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."

Comments

short answer

[OutOnARock]

yes

Re:short answer

[gander666]

Slightly longer answer:

The things that probably baffle you about the leadership where you are at, the decisions that seem to make no sense, and the troglodytes that seem to have power will make more sense to you after learning a bit about business.

As someone with a physics degree, who does marketing and product management, I self taught myself a lot of what is needed to function in these spheres. It isn't hard, but it will seem alien. It doesn't require more than a modicum of common sense (once you learn to not sneer at it) and the ability to do basic arithmetic. I occasionally break out a PDE to model a pricing structure, and am met with amazement (particularly when it turns out to accurately model the true system response). But I am a geek like that.

Re:short answer

[fair_n_hite_451]

Slightly longer answer:

yeeeessssss.

As a geek who went to business school ...

[perpenso]

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.

Re:As a geek who went to business school ...

[ranton]

what is it that corrupts them and causes the disastrous short term thinking epidemic in companies these days?

As the parent mentioned, they are immediately given incentives that reward short term thinking. If they don't grasp for short term solutions, they don't reach a VP position by the time they are 40. It is an endemic condition found throughout our entire economic system.

Re:As a geek who went to business school ...

[sydneyfong]

How do you explain the hordes of McKinsey/Accenture/pwc/BCG/Bain "consultants" who walk into a business and proclaim to the execs that they have all the answers?

Some people believe in magic(k). So you find overqualified (on paper) people to pretend to be magicians and sell them snake oil and pixie dust.

"MBAs can manage anything" mindset is a killer in technical job roles

I'd wager that in many non-technical, "commoditized" industries, this is actually true. If your job is to trade oranges, you're not going to set up a multimillion dollar R&D facility to make better oranges. Instead, you just try to source the cheapest oranges, and market it as if they were premium products and pocket the difference. Everyone knows what an orange looks like, and how to deal with them, so you just fire the expensive employees and hire a bunch of unskilled workers at minimum wage. Any on-the-job skill required would be picked up in a week by those workers -- there's nothing complicated about oranges.

That's how the vast majority of businesses are done. When the CEO of the oranges trading company jumps to a textile company making commodity (non-designer) clothes, it's pretty much the same thing. Sell off the factory, buy cheap stuff from China, put your brand on it and market it like crazy. Then they wonder why people look at them funny when they move to a tech company and their first act is to sell off the billion dollar R&D facility and fire all the employees working there. Just get a team in India to do that programming stuff, right?

That being said, while you can laugh at the ignorance of most of the MBAs, technically oriented people (eg. slashdotters) are often just as clueless when it comes to the business side. That's why it's really hard to find a right CEO or exec for a tech company -- they have to know both worlds really well.

Re:Tech Management?

[Lennie]

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.