4 ms·
Programmers working directly with customer is a bad idea. The skills required to program and to be client-facing are very distinct.
by erehweb 13y ago
Programmers working directly with customer is a bad idea. The skills required to program and to be client-facing are very distinct.
- mathattack 13y agoThey are, but it's easier for a programmer to develop business domain experience, than an end user to learn programming. Adding a business analyst between them works if it's a great BA, but frequently it cuts the accuracy of the communication. I can't think of too many times when I got burned putting programmers in front of customers. They don't always facilitate the meetings or ask the open ended questions, but it's great when they're present. Same concept as getting factory workers to observe end users of their cars. Valuable, even if the product managers and marketers own the interaction.
- steven777400 13y agoIncidentally, when I worked for a college we spent some time investigating Healthcare IT possibilities. Speaking to hospital hiring managers, the general consensus was that they'd like to take someone with a healthcare certification (RN, etc) and train them to be a programmer, database administrator, or IT support person instead of hiring a skilled technologist and training them in healthcare. I've noticed this in practice as well; one of my friends is a pharmacist who moved into an IT project management role at his facility. They would have never considered a non-healthcare professional for that role, is what I understand.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoI have long asserted software development is like literacy - it's something everyone will do and will bring enormous benefits to future humankind This approach of Teaching the thing that will take less time is intereting
- taproot 13y agoI have to agree with this sentiment all throughout my studies of comp sci i felt the amount of study required was very small to that of other science or really any degrees. After being a developer for almost a decade in various roles ive found the thing that i enjoy most is the learning new domain knowledge at each business. Sure ive picked up a lot of new tech knowledge along the way but the thing that takes the most time is always business knowledge, needs, usability, and industry domain knowledge. Further to that many universities have started adding tech study to the courses. I guess they got one too many requests for managers who knew sql spreadsheets?
- mathattack 13y agoMy impression (could be because I went to a non-engineering school?) was that computer science had the most work of any major. Certainly much more than anything out of the business school, and most non-science. Perhaps Physics could have had more work, but I don't think biology or chemistry did. Things could be different at other schools though.
- dsuth 13y agoIt's not a question of whether it's easier for programmers to do BD stuff, or BMAs to learn technical details; it's a question of whether you want to waste your highly trained and expensive programmer's time dealing with customers. Sure you need somebody technical in front of customers, but the whole point of org structures is to delegate roles to increase efficiency. This methodology strikes me as ridiculous - who is going to volunteer for QA work? What if your 'QA guy' gets bored and decides to become lead programmer for an area, but can't really handle it? What if a bunch of programmers get together and find a really interesting technical problem, and get lost in the jungle for 6 months whilst contributing nothing to the project? I've never heard of PMs or managers as 'empowering' their teams to do work - in the engineering world they're simply considered to act as shields against the crap that flies around at the next level up (contractual and legal shenannigans - do you really want programmers getting into that?), and helpers to get rid of admin problems.
- MartinCron 13y agoSpeak for yourself, some of us thrive on customer interaction.
- StavrosK 13y agoIsn't it most of us? Most of the people I know would be delighted to spend time with customers and learn that/how their product is being used.