Don't get me wrong, customers are of paramount importance to every business; And in the startup / small business world, the programer is often directly buildin

Don't get me wrong, customers are of paramount importance to every business; And in the startup / small business world, the programer is often directly building things for them, but that is not the role of a programer, and that is what I chose to focus on in this specific blog post. The roles you describe are more often associated with Product and Program management; They are important, and in a startup, even where I work at Cloudkick, the roles all bleed together, but they are fundamentally different. I'll close the comment with a quote from Office Space: I'm a people person. I deal with the customers so the engineers don't have to. Don't you get that? What the hell is wrong with you people!