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Comment by mattmiller | Hacker News Reader

I disagree with part of #3. I really like being included in some of the business decisions, or at least being aware of why they were made. I don't want to spend 8 hours a day in customer meetings, but I do like having quick meetings with BD people on why I am doing what I am doing. A lot of times it gives reasons to tasks that seem stupid. (ie we are implementing this bad feature b/c it will give us some sort of negotiating advantage)

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Being aware of business reasons behind decisions is very important. I can think of two main reasons. 1. Poor translation of customer intent/business goals can lead to some terrible software because the real purpose of it is obfuscated. 2. Ability to comprehend which urgent deadlines are actually important and which are exaggerated.

The thing is, a truly great technical manager will sit in most of those meetings for you, and give you a digest.

You still want to interact with the customer whenever possible, but not so much so that you can't get anything done!

3. The ability to come up with an even better solution for a business problem.

In my experience, a lot of business people don't really know what is possible so their solutions aren't always that good.

Example: "I need to know if I own more than 3% of a company. Give me a report that tells me what percent I own of each company. " "How about a big flashing light or warning if you own more than 3% (or set it at 2% so you know when you are getting close) so that you don't need to spend time each day looking at the report."

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