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At one point I entertained the quixotic and, retrospectively, stupid idea of requiring every employee at Fog Creek to be a programmer... The converse (and less
by ehsanul 17y ago
At one point I entertained the quixotic and, retrospectively, stupid idea of requiring every employee at Fog Creek to be a programmer...
The converse (and less stupid) idea is to require every employee at your software startup to do sales/marketing/customer service. There are a bunch of great examples of this, but what comes to mind is how the employees at Wufoo rotate the customer service position daily (mentioned here: http://mixergy.com/wufoo-kevin-hale/ http://mixergy.com/wufoo-kevin-hale/).
- illumen 17y agoExpect to lose staff if you do this suddenly. I've been at a place where this was implemented... and in a few months a bunch of people had left. Many developers at companies just want to do development... and not sales and support. As usual, changing a culture of a place should be done in consultation with everyone there.
- ehsanul 17y agoGood point. The other, probably better way to do it is to have that kind of culture from the beginning.
- skmurphy 17y agoIf you make it clear it's formal part of everyone's responsibility during the interview process you will likely get a self-selection for the development team that you are looking for.