3 ms·
Are those MBA's clueless? Programmers are costs, and expensive ones at that. We start off underwater on the value proposition. Saying "I'm a programmer" is sayi
by maaku 15y ago
Are those MBA's clueless? Programmers are costs, and expensive ones at that. We start off underwater on the value proposition. Saying "I'm a programmer" is saying "I'm a large, fixed cost." The question for the businessman is always: what value do you add, and does it exceed your costs?
Yes, there's value for an in-house engineering team, but with widely varying skill distributions and unevenly matched compensation. Managers know this, and Patrick's point is that "I'm a programmer" is starting off on the wrong foot as it just re-affirms that you are a large, fixed cost, saying nothing about your specific contributions.
- anthonyb 15y agoThe value of programmers tends not be linear with cost though. Paying an extra 25-50% for decent ones gets you at least a 2x improvement, possibly more if they can rewrite large chunks of your corporate code to improve it.
- maaku 15y agoThat's precisely my point. The question in the businessman's head is "are you one of the decent ones? are we getting our money's worth?"
- anthonyb 15y agoYes, and it should be, but the answer, unfortunately, is that they typically have no idea who is a good programmer and who isn't, so they only end up hiring cheap programmers. In other words - yes, they are clueless.