"Closer to the people": Does the manager need to understand programming
/ photo by Sean Hagen CC
In 1cloud , we are constantly working to optimize the interaction of our specialists and try to learn from the experience of our colleagues. This gives its fruits in the form of posts on Habré.
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Last week we prepared two materials on the topic at once: gave 6 “harmful” advice to developers and a couple of valuable recommendations on the topic of communication to their colleagues in the workshop.
Today we decided to raise the question of the need for (at least) basic knowledge and programming skills of those who run a modern company (one way or another using IT solutions).
As technology increasingly penetrates our daily lives, more and more “traditional” companies are beginning to look like technical ones.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen wrote the famous article “Why Software Eats the World” (“Why Software is Eating the World”), where he noted that even the leading music companies are involved in software: Apple, Spotify and Pandora. His list also includes transport companies (Uber), companies engaged in the hotel business (AirBnB), and financial institutions (Coinbase) - they all provide their services online.
In this regard, it is important that company executives can understand and navigate the digital world. “Otherwise, the company risks being left behind. Competitors will simply take the lead, ” said Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of TransferWise.
A certain level of understanding of programming and technical sciences raises the authority of the entrepreneur. “From my own experience, I can say that software developers rarely take seriously those who don’t know how to code,” said Benoit Curdy of Vocalytics. - The CEO, who cannot program, is forced to hide behind the technical director. It is ineffective. ”
Understanding technical concepts, knowledge of slang and programming languages ​​is the basis of communication. If you come to France, you need to know French to communicate with people. If you are running a startup, then you need to understand at least the basic things about programming. This allows you to communicate in the same language with the engineers and members of the development team.
Many personalities, from Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg to physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, have publicly stated that basic programming skills are necessary for everyone in the modern world. These quotes and quotes from many other celebrities can be found at code.org .
Such a demand has led to startups offering programming lessons. General Assembly offers offline courses. In 2014, the Codeacademy online education website reached a threshold of 24 million users who completed over 100 million exercises. Codeacademy founder Zach Simms once said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that programming is not necessary, but it is important to know the theory of algorithms and to understand in what situations they can be applied.
It is also worth noting that higher educational institutions are very active in this issue. Universities in New York and Chicago introduce new educational programs to prepare students for life in the "technical world." Harvard University reported that computer science has already overtaken the economy in the list of the most popular courses.
The art of writing code is gradually becoming a trend. Even the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg (Michael Bloomberg), noted that he wanted to learn how to program.
Another point of view
However, not everyone adheres to this point of view. In response to a statement by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2012 that he will start learning programming, programmer Jeff Atwood, the author of the Code Horror blog, asks , “Can you explain to me why the mayor of the largest city in the US, if one morning woke up a first-class Java developer? ”
Programming skills are important, Atwood agrees, as do many others, but he notes: “I would not advise everyone to learn programming. We don't study plumbing or plumbing without exception. ”
Entrepreneurs are always under pressure - they need to think about the product, customers, partners, supplies, and so on. For this reason, Sindhu Joseph believes, it is impractical to study what others are doing better. “If I started a business today and did not know how to program, I would direct all my efforts to the development of leadership skills, as well as to the study of marketing,” Sindhu comments.
Katrin Buckenmaier, co-founder and CEO of TravelMenu in Russia, also says that entrepreneurs need to think about the efficient distribution of labor and money and how to create a strong team with all the necessary skills. In other words, the company's management should engage in competent staff recruitment, and this is a whole science that needs to be comprehended.
Thibould Favre, an engineer at AllmyApps in Paris, believes that programming skills will be useful only for the first few years of working on a project. “It will help you quickly turn an idea into a product, but then programming skills become less important. “You have to do sales, marketing, planning, and so on,” says Thibault. - The most difficult part is precisely in understanding when to stop “scribbling code”.
Myths and delusions
As noted above, the general trends in the popularization of programming are outlined quite clearly, but many still do not agree that managers of technical startups need to know programming. And most often the following arguments are made:
1. I can always hire someone to work with technical issues.
Marc Benioff, Marc Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer or Jeff Bezos now hardly write the code themselves, but they owe their success to their technical background.
For example, Mark Benioff worked as a young man in programming, he also worked at Oracle. Mark used his accumulated experience to establish Salesforce, a company whose income in 2015 exceeded $ 5 billion.
John Doerr also began his career in the technical field and only later joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers - one of the most successful venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.
2. I do not want to sit alone in front of the computer and program
This is probably the most "living" stereotype about programmers. In most organizations, things are completely different. Engineers work in teams, communicate, share experiences, because there are no universal solutions in programming - creativity is important here.
3. I am not good at math
Programming does not require knowledge of mathematics. Looking at the list of disciplines at Duke University, you will see that many computer sciences contain less math courses than economics.
Programming in the first place teaches new thinking, since it is not so easy to turn an abstract idea into a real product — it requires creativity and knowledge of the subtleties of the language used.
4. It's too late to learn programming.
It's never too late to start. You do not need much time to acquire a decent set of technical skills. Many young founders, such as Evan Spiegel of Snapchat, built billions of companies with programming experience of no more than two years. Therefore, feel free to choose a course for yourself and start learning about it (for starters, you can search for something in this thread on Reddit).
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to again give an example to France. If you go to this country without knowledge of French, in any case, you can understand the situation. Someone will communicate with you in English, you can guess the meaning of the words. Everything will be fine, but a substantial part of the nuances of the life of the local population and a layer of interesting events will not be available to you.
Absolutely the same situation with the development. You can create a startup and “survive” without programming skills, but at the same time miss the sea of ​​opportunities and interesting solutions that you could find in a dialogue with the development department.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/305908/
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