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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
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.
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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!
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...
Even without wanting to move to a non-tech area or become management, understanding the business side of things gives insight into how/why decisions get made. It can also allow you to make calls as to which features you will implement when faced with a limited budget or other item not related to the technology. I have found it allows me to make better decisions based on pragmatic reasons and fight the fights that are really important, rather than wasting time on something that is technically not overly important but to a business person is apparently critical.
Take care to not let the business-think take over your mind though, you may wake screaming from the cognitive dissonance that seems to be a requirement for senior business people to operate.
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?
Sorry, I forgot to sign in.
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.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
Halfway: Buzzword Bingo
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.
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!
Most businesses are doing it wrong.
Instead of moving smart people from being productive to management-type functions and get payed more, they should pay the more productive people more.
As Gabe Newell from Valve puts it: Management is a skill, not a career path.
New things are always on the horizon
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
"No one can tell you when the price will go up, or if the commodity will crash." - this is not business. This is futures speculation.
"No one can explain to you why (before launch) a product gonna sell like hot cakes." - this is not business. This is product speculation. Something that journalists do. Companies create products that there is market demand for. They know there's market demand because there's already competition out there. Most of the time they do not become market leaders.
Business is about networking. It's about making deals with people and creating relationships with the right people. Clients, suppliers, employees.
Good leadership absolutely can be taught. This is why having a mentor is absolutely necessary in the world of business. The mistake people make is focusing their learning on their weaknesses. You should focus your learning on your strengths and hire people that complement your weaknesses.
Jobs was great at contract negotiation, as he was a narcissistic sociopath that could deify or bully anyone he pleased at any time without remorse. He got his own way more often than not. He was ruthless & unforgiving in "maintaining perfection" with the products & ideas he took on. And he fucked up many times. The Next Cube. Pushing Pixar to be a hardware company. The Apple Lisa. Macintosh TV. The Apple III. The Powermac g4 cube.
Steve Jobs was ruthless & lucky, and like all deified CEOs, stood on the shoulders of giants. Where would Mr Jobs be without Steve Wozniak? Where would Jobs be if Apple didn't have the pulling power needed to employ the best & brightest? You would never have heard of him.
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.
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).
I think that a lot of that feeling comes from not actually understanding business - many techies don't, I know that I didn't when I was younger.
The business professional may be able to look at a situation and say, "You're building the wrong product, it won't help any of our customers or prospects so it won't sell." To which the techie may respond, "But look, its twice as fast as its competition!"
Both are right - it may be amazingly good software - but that doesn't mean that the company for which they work should pay the developer to keep writing it.
See also: bridge to nowhere, Alaska.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!