flagged for misleading title. I don't want to be lied to before I even click the link. be honest, say, "Good programmers need marketing too." Do I really wan

flagged for misleading title. I don't want to be lied to before I even click the link. be honest, say, "Good programmers need marketing too." Do I really want to take advice from someone who is marketing their blog with a lie? This is why "good programmers" don't like marketing -- a lot of it is lies. What good programmers need is honest marketing. What real programmers need is to learn how they can remain honest, communicate effectively with their customers, and still sell the product. I've seen this so many times in so many organizations. The sales and marketing team write up a bunch of lies and tell the potential customers anything they need to hear to get the deal and then the programmers are put in a position to have to do impossible things. The sales people don't even know what they are selling. If a lead asks a sales guy if product x can do function y, they say "Yes." This answer is given without regard to whether or not product x actually can do function y. Where is the balance? The programmers lose on the sales side, because they think the customer wants the truth and sometimes the truth is, "I don't know." Or "No, product x doesn't do function y, but if you buy product x, we'll implement function y just for you." Unfortunately, that makes the customer think the product is unfinished or hasn't been well thought out. The reality is that there are myriad functions that product x doesn't do, but can do easily but no one else has asked for it or needed it, so product x engineers focus on other things. So that's what the programmers do, they focus on other things besides sales and marketing, they focus on making their product do whatever their customers ask them for, but every new potential customer wants the product to do some little other thing so it's an endless cycle. What programmers need is to know how to market effectively. How to sell honestly. How to close deals. They don't need to be lied to anymore than the customer does.