| A very generic question, so I'll put out a very generic answer. "Business" is about making stuff people want. Business folks work with each other -- many times under low levels of trust and high levels of risk -- to make something people want. "Programmers" already know what they're doing: programming. Therefore programmers really don't care so much about what people want. Somebody is paying them, so they program. They work inside a tight domain and usually with a small number of people that they get to know over a long-ish period of time. These are two vastly different universes. Business folks are always using business skills to interact with coders: negotiation, price commitment, conflict facilitation, and so forth. They don't care what whiz-bang you are using to do the job. They just want the value. Programmers are always applying programming skills to non-programming domains. Why doesn't the business know exactly what it wants? Why do they keep hassling us with providing estimates? How can people who are so clueless about things actually be running the marketing department? Why do they keep pushing for unrealistic schedules? And so on. Very early on, organizations start stove-piping jobs. Bill is a CPA. He should only do accounting stuff. Joe is really good with people. We're just going to have him do pre-sales. Amit is a database guru. We'll have him do all the DBA work. We need to have some defined roles around here! Where's my job description? This seems to make sense, but over and over again, this logical separation of concerns comes back to bite. After a year or so of doing just the "DBA work", whatever that is. He starts viewing things not involving database administration as a waste of time. You keep that up over many years, and allow the company to grow? You've got a bunch of folks who all like the folks they interact with and see everyday, but are deeply suspicious and completely clueless about everybody else. Not a good thing. |