This kind of thing is a shame: > You expect your staff to speak in plain language. > This policy has served you well in many facets of > operations

This kind of thing is a shame: > You expect your staff to speak in plain language. > This policy has served you well in many facets of > operations, but it hasn’t worked at all when it > comes to overseeing software development. I totally agree you should aim for a lay understanding of things outside your specialty. Programming is technical, but so are business, law, accounting, and medicine. I feel like explaining tech to non-tech people is something I'm really good at, and I see how hard it is for other programmers. I suspect that if our profession can learn to communicate better it will profit us all---but then on the other hand I don't see my own ability making me rich. Maybe I just haven't figured out how to make the most of it. And this statement makes me mad: > All of the computer code that keeps the website > running must be replaced. At one time, it was > very valuable and was keeping the company > running, but the new CTO thinks it’s garbage. A project manager said to me once that he'd never heard one programmer praise another's code. It's always "This is crap!" Another thing I think I'm good at is coming on to a new project and adopting the style, patterns, and architecture without wanting to reinvent everything. It takes patience to read and understand, and not start too quickly to write. I feel like that behavior sets me apart from even other good programmers, but I don't know how to take advantage of it.