Biased opinion: software companies should be run by software devs

[Quietude]

Originally Posted by Liar_Liar

OP probably thinks knowing how to write excel formulas is all it take to be CFO.

Without just heaping on the consensus rejection of the OP's idea, it's astonishingly common for workers at every level to assume they're the only useful part of the company and everything else is deadweight, especially all that management stuff above them. That's the core of the "functionalist" movements of the 1930s, the core of most union attitude and endemic in today's twisted world of software/online/virtual manufacturing, where the "build and sell out" model still reigns.

And validates an insightful comment from a man who was, amusingly, subject to his own observation:

“Expertise in one field does not carry over into other fields. But experts often think so. The narrower their field of knowledge, the more likely they are to think so.”

- Robert Heinlein

[ddm2k]

What's worse than a CEO with no management skills? An otherwise very intelligent, highly skilled professional, who thinks he knows better, with no management skills. Part of management is saying no.

No: you cannot allocate 80% of the budget to SWE salaries, and flatten the organization. (Like Netflix flat)

No: you cannot have unlimited PTO with no blackout dates, no minimum staffing, while telecommuting 100%

No: you cannot allow a team the freedom to run rampant without checks against their development at times (assuming all highly skilled engineers operate at a certain "level", an interface design may make sense to them, but may not make enough sense to sell millions of units to support their salaries)

[reneeh63]

Originally Posted by wallbuilder

Companies become bloated and inefficient when a large number of product managers, program managers, etc. get added to the mix.

I would go as far as saying that UX designers aren't that necesarry, because software developers do a perfectly good job of designing the optimal user experience for their code.

Not even gonna read any further. Even UX designers don't always get it right - that's why you need usability researchers to have real people try it out using realistic tasks. This gives an objective evaluation of how easily the product can be used.

If you don't know that, then the rest of your premise is also false.