Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: As a Programmer/Geek, Should I Learn Business?
An anonymous reader writes "During my career I've always been focused on learning new technologies and trending programming languages. I've made good money at it, but I'm not sure what the next step is. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how to find a good way to transition from programmer to somebody with more responsibility. Should I learn business? It it more important to focus on personal networking? Do I step into the quagmire of marketing? I'm not sure what goals I should set, because I don't know what goals are realistic. Running my own business seems like something I'd like to do, but I'm unsure how to get from here to there. I'd appreciate advice from any fellow geeks who are making (or have made) that change."
yes
write a script (not even worth real code) to replace MBAs once and for all?
Are you looking to climb the ladder on the tech side or completely move to something non-tech like marketing, sales, HR, etc.?
I've had good results in getting opportunities to manage and lead tech teams because I have spent a good bit of time pursuing business goals. The goals themselves have not been successful but being someone who would take on the responsibility of making a business work gives you a good start in conversations about moving up the ladder on the tech side.
.. If you enjoy losing your soul.
Brush up on the art of backstabbing, lying through your teeth, fake smiles, and keeping up appearances and you'll be successful in business.
Oh, you just want to deal in local business? Don't want to get tangled up in the politics of a large national or multinational and want to stay in your local community? Well then the above goes double. (Triple if you're involved in local politics)
What is it that you really want to be? Do you want to be a businessman? (or woman, but then, this is Slashdot after all) If so, by all means study business. Do you want to be a project manager, or do some other type of management? If so, study that. Until you know what you want to do with the rest of your life, nobody can tell you what to study, and once you do, you won't need to ask.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
Re-posting non-anonymously: Are you looking to climb the ladder on the tech side or completely move to something non-tech like marketing, sales, HR, etc.? I've had good results in getting opportunities to manage and lead tech teams because I have spent a good bit of time pursuing business goals. The goals themselves have not been successful but being someone who would take on the responsibility of making a business work gives you a good start in conversations about moving up the ladder on the tech side.
If nothing else, it is an important part of a well rounded education. It will help you personally and professionally.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
It's useful to know enough about these things that you can discuss the basics with the people you work with. That said, you do not need a degree in marketing to speak marketer, and you do not need an MBA to speak boss.
This is part of the modern fundamentals of the liberal arts: trivium, quadrivium, then everyone should also know how to physically use a computer (desktop/laptop and tablet variants), know how to make a document/make a spreadsheet/use the internet, know some HTML, know how to run a business, know how to do your taxes (without killing yourself), know when to contact an attorney (as important as 911 these days), and know how to change a tire. These are BASIC skills... and at this point you are smarter than a fifth grader!
Do you enjoy development? Then get more involved in process. Get fluent in stuff like agile methodologies. Agile is slowly growing outside the development context.
Sure, get a business minor and/or an MBA. Especially if you like the business side of things. I have a minor in business, and got a major in CS. I've been very happy with my education and run a small software business. Or you can teach yourself these things by just reading books and listening to lectures, but that is harder to "sell" on a resume unless you can back it up with job experience...
Learn business. Understand it. Realize that you are swimming with sharks and learn to understand their behavior, or you will be eaten.
YES you FOOL!! The longer you second guess yourself the longer you won't be successful at it. Doubt and fear lead to nowhere and eventually nothing.
The first thing you need to do - is work out what you want to do.
Then you can start getting your skills together - and plans.
However in saying that, networking is always important, regardless if you want to start a business, or get into the higher rungs of management - no body is going to want your skills and services if they don't know about them.
If you want to start your own business, remember there is things like start up cash (you'll be running at a lose for a while - even a year or two if you don't have clients to start with), you'll need to be able to market your business to the right people
Are you going SaaS?
Are you creating software to sell in volume, or are you going to do custom work for every client?
Have chosen a vertical industry to go into?
Keep doing it. It seems like you are implying that you have moved up as high as you can as a programmer and therefore, you must move onto "business". I think this is a false assumption. Sometimes management can be a good move for some people, but for others it's not. You will have to play politics and do things you don't currently consider work. You might hate it. You also will not necessarily make more money doing it. I know of cases where a manager did not make as much as programmers that report to him/her. I'm not saying "business" is bad, but just go into it with both eyes open if that's your choice.
I'm sitting in a free entrepreneurship lecture in Toronto, Ontario offered by MaRS Discovery District.
Available here: http://marsdd.com
I agree with others here: do it, you'll need it.
The course's lectures are free and archived, so there's no cost involved, just the time needed to watch and learn.
The model we have works fairly well for us. When we develop a product is either our product, or a product that somebody asked us to develop. If we find it worth it, we'll develop it charging money, and we'll keep a percentage of the company/product as well. We are learning business as we go and from a disparity of sources. But the bottom line is that good products have a marketing of their own as word of mouth is the best seller. I have a bias against college MBAs, you could just read the books and use your business as the field to apply.
You don't need an MBA. if you're a programmer, just do the exact opposite of whatever you think the right solution is to a situation. That's how business people think!
For example, if you have a desire to pay people a decent wage, don't. Greedy business bastards don't. Second, if you think golden parachutes are wrong, be sure to get one.
Business can be learned, but like all things it is better to learn that in your pre-teen years and continues for a life time. Marketing is something you are born with... you can learn it but the innate talent (?) has to come first. Yes, learn business!!!
At UCSD, I majored in Computer Engineering and minored in Business Economics. This combines lower division economics, and upper division accounting. It does help me think of money and time's value to managers, and understand the jargon of the business world.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
But yes you should get the bulk (or entirety) of what makes an MBA under your belt; just don't drink the kool-aid. I really don't like people who only have an MBA. But having a real skill plus an MBA is pretty powerful stuff. Quite simply I have seen a zillion people build awesome stuff (me included) and just not market it very well or at all. And then I have seen people with complete dog poo for a product market the product into being set for life. Guess which skillset the later had and the former didn't have? This is not just marketing but being able to communicate with those moneyed types such as investors and banks.
At the same time financial training is not a magic bullet. I have seen highly educated CFOs get completely hosed by well concocted financial set-ups.
As I said, don't drink the kool-aid. The worst symptom of a useless MBA is that they are able to manipulate reality through very convincing reports and excellent spread sheets. A recent example of this behavior would be the MS Windows phone OS. MS made every effort to make it look like it was gaining real traction; I even remember one article where they were breathlessly predicting that it would have over 50% of the smart phone market by about 2014. Even when sales were abysmal they started quoting numbers like units shipped or quoting the first day sales as a comparison to other phones.
With good business training you will learn to bend the market into accepting your awesome product. With the same training you might even fool the market into buying your worthless product. But with only technical training you should be prepared to be the only user of your awesome product.
Start-ups provide exposure to many aspects of business (with more focus on results and less politics and backstabbing). Find your passion and follow it.
If you don't understand Business, then you are a limited programmer. Programming taught me business and understanding business processes is how a programmer markets themselves to a business. If you aren't smart enough to understand business, you have no business in in IT.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This might answer your question...
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_jennings_watson_jeopardy_and_me_the_obsolete_know_it_all.html
If you work in a commercial software company you will notice that business is the business you are in (if your company is destined to stay in business for any length of time).
As you get more experience you will see bad decisions being made that cost money, and (hopefully) good decisions being made that make money and vastly improve efficiency and give a competetive advantage (Note : you will have to work for several companies to be able to evaluate this as comparing the good and bad needs perspective).
To evolve from programmer to businessman you need to fall out of love with your favourite "today's magic bullet" technologies to be able to settle on a money making approach that will beat the competition. Easy.
Except that you then need to stay ahead of the curve without heading down what hindsight will label a technological dead end. Good luck, you're asking the right questions so I hope you make it.
Business will help you no matter what you get in to. It's worthwhile, but if you don't care about it, you won't invest yourself in it and really appreciate it.
Sales/marketing takes more natural ability than book teaching in my experience. Here you REALLY have to have a desire for it, or you get burned out quickly and hate your job.
Starting your own business requires some level of knowledge of both, as well as finance/economics, or complementing your team with those knowledgeable/trustworthy where you lack.
So you have figured out what you are currently doing isn't your passion, now figure out what IS your passion. The only reason I was happy with the career I've had is because the day to day job I enjoyed, in all aspects of my career, including current. Explore other venues, talk to friends, see what excites you, then pursue what permits you to be involved in that.
(I've managed multiple businesses, owned a tiny company [short-lived], then worked for others in creative fields, now manage property investments and wear multiple hats, none of which required even my high school diploma, heh.)
The other trick is to find something fulfilling that capitalizes on skills you have in other ways. Also, ask friends what they see you possibly doing other than what you are doing. I encouraged a friend to become a childrens' librarian over a decade ago, she's been enjoying that work ever since. Another friend is in the process of transitioning his career to reselling/auctioning, totally up his alley.
PS: Networking is required/a given in all options, to various degrees, so it's not a separate consideration.
The crucial skill you must learn as a manager, is to convince developers that managers have more responsibility than developers, when in fact they have far less.
Since yours apparently succeeded with you, you should be able to refer to your managers for specifically how they managed to convince you of the standard falsehood.
The manager deals only with the summary level, that is, about a hundredth to a thousandth of the conceptual detail you need to create a functional system, and need not ever actually do such a thing, or know the preconditions to even being able to do such a thing. Should anything go wrong, it will be you and your detailed, 1000-shifting-elements essential mental model that will bear the blame, not his 10-item, no-analysis-needed-or-done "business" model of the same system.
Really, I think you should consider this as much a moral decision as a financial one. The world needs engineers making real products by mentally-intensive means, not managers chatting idly about real products by effort-free means.
If there's one piece of advice I can suggest as forewarning after 20+ years, the greatest threat you can be presented with for your career and general well-being, is Responsibility Without Necessary Authority. Moving "up the corporate ladder" won't help you entirely avoid this dilemma, so whatever "level" you are at, understand this game.
No MBA, yet! A MBA is NOT a ticket into management.
What the asker should try to do - if he's employed - is talk to his boss about his goal of getting into management.
Ask for supervidory/team lead type of duties. Take the initiaive and actually lead.
Then and only then, if a MBA is required to keep your job or not having one is holding your back, THEN get one - and if your employer pays for it, all the better.p/.The order is: get into managment and then get MBA if needed - and ONLY if it's needed to keep your job.
Look, if you want to get paid to program, you're going to need to know something about the business or organization you work in. In a ton of cases, that means knowing some accounting, organizational structure, and the actual goals of the business. For anyone who can actually program, that should be too hard.
After decades of software development I went to business school. Some take aways.
(1) Business school is probably not what you think. The bankers, ceos, etc making the headline news for various nefarious reasons are not practicing what they were taught in business school. They are very much like the software engineer who is taught how to write well designed maintainable and reliable code and then writes complete crap once they enter industry. You can teach people how to do the right thing but there is no guarantee they will follow through, this is true in both engineering and business. In business school you will be taught to plan for the long term, to treat your business partners well, to treat you employees well, to treat your customers well, to be socially responsible, to be ethical, etc. In other words things leading to long term company success.
(2) An MBA program is probably not what you think. An MBA program is not about accounting and financials, that is just once topic covered. An MBA program is an overview of the complete organization and its lifecycle: Entrepreneurship, strategy, product development, marketing, accounting/finance, operations, information technology, organizational behavior (people), economics, etc. You will learn to look at things from the perspective of each of these specialties. The point of doing so is not to make you an expert in any of them. You will not become an expert, however you will learn enough to understand their perspectives and to therefore be able to effectively communicate and perhaps be more persuasive in your arguments with them. You don't have to stop being an engineer. You just become an engineer with a broader perspective and more likely to persuade ceos, accountants and people in marketing.
(3) Your classmates will probably not be what you expect. Most people in an MBA program are not coming from an accounting/finance background. They actually represent a minority. About 1/3 of my class consisted of people coming from engineering and scientific backgrounds. You will have an incredibly wide set of skills and viewpoints among your classmates.
(4) You get what you reward. There is a common theme that occurs in many classes, strategy, accounting, product development, information technology, operations, etc. Many failures can be traced back to having the wrong incentives. Basically people give you the behavior you incentivize, that you reward. Not what you ask for, not even what everyone agree is good or the right thing to do. There are many lessons to be learned in business school but it is amazing how often and in how many unrelated areas this one single problem arises.
I remember when I was a young engineer. I got promoted through the ranks quickly, and at some point faced the same quagmire as you. What I ended up doing was to take a program of marketing management. Two months, Friday all day and Sat mornings for a month and a half to get a taste of the discipline (I was exposed to economy and accounting at the University, 12 weeks each, and lots of reading on economy, administration, etc). After that brief and non compromising stint, I realized that there were more nuances to marketing than what could be anticipated, and that the whole "Business" field was VERY interesting to me. Therefore, I went and did a full time MBA.
If you are gonna learn on your own (which I do not recommend), try to read the classics, Kotler on marketing management, rice & trout for positioning, etc. No Wikipedia or "Business for dummies" for you.
If you are going to take (a) short course(s) on the subject, go to reputable schools (I did the Short stint at IESA, not high in the world rankings, but best in my country, and did my MBA at IE in Madrid), while there are no hard and fast guarantees, going to reputable institutions will raise the possibility of being exposed to great teachers. Try to go for classroom courses, is harder, but you will build your "networking thingie" much better.
There is no guarantee that doing an MBA will improve your situation. But it would be hell to sign up for an MBA and discovering that you HATE "Business", and ALSO it would also be a grave mistake to decide "What you want to do" without at least a glance of what this "Business" thing is all about.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
I work in areas of quantitive finance and have found the CFA charter to be very worthwhile. It briefly covers some of the subject matter of an MBA but is more oriented toward analysis which may be a good fit to a geek mind-set.
It's not an easy program - first, because it's largely self-study and second, because each of the three successive levels of the test has about a 50% pass rate. However, the self-study aspect also means it's far less expensive than most academic business degrees. Also, the rigorousness of the test makes it a highly-valued credential.
You can find out more at the site of the CFA Institute: https://www.cfainstitute.org/pages/index.aspx .
I think it's best to go "all in" - or not go in at all. If you want to get an MBA or other business education, make a commitment to it. However, most technical managers I know have no real business education and they do just fine in The Big Corporation. So a business education is helpful but not necessary.
Likewise, if you want to start your own business, go all in. I've operated a part-time home software business for the last 15 years which has been modestly successful. However, since I do 100% of everything myself, it ultimately can't grow beyond a certain level without more commitment of time and energy than I can give to it. I don't regret the way it's worked out, but it has never allowed me to quit my day job - as I had originally hoped.
An "all in" approach to starting a business would be to quit your day job, then sink or swim. A business education might be helpful, but if you're good at learning new skills, you don't need to get a degree for that. There's plenty you can learn through self study - and also from the school of hard knocks. In my case, I had to learn lots of little skills of both a technical and business nature, including various software skills, web site design/administration, software publishing, marketing, and basic business skills in accounting, taxes, and legal. For example, whenever I do a contract, I write it myself and then pay a lawyer to check it over and spruce it up.
I honestly don't think there's any degree that covers all that. OTOH, if you're more serious about your business than I am, you'd probably pay people to do most of that stuff for you. In fact, the highly successful entrepreneurs of the world recognize that they can't do 100% of everything and are adept at finding people to do it for them. And they go all in.
The answer depends on where you want your career to go. But, regardless I would say that all programmers should invest the time to understand the business they work for so that they can best serve the interests of their employer. This is different from getting an MBA or studying business in the general sense. Programmers need to understand the problems that their company deals with, otherwise they're not going to see the best solutions.
As an example I currently work for a company that manufactures packaged food products. As the lead developer it is part of my job to understand how the business operates; from how our inventory is managed, to how our customers pay us, to how our shipping personnel process incoming and outgoing items. Understanding this and talking to people in all these areas allows me to spot inefficiencies and address problems, sometimes before others realize they are a big deal. That means I can help put technology to work in a way that makes our business more efficient, which leads to better profits and happy bosses and better compensation for myself and those I work with.
Unless all you ever want to be is a low-rung developer, or if you don't have any desire to stay with the company you're with long-term; then it always makes sense to get to know your business, and it will make you a more valuable employee.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
and how it is applied. I am in business and got my programming certs in Java and VB. It has helped me immensely, becuase too many business people don't understand the complexities of tech and see it as a panacea for everything.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Yes learn business - the same way you learned to walk and learned to ride a bicycle. By doing it firsthand. Not by paying a school.
I know several (10) successful people who make anywhere from $10k a week to $100k a month if not more. Most of them don't even have college degrees.
1) "How to Get Rich," by Felix Dennis 2) "Screw it, Let's do it," by Richard Branson
Absolutely do NOT start your own business at this point. The first few years of starting a business typically means working 60 hours doing alot of business management and adminsistration. Unless you have a passion for either a) tax forms or b) working until 2AM because the buck stops with you, starting and running a business probably isn't your optimal choice. That's especially true if you'd have any employees. There's a lot of crap involved in being an employer. Without employees, you still have to run the company, so while you're doing the quarterly taxes, who is serving the customers?
Check into project management. There are certifications available. After a few years of managing projects, you'll have some clue if you'd want to manage a company and how to manage a company.
Absolutely yes and at least become familiar with other departments at your company. It will really make you appreciate the roles that sales, marketing, technical support, product management, professional services, accounting, legal, etc. play.
As for myself I transitioned from pure development into professional services (customer-facing post-sales installation, training, integrations, trouble-shooting). As much as I liked development I'm finding I'm really good at this role even though I consider myself an introvert. This group works really close with sales and technical support and I've learned a lot about those departments.
Benefits include: travel to exotic places, exposure to many companies (good networking opportunity), short-term projects with rapid closure, more time and brain energy to pursue personal projects, and very importantly: I'm no longer part of a cost-center i.e. when billable I'm making the company money! It offers some protection against off-shoring.
Drawbacks include: travel, no social life, and I miss hard-core development.
I realize that this may not be the path you intend to become an entrepreneur but relaying my experience for the benefit of others.
BTW, the comment above is from someone who has run businesses my entire life, helped several other people start businesses, and whose clients and mostly small businesses. I just sold one of my companies, which is the second time I've sold a business. Now I have one left (Clonebox). So it's not that I'm saying starting and running a business is a bad thing - it's just not right for YOU right NOW.
When I was about eight years old I put an ad in the newspaper selling replacement window screens. I'd go to your home or business (on my bicycle) and make custom fit window screens. I have a passion for starting new businesses, and don't mind working until 2AM doing that. I also enjoy running them, being the "buck stops here" guy, even though that means the buck stops with me at 2AM, I'm the one who has to get up and drive 90 miles to the datacenter or whatever. From what you've said, you really don't know if you have any interest in business. In that case, starting one would be like getting married without ever going on a date.
Learning how business works should be a high school basic class. If you are involved with programming beyond the "here's a spec, write code to match it" level, being able to communicate with users in their own terms will make your life SO much easier!
As others have pointed out, it will help you with the "big picture".
If you're writing software to be used by businesses, understanding what is important to them affects what you develop. It is easy for someone to write a detailed specification of what someone THINKS they want. It is easy to write software to match that spec. But, how do you deal with the aftermath of finding out what was really being asked? "Why are we generating a daily report on information that is only available on a weekly basis?" "Why are we generating a weekly report, when the data changes by the hour?" Without a background in business, those questions would not occur to you.
Software people are often isolated from the people who use software by a common language, to borrow an old line. Learning about business, even without going to get a degree, will help you understand when words don't mean what you think they mean.
You should absolutely learn this stuff, but the question is do you do it for free or get a degree and a network. I would recommend going 80-100K in debt; however, if you can get an employer to pay for it, I would recommend this: http://www.babson.edu/admission/graduate/programs/part-time-mba/Pages/fast-track-program.aspx it's a nice part time program with plenty of resources to help you start your own business.
If you can get into a top tier business school, then paying full price makes sense, otherwise, go part time and don't pay more than 40K.
And I'll tell you this - if you don't know instinctually and through experience how to apply business knowledge, you're a lot like that clueless 18 year-old kid who thinks they'll be able to read minds after studying psychology.
When people tell me that they are going to LEARN business I look at them with funny expression.
Business can't be learn.
Sure, some skills you can pick up here and there, but the main part of BUSINESS is still largely based on instinct.
No one can tell you when the price will go up, or if the commodity will crash.
No one can explain to you why (before launch) a product gonna sell like hot cakes.
Sure, there are a lot of after-the-effect pundits, doing their 20/20 hindsight analysis, but those are essentially useless.
What is really needed in Business, after all, is the keen sense of knowing what will happen in the future, something that Steve Jobs possessed and many others were sorely lacking.
That is why, without Mr. Jobs, Apple came out with that ridiculous "Apple Newton", and with Steve on the helm, they had their iPhone and iPad.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
When I was a lonely undergrad and not studying for my degree in what they now call MIS because I was too busy writing code the department chair of all people gave me a great piece of advice that I have never forgotten and it has paid off on at least one occasion. He told me the being a coder is all well and good but the people who really get the jobs are those who can code AND are competent in some other area as well.
One job I got in the late 90's with a library software vendor was specifically because I knew the true evil that lurks in the way libraries use computers thanks to a masters degree in library science I obtained. I knew the terminology and actually knew something about cataloging and automated library systems having done it in grad school using their products. The fact that I knew Java at a time when not many people did all helped as well.
The job have now is, ironically, the one I've always wanted but didn't get after getting my BS because I didn't specialize at first. However, I have a lot of experience in the Java world, something they don't have, and I had to take a big pay cut (it's the government) in order to do this work without a lot of experience in the corporate world.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
learn how business works. The level of learning depends on your interest. Do you really want to start your own business? Or you just don't want to do technical stuffs anymore. Just want to share: I don't want to own a business because I grew up poor and now I am very afraid of losing money and back to being broke. So I fall in the latter category. After more than 10 years doing the grunt works, I understand enough the big picture of my industry to make reasonable decisions and to lead a small group of people to complete projects. I'm just waiting for the right opportunity right now to move up to management.
When I started a business, I hired someone to handle the business side of things while I handled the technical. Not that I didn't understand business, but I understood that my talent was tech. I could do a lot more of what brought in the cash if I hired someone else to do all the non-technical stuff. She was officially my boss, but I owned the business. The business also looked a lot more professional by having more than one person and a division of talents and responsibilities.
It worked really great for a while. She was great with building the business, handling clients, accounting, payroll, etc. Unfortunately, she was embezzling. So I had to fire my boss.
Especially if your company's paying, you should do it. If nothing else, it might give you perspective. I have a pretty broad background, but don't have an MBA. I'm not sure if it would help me or not but I'm never against learning something new.
That said, what is your reason for wanting to be in management, or "something more responsible?" I've been repeatedly asked to make this transition, given that I'm getting older, and so far I've been able to avoid it. Not that I mind responsibility -- I have technical authority over a very complex product at work. The reason why I don't want to go there is that I don't want to work with the equivalent of preschoolers and their people problems all day long. I would much rather be solving problems. To top it all off, if you're in a big organization, lower-to-middle management is always the first to get at least one level knocked out of the hierarchy at the first sign of trouble.
Also, consider the fact that management is not a technical job. You will never do anything remotely technical again -- which is one of the reasons I'm avoiding it. Your job will be to delegate tasks to your staff, something I've never been comfortable with, and you have to hope and pray they get it right. You'll spend your entire day in meetings, crafting emails and fighting your way through an organization of people. It is problem solving, but a very different kind. and not everyone is good at it.
In short, know this before you leap out of your technical job. I was offered and accepted a management job a few years ago, found out I sucked at it, and had to quit because the company I worked for refused to demote me back to somewhere I could be useful.
The actual "learning" part that goes in a classroom is nothing, no problem. The hard part is the personal interaction part. And if you can't do that naturally, no program is going to teach it to you, and you won't succeed in business.
Learn to suppress your gag reflex.
Some business basics should probably be a high school graduation requirement. One way or another, people are going to have to deal with or become a business. Understanding the basics of loans, billing, contracts, employee laws, etc. would be good for both sides.
Sad stories: When I worked for a major local engineering/manufacturing firm, I ran across engineers that had no idea what the Dow Jones Industrial Average was (including one guy who had several hundred K$ in stock). When they enrolled me in a management training class, one of the 'get to know you' exercises was to name one of your heros. I put down Warren Buffett. The instructor (an MBA grad) thought he was a country/folk singer.
Have gnu, will travel.
I did something similar. That worked pretty well except it made me an EMPLOYER. It takes a lot of extra work to be an employer in the US, if you want to do it legally. The fed, state, county, and city all want a piece of you.
I just sold my business that had two employees. From now on, I won't hire anyone until I'm ready to hire at least three.
Having studied finance (eg business) I would say definitely not... Now if you'd also like to sign this contract I sent you assigning me all rights and incomes from your intellectual property that would be swell. It'll benefit both us , pinkie promise, I swear...
> Should I learn business? It it more important to focus on personal networking?
No, and it doesn't matter. Statistically, if you're good at programming and love it, you'll probably be miserable focusing on business, and even MORE miserable trying to force yourself to personally network. If you're miserable, you'll never succeed. Network enough to find someone who won't fuck you over too badly who genuinely ENJOYS the business end, and stick with programming. Come up with something cool, and let THEM worry about finding a way to make it profitable, so you can buy a cool loft somewhere, take a few decent vacations to places you enjoy, and have enough money in the bank after the IPO to let you spend the rest of your life writing quirky open-source software for your own personal gratification.
Learn enough about business to sense when you're getting screwed over, but don't try to BE the one who actually RUNS the business. Been there, done it, swore to at least 3 major deities I'll never do it again. And fortunately, I was young enough to be mostly judgment-proof. If you're a programmer, having to spend most of your time being a bill-collector, salesperson, or worse will demoralize more than anything you've ever done in your life. If you study ANY area of business, study the basics of IP law so you can turn your hobbies into a personal patent portfolio, then go shopping for someone to finance your future fun.
if you are asking if you should on /. = my guess is that you probably aren't that interested
but this always make me laugh (because it is true)
It ain't what they call you. It's what you answer to. http://mylyceum.us/
Starting your own business is a lot harder than working as an employee/programmer/engineer etc. There's a lot of BS you have to deal with, and at 10:30pm if the order has to get out for the morning, guess who's running the machinery? And if you are just breaking even, that 10:30pm isn't even going to end up in your own pocket. I started a small businesss with a friend, worked 30+ hrs a week on it, had to work 40hrs a week as "high income earning consultant" to pay my bills, and for 7 years I was flat broke. From new BMW to 25 year old Mercedes (mind you i did learn that an old Mercedes is 10x the car of a new vehicle, but that's another story). :)
Once we gave up on the business, after paying off the most impatient of the creditors, then working down the more patient ones, I can finally enjoy things like going out for dinner and buying "stuff". Since I'm used to working crazy hours, I can put in 10 or more overtime hours and that's just gravy.
My advice; get attached to someone who has experience starting a business, and has deep pockets, and help them to get from $10 million in net worth to $50 million (or whatever their goal is). You'll get a taste of business, possibly be "in control" of your work and you'll have a lot less pain than just going out on your own.
Thank you! You have just inadvertently highlighted exactly what's wrong with the entire MBA approach and why we're seeing "financial crisis" and a complete mismanagement of the world at large.
The main thing you teach them is that you can understand everything at a high level and take shortcuts assuming that with your perspective you'll know better than the specialists you manage how to integrate their fields into the company. So don't be surprised when they start cutting corners and going after short term benefits for themselves while throwing away the rest of the instruction.
An MBA program is an overview of the complete organization and its lifecycle: Entrepreneurship, strategy, product development, marketing, accounting/finance, operations, information technology, organizational behavior (people), economics, etc. You will learn to look at things from the perspective of each of these specialties. The point of doing so is not to make you an expert in any of them. You will not become an expert, however you will learn enough to understand their perspectives and to therefore be able to effectively communicate and perhaps be more persuasive in your arguments with them.
In other words you learn just enough to be dangerous in an area outside your expertise AND you gain just enough knowledge to be able to argue the point from a position of power that forces your naive vision on the company.
Try replacing the above areas of expertise with: brain surgeon, rocket scientist, or hell if you don't want to be intellectually elitist race car driver and you see just how ridiculous this is and why MBAs are treated with such contempt by technies. (Well that and they've lived through their dreams and work being ruined by inane decisions).
You get what you reward. There is a common theme that occurs in many classes, strategy, accounting, product development, information technology, operations, etc. Many failures can be traced back to having the wrong incentives.
You mean the incentive to overrule technical staff with only a rudimentary understanding of what you're managing. I wonder why companies fall flat on their faces.
An effective leader hires competent people who know their field well and can lead well enough to delegate to, gives them incentives for succeeding, and co-ordinates them into a cohesive unit. THAT is NOT what is taught at business school.
You were NOT paying attention. Geek card revoked. Enjoy your higher pay and benefits though, because this society in decline likes to reward such thinking.
We've followed similar career arcs. When I figured out, like you, that this wasn't what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, I started studying money. It's essentially a new language, with variable, types, modules, classes etc. Once you understand the basic premises, it's no more difficult to make it than to write a significant application.
The cool thing about working towards a good chunk of cash is that it gives you the ability to take a step back and look around. Maybe software development IS what you want to do for the rest of your life, but you don't want to be tied to the company you're at, or to a paycheck at all. Maybe you want to do like This guy.
I'm not much for the self help genre, but try these two books. Even if they don't solve your problems, at least you'll be happier where you are.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Absolutely/NO questions asked, it helps. You work with the folks who use it daily in various business capacities for the process of production & profit: It helps to know their lingo, what dept. they work in even if @ a rudimentary level only (say cost-accounting if you're working with accounting departments) - when in rome, do (KNOW) as the romans do. Makes for a better team when everyone's on the same page too, & faster work (or rather, a lot less tension @ deadline since things got done as needed, on schedule) as well as less impatience &/or frustration on anyone's part too.
* B.S. MIS concentration in business & 90/120 cr. hrs. into a Bachelor's in CS (way past 60cr hr. AS) - & yet I worked almost continuously 1st as a Programmer-Analyst, & lastly, a Software Engineer as titles 1994-2009 almost continuously in them, professionally, in that interim period (before that as a techie & network admin in college (which coders do anyhow on big projects, & have to be)+ DBA work - Glad I did too & had that great broad set of opportunities in this field since I found, that helps TONS too -> e.g. - When you can 'build your Harley' bolts upward, tune and secure it too plus write your own parts for it? You're Kung-Fu set - makes life a lot simpler, having little doubts on a job...).
I read an E-Week article a few years back, around 2009-2010 iirc, entitled "The Perfect Programmer" what employers want... guess what they wanted? Business AND programming skills.
(LOL - Guess I know what THAT demand, makes me?)
Yeaaa... well - hey:I can't claim to be perfect, but after 15++ yrs. in where knowing business HELPS in coding?? Experienced enough professionally, to talk about it, & be pretty spot-on in general on it as to why...
(From a lot of real world hands-on in the trenches professional experience (never failed a project either - best part - then again, MIS is rarely "rocket-science" either, but it has its share of math & logic work to it, despite those of you that *may* not agree, especially since no 2 businesses DO business, totally & EXACTLY alike - none))
APK
P.S.=> I like the CS a LOT better, by far, vs. business stuff though - I got the Mgt. degree in 88-89 finalized, & yet I went CS in the end, because it empowers those who do the other side, whom I've spoken of above & whatever you do, DO use your users inputs @ least on interface design for usabilities' sake (it's going to be theirs after all) - SQL alone in their world is a valuable job tool, of all languages I personally ever used as a pro in 1 capacity or another (a dozen by now). Most business types use spreadsheets. Yea, they're ok, I started on them in business software like most (Lotus 123 later Excel), but once I discovered databases? The spreadsheet's a very limited toy (but I do find pivot tables useful).
I did mostly that work, once you got used to it 1-3 yrs. in & had a playbook + overall client-server architecture even distributed entails, was fun @ times even - Access, VB, Delphi, & C/C++ mostly on Win16-32-64 in that timeframe.
Anyhow/anyways:
I.E.-> At that point, you can "build a house" pretty much, & know what you're doing top-to-bottom/back-to-front, but... still, don't be an elitist douche thinking "I am computer god, users are dumb" (Yes, I've SEEN & heard it professionally from other coders, & their shit sucked - ESPECIALLY for useability, because as a jr. programmer once, the senior who was 1 of 2 that said & felt that way later made ME have to run one of his programs daily, validating its outputs (wtf? Get a temp!) Why? Heh - he wasn't sure of them, & it was TOO many damn steps he could've reduced to 1, for example + yes, WAS INACCURATE, dropping records even (huge no-no in the business world bigtime))
So, users can be your best friend - & keep you working too (& they even know things you don't in THEIR niche in life that you might find beneficial knowing too)...
Think about it! apk
Even if you don't "do" business, it's what the people who run your life speak. You need to be able to describe what you do, or what you want to do, in terms that they understand, and that's business speak. You don't have to become a maven of RoI, or IRR, or all that stuff, but you do need to be able to articulate why what you do is worth paying for.
Unless, of course, you are independently wealthy, or have a wealthy patron, or you don't mind living in a tent and eating gleaned veggies from harvested fields.
But to take the latter, Leonardo da Vinci was successful, not just because he was a bright dude, but because he could speak to his patron in terms that the patron understood. And, because he could have an entire shop full of other bright guys and he could serve as the intermediary between "patron speak" and "inventor/artist speak".
I don't think you should be asking that question. You need to understand what brought you to development, and why you don't want to continue in it. From that you can figure out where you want to go. If you really wanted to go into business you would have phrased that question completely different. As for mechanics, I'd say networking is always helpful. It cannot hurt at the very least, and getting exposed to many different people is good. I'd start by asking people where you currently work what they are doing. Many people are happy to explain what they are doing if you show an interest in it. Pay attention and look with the lens of whether you'd want to be doing what they're doing. For starting a business, it really depends. Lots of cities have organizations that help connect new founders to mentors. Do Startup Weekend or some such. Even if you don't want to stay in tech it wouldn't hurt to know how that works. The dynamics of starting a company is really similar whether that company is tech or something non tech. I would not go for an MBA or any real class until you have a clue whether you really want to do it or not. And now for the bad news, your development experience will devalue quickly over time. Lets say you're lucky and start a company and that company lasts for 2 years. So you need a job relatively quickly so you fallback on your old skills. Right now that wouldn't hurt too much. However, lets back up to 2007 or 2002, you would like be SOL. Your old skills are old, and your new skills are way too new. So I'd make sure you have a decent safety net before transitioning.
Studying business is short sighted. At the end you'll find it's mostly a waste of time because you could have learned it all on the job. Blah blah, yield management, blah blah cash flow, blah blah EBITDA.
If you feel strongly about studying business, what you'll find next is the obstacle you can't get around is law. As much as you might want to understand the business dynamics, you'll run into having to deal with contracts, agreements, or copyrights and patents. That's a much harder obstacle to overcome, even if you have internal counsel.
Having said that, look at your options and figure out the path. If you go into management you'll figure out the b-side and have no need for a silly MBA. You'll still be stuck dealing with legal though. With regards to marketing: you either have that skill or you don't. You already know the answer to that question. The best at marketing use analytics and statistics; and the overwhelming majority don't. If you have the opportunity to learn from the best, do it, or don't bother.
----- obSig
Overall I'd recommend anyone who criticizes MBAs to try and reserve judgment until you have a chance to go sit in on a class at a good school. I believe that you will be surprised at what it's like, who you meet, and you might even change your opinion.
That is exactly what happened with me. A friend was a TA and a guest speaker for his class was the person running the Mohave Spaceport. My friend thought I might be interested and invited me to sit in. I think the class was entrepreneurship and they were discussing the various companies at Mojave and the civilian space industry in general. Sitting in got me thinking about enrolling in the program.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm a huge fan of the Mixergy podcasts (free on iTunes) to expose you to a huge array of startups by (mostly) technical founders. It gives you a good idea of what the world of business is about, and lets you test out which stories attract you, and therefore what you might want to do.
I have an MBA from a brand-name school. Nowadays I tell people not to go. (Unless you can get into Harvard, Stanford, or maybe MIT.)
I think the question is do you like business? I think you would be surprised at the content of a business degree/qualification. It is mostly not what people think it is. Take a look at some business content you may be covering and see if you enjoy or understand it.
The main thing you teach them is that you can understand everything at a high level and take shortcuts assuming that with your perspective you'll know better than the specialists you manage how to integrate their fields into the company.
You fail at reading comprehension. The GP specifically states that an MBA is not an expert, merely someone who from their existing area of expertise can more effectively communicate with people from other expertise's. Pay particular attention to this line: "You don't have to stop being an engineer. You just become an engineer with a broader perspective and more likely to persuade ceos, accountants and people in marketing." In other words the MBA for a geek is about geeks more effectively communicating the geek perspective to non-geeks.
You mean the incentive to overrule technical staff with only a rudimentary understanding of what you're managing.
Again, you fail at reading comprehension. The GP specifically states that many MBA students have scientific and engineering backgrounds. The geek with an MBA does understand what they are managing.
Clue: This thread was started by a geek asking if he should study business.
Every software developer should have their own company, even if it's just a company of one. Nothing teaches you how to be a better employee than being a boss, even of just yourself. You should have your own company in parallel with your day job until you can support yourself fully.
Virtually everything important I've learned about how to deliver working code came first from working on an outside project, which I then perfected by applying those techniques as part of a project at work. Everything important I've learned about what people are really like -- the good, bad, and the ugly -- was formed in the same way: in my outside "company" first, then finished within the context of my employer.
The big takeaway about business I learned is that a good business is a stool with three legs: one leg is sales, the other is operations/development, and the third is administrative/executive. Every one of those legs are equally important, the company is only as strong as the weakest leg, and if any one leg is failing badly, it is only a matter of time before the company will fail.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
... which is not being a programm or a geek, but possessing the skill to assertain any situation with 90%.
People who are taught 'business skills', are often taught braindamaged nonsense, that involves mass exploitation, and profit before social responsibility. The only 'use' that such people serve, is shareholder enrichment, and re-distribution of wealth to the rich - almost identical in ultimate practices to socialism, except the policies don't benefit the majority, they benefit the wealthy 1%.
I have worked for enough corporations to see the impact of the Harvard Business School mentality on decision making. Companies are no longer free to plan for the long term as a result of the need to redistribute ever more wealth to the shareholders. Consequently, the long term future of the company suffers, as do the terms and conditions of its employees. This is why it is better to work for a privately held company, than a PLC.
If you run a business by rational logic, then you won't have any problems. You don't need the mediocre, pseudo-science that comes our of business schools. It is all predicated on a particular economic world view, which is neither correct, nor ethical. Spare yourself the mind molestation.
I'm a geek who has done everything from racking and stacking multi-million dollar hardware to software development in sql down to parallel micro-code (binomial decomposition of 17 bit Ints with 8 bit co-procs). I've run my own successful consulting biz for several decades as well as other biz interest. I'm sad to say that even with biz understanding many corp decisions still won't make sense. It would require an understanding of the CEO's compensation package and game theory. A post for a different time.
Biz is just another optimization problem, much like increasing computer performance, only you are increasing income (revenue - expenses).
Biz always looks for ways to increase revenues and decrease cost.
Here are some of the rules for starting out and some things I've learned along the way:
Have either a year in the bank or a customer for the 1st year. (I had both)
To calc your rate take your yearly income, including benefits and expenses and divide by 1000 for your rate.
If this is higher then the going rate you will probably have trouble.
Most consultants over commit and under-perform, I took the opposite approach and it has worked for me.
Critical thinking and problem solving will be your most valuable skills, it translate to any new tech.
I once found a bug in a Crystal Report never having used Crystal.
Learn to do a project plan, it will help you move up the consulting ladder.
Treat everyone you work with as a potential reference.
Don't be annoyed when client staff makes silly mistakes, if they didn't you wouldn't have a gig.
Never say no when a client ask you to do something, even if you've never done it before,
that's what nights and weekends are for (to learn the new stuff)
Learn to negotiate you will be doing that on almost every contract.
There is a dance when negotiating with pimps (placement companies).
They will always ask how much you want, hoping it will be much less then the contract will support.
I always quote my highest rate as the most I got. After the giant sucking sounds stops on the other end of the phone,
I ask what's the most the contract will support.
Crude but reasonably effective.
Finally, live below your means, preferably way below your means.
There may be times when you will be on the bench (not billing) for longer then you would like.
Hope this helps
If you answered anything but 'money', you are wrong. You need to know the basic of making money and the processes that help a company know if they are making a profit or not. You need to be able to do a cost analysis of a project so if it's something you really think is a good thing to do, you can prove it from a 'making money' perspective, or at least 'not losing as much'. The cool thing is, many of these skills are transferable to your personal life in how you handle money also. Accounts payable, receivable, book keeping, and budgeting are all skills one needs in the daily life to manage finances. For instance, an understanding of ROI can help one decide if they should spend the extra money on the higher grade of carpeting.
You don't need to be an expert, some basic account, marketing, and ethics knowledge will suffice. It used to be that developers would spend time out in the field learning these things. I've sat with accountants, bookkeepers, and other office staff for hours at a time learning their trade to help design software for them, and in doing so picked up a lot of skills. But opportunities like that don't happen as much anymore; with the advent of more formal SDLC procedures the ability of developers to mingle with their users has limited that path to a few higher level jobs, like project leaders and architects.
It's not important whether you learn by taking formal classes or buying books and studying or just being observant at work. But you do need to know it. Or be prepared to be nothing more than a code monkey the rest of your career.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
If you look at a number of products/platforms coming to market, the process of abstraction continues. Where we once wrote assembly, we now drag and drop processes. This is being pushed further and further out to the lines of business and the days of hordes of programmers are numbered. Much like "web developer" positions were a dime a dozen at one point, they were abstracted from the underlying tech with WYSIWYG editors and site templates. Cloud management software can spin up an environment in minutes that used to take a handful of good engineers a week or two to construct. We need to be in the business game, your background in development will just make you a more effective manager of the tools...
If you want a degree, consider an MA in Economics instead of an MBA. Pick a solid school with plenty of flexibility in course selection. Take some classes that MBA students take—general Mgmt, Finance, Production Mgmt, etc.—and otherwise concentrate on behavioral and quantitative stuff (business psychology, forecasting, econometrics). You'll probably need to take some undergraduate prerequisite courses such as Micro, Macro, Money & Banking... but that's a good thing. What you'll end up with is a deeper understanding of how and why things work in the business world (and world in general) than MBAs at the same school get. You won't end up learning as many heuristics and observations concerning how to achieve business objectives. Those can be easily learned by reading articles (Harvard Business Review, etc.) on your own. What else might you miss? MBAs are generally in a mutual admiration society and may undervalue your education's relevance to the organization due to their lack of knowledge about it. If you're looking for money, it may not be your best bet, as you'll be promoted based on proven expertise rather than the assumed value of your credentials. If you're looking for a greater understanding, it probably is your best bet.
Yes, I'm swimming upstream here, but somebody needs to.
He addresses exactly this and plenty more. ....).
Well worth considering advice from, given that he's one of the co-founders of Y Combinator and very adept at getting techies over the hump into effective business (eg DropBox, Xobni,
captcha: interest (!!)
that's what Im looking for....
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Writing software (GNU) != Selling software (Microsoft)
Both require mutually exclusive skills.
Casteism
"During my career I've always been focused on learning new business models and management techniques. I've made good money at it, but I'm not sure what the next step is. I don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I'm not sure how to find a good way to transition from a manager to somebody with direct technical responsibility. Should I learn computers and technology? I[s] it more important to focus on programming? Do I step into the quagmire of network management? I'm not sure what goals I should set, because I don't know what goals are realistic. Becoming some kind of computer guy seems like something I'd like to do, but I'm unsure how to get from here to there. I'd appreciate advice from any fellow geeks who are making (or have made) that change."
Seriously, what you wrote sounds an awful lot like this. So many unknowns that any advice beyond purely superficial will be meaningless. But I'd opine: The *only* reason you should think about changing tracks is if you really have a specific idea about what you want to be doing, and really understand why you don't want to be doing programming any more. The language you're using shows you really don't have a clue about this: A small business owner (or large, for that matter,) and what they think and do is as different from an entry level management track as being a coder is from being a sysadmin.
What you choose to actually focus on is far more important than the field you think about pursuing. Otherwise you're pretty much doomed to go from being a miserable IT person to a miserable management person. (And I speak as someone who went from being a miserable management person into a somewhat happy IT geek. And happier still when I get to focus on the IT parts and less on the management aspects. YMMV.)
I got here from having a B.S. in Business Administration, parleying that into an executive assistant role, and then morphing my omnipresent IT geekery into a transitional position where I did both and finally into more pure IT work. It is *much* easier to start the transition in the right corporate environment than decide one day "I'm going to run my own business! See ya!"
So here's the question: Do you read Forbes for fun? Studied accounting just for the hell of it? Have an opinion about the Affordable Care Act and what it will do to a company's bottom line (whether you agree with it or not)? Get excited enough about appending the title "Owner" to your name that you're willing to happily do 110 hour workweeks? Tried to become an ebay seller as a sideline? No? Then why do you want to "do business" if it's not enough of a passion for you to be a hobby?
But I hope you find what you're looking for! Good luck!
My major right now is account with the emphasis on the information systems. I plan to get my CPA certification so if the computer aspect doesn't work out, I have something to fall back on.
Learning about business is probably a good idea for anyone who works for a living, and possibly others.
I decided to this recently and went back and forth with the idea of going for an MBA, but realized that the return on my investment of money and time to get it would not be worth it, so I decided to learn on my own.
The first book that I'm reading for that purpose, and I'm glad that it is, is "The Personal MBA: Master The Art of Business" by Josh Kaufman. This has been excellent so far, giving a concise introduction from scratch to what seems to me like a complete A to Z of business topics, and providing pointers to where to learn more. The writing is clear, and I have actually been enjoying reading it.
After reading that, you can branch out into more specialized books on topics about which you would like to learn more. The author of the book above has read thousands of books on business and other related topics and points you to the ones that he believes are worth your time.
Good luck!