{"id":614,"date":"2012-07-24T09:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-07-24T14:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/?p=614"},"modified":"2012-07-24T10:16:34","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T15:16:34","slug":"developers-or-marketers-nah-developers-are-marketers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/2012\/07\/24\/developers-or-marketers-nah-developers-are-marketers\/","title":{"rendered":"Developers OR marketers? Nah, developers ARE marketers."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/blip.tv\/play\/AZPiFQI.html?p=1\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"596\" height=\"334\"><\/iframe><object style=\"display: none;\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/a.blip.tv\/api.swf#AZPiFQI\" \/><\/object><\/p>\n<p>My fellow Monk <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/\">James<\/a> recently wrote a piece on <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/2012\/06\/22\/on-recent-ibm-sap-and-adobe-conferences-developers-developers-developers-marketers\/\">developers versus marketers<\/a>\u00a0as customers for IBM, SAP, and Adobe (with the last of them shifting toward marketing). I&#8217;ve been thinking about it lately, and I coincidentally came across a link while reading the latest Coding Horror <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codinghorror.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/but-you-did-not-persuade-me.html\">post<\/a>. It&#8217;s\u00a0about a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codinghorror.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/the-one-thing-every-software-engineer-should-know.html\">2008 interview<\/a> with the inestimable <strong>Steve Yegge<\/strong>, a former Amazonian now at Google. <strong>When he talks, you&#8217;d better listen.<\/strong> He&#8217;s the same guy who wrote about Amazon&#8217;s internal shift toward <a href=\"https:\/\/plus.google.com\/112678702228711889851\/posts\/eVeouesvaVX\">mandatory API usage<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s what Yegge said about developers and marketing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If there was one thing I could teach every engineer, it would be\u00a0<strong>how to market<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hold on, what was that again? Marketing?! Stop the presses! One of the best developers out there has said that <strong>the most important thing every one of them needs to learn is<\/strong> not the latest hotness like Javascript, old-school languages like Lisp, or how to document their code, but <strong>marketing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Marketing isn&#8217;t a dirty word. Jeff Atwood <a href=\"http:\/\/www.codinghorror.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/the-one-thing-every-software-engineer-should-know.html\">put it wonderfully<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>people\u00a0<strong>understand<\/strong>\u00a0what you&#8217;re doing<\/li>\n<li>people become\u00a0<strong>interested<\/strong>\u00a0in what you&#8217;re doing<\/li>\n<li>people get\u00a0<strong>excited<\/strong>\u00a0about what you&#8217;re doing<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Steve Yegge gave a talk on the same topic at OSCON a few years back: &#8220;How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in Two Easy Steps.&#8221; It&#8217;s at the top of this post; if you&#8217;re a developer, consider that video required viewing. If you&#8217;re not, it could give you a glimpse into how a great developer sees marketing.<\/p>\n<p>The best examples of this in action are generally in open-source projects and startups, where there simply aren&#8217;t enough people to dedicate one to every role when things start out. Non-technical founders may need to learn to code, at least enough to prototype something interesting enough to recruit a developer. Technical founders, on the other hand, may need to learn the vast number of other tasks necessary to run a business.<\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t mean all developers are marketers, or all marketers are developers. <strong>But both should be thinking and learning about the other side and the value it can provide \u2014 and in some cases, be willing and able to go it alone.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Disclosure: IBM, SAP, and Adobe are clients. Google and Amazon are not.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"acc_license\"><a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i.creativecommons.org\/l\/by-sa\/3.0\/88x31.png\" alt=\"by-sa\" \/><\/a><\/div><!--<rdf:RDF xmlns=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#\" xmlns:dc=\"http:\/\/purl.org\/dc\/elements\/1.1\/\" xmlns:rdf=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/1999\/02\/22-rdf-syntax-ns#\"><Work rdf:about=\"\"><license rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\" \/><\/Work><License rdf:about=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/\"><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Attribution\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Reproduction\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Distribution\" \/><permits rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#DerivativeWorks\" \/><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#ShareAlike\" \/><requires rdf:resource=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/ns#Notice\" \/><\/License><\/rdf:RDF>-->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My fellow Monk James recently wrote a piece on developers versus marketers\u00a0as customers for IBM, SAP, and Adobe (with the last of them shifting toward marketing). I&#8217;ve been thinking about it lately, and I coincidentally came across a link while reading the latest Coding Horror post. It&#8217;s\u00a0about a 2008 interview with the inestimable Steve Yegge,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adoption","category-marketing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23Tsn-9U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/dberkholz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}