Coding might not be the be-all end-all competence, but technical "maturity" is essential for communication with programmers. And the appropriate designation of

Coding might not be the be-all end-all competence, but technical "maturity" is essential for communication with programmers. And the appropriate designation of developers, as such, is very important. I consult with businesses for software development, and it's crap like this that wastes 10-20 minutes of my time on every conference call. There is a whole layer-cake of bureaucracy around titles and how they're tossed around, and I have to spend that time figuring out which of these analysts/developers/leads/specialists/architects can actually code or admin. It sucks to be in mid deliberation, stream-of-consciousness reporting about what you have done, giving a sermon without shell-completion .. when you get this faint suspicion that the audience doesn't know what you're talking about. When you tell me you have your three developers on the line, I am gonna talk to them like developers. It might sound patronizing, but I am very close to just starting each call with "so, which one of you guys can code?".