With API Knowledge Comes Great Power

Drawing on experience at the Department of Veterans Affairs and years of API consulting, the author argues that knowing where APIs are, who owns them, and how they work translates directly into organizational power and career advancement. By discovering, reverse engineering, documenting, and building relationships around APIs, professionals accumulate knowledge of the technical, business, and political systems that drive their organizations. This dynamic has existed since the mobile era and is intensifying with the rise of AI-powered applications.