon software falsely flagged local branch workers for financial misconduct. Over 700 people were prosecuted based on faulty digital records. Some went to prison. This is not the only example.

Unlike concrete or steel, software should be reversible. But in these domains, that’s not often the case. Other industries can design around vendor lock-in. But in our industry, procurement cycles are long. Changing platforms means retraining thousands, re-integrating data, and rewriting processes.

The people using your software? They’re not the executives buying or comissioning it. They’re not opt-in users. They’re nurses, teachers, caseworkers - working often in understaffed departments with no alternative tools They didn’t choose your interface, but they have to live with it. There’s a quiet reality that thousands of people may live within the constraints you define, without ever knowing your name.

When you zoom in enough, everything looks like Jira tickets and quarterly planning. When you speak up, you’re sometimes treated like friction. You won’t get promoted for asking harder questions. You won’t earn more for caring.

I don’t pretend to have a solution. There are days I wrestle with this myself.

What I want to say is: if you have the honour of working in one of these industries, care anyway. Not for the company, but for your end user.

Not because someone will notice, but because someone will have to live inside what you build.

Thank you for your time.

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P.S: You can find me also at https://protocoltwo.com

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To people building software in healthcare…