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The most important "developers" in most businesses in non tech industries as in most businesses does not program at all - they use excel. They have to do scope

The most important "developers" in most businesses in non tech industries as in most businesses does not program at all - they use excel. They have to do scope, development, ux, testing all by themselves and rarely has anyone to ask for help except google. Oh and they have to do their normal job as well. In order to have a developer provide value there needs to be quite the system of support around that job function. From a value perspective developers are valuable, but only in the right environment.

z9znz 4y ago
> they use excel Indeed, many companies make great progress because of this. But inevitably they reach a point where it is unamanageable or unmaintainable. Then who do they depend on to keep their business operating (as it is now overly dependent upon Excel)? I'm glad you mentioned it though, as it is something I have direct experience with. The firm I worked for several years ago was full of very sharp people, such that they made great money on mortgage related debt trading before, during, and after 2008. They did it by applying their effort and knowledge and depending on complex spreadsheets their people had made. But it reached a point where Excel would regularly corrupt the file; and opening the spreadsheet would take 10 minutes on modern hardware. And many activities were ungodly slow. Who might you imagine took their Excel VBA and rebuilt it (still in Excel, and still with VBA) so it took an order of magnitude less disk space and launch time, and also a fraction of the file space? Yes! A software engineer. Also, as most of us SWEs do, I didn't know VBA before being given the project and producing a very successful new version. How much money did they make using my version in the following years? I assure you it was enormous compared to what they paid me to do it. A good developer is a force multiplier. Our salaries, if we actually do a reasonable job, should be large.

z9znz 4y ago

> they use excel Indeed, many companies make great progress because of this. But inevitably they reach a point where it is unamanageable or unmaintainable. Then who do they depend on to keep their business operating (as it is now overly dependent upon Excel)? I'm glad you mentioned it though, as it is something I have direct experience with. The firm I worked for several years ago was full of very sharp people, such that they made great money on mortgage related debt trading before, during, and after 2008. They did it by applying their effort and knowledge and depending on complex spreadsheets their people had made. But it reached a point where Excel would regularly corrupt the file; and opening the spreadsheet would take 10 minutes on modern hardware. And many activities were ungodly slow. Who might you imagine took their Excel VBA and rebuilt it (still in Excel, and still with VBA) so it took an order of magnitude less disk space and launch time, and also a fraction of the file space? Yes! A software engineer. Also, as most of us SWEs do, I didn't know VBA before being given the project and producing a very successful new version. How much money did they make using my version in the following years? I assure you it was enormous compared to what they paid me to do it. A good developer is a force multiplier. Our salaries, if we actually do a reasonable job, should be large.