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Comment by hodgesmr | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't agree with this more. Unfortunately, for every "I am a person" developer out there, there are 2-3 "all I care about is code" developer. It's depressing.

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I'm not sure why it's depressing that someone would enjoy coding and not business + coding. Some people tend towards specialism, some generalism. It's probably good that we have both sorts of people.

Me, I'm a specialist at heart - I have no interest at all in business. All I want in the world is for someone to come to me with an interesting problem to solve, and to help them solve it. Fortunately, I have that, and I get plenty of enjoyable interaction from helping less technically able (but more customer-focused) people to produce what they want to produce.

Classifying specialists as not-people is condescending and pathetic, every bit as much as it would be for someone like me to dismiss generalists as morons because of their lack of technical depth.

And don't forget about people who don't like to specialize, yet wouldn't like to be anywhere near business administration. The idea of being only a programmer seems to me as depressing as running a business. It's just not for me; there are a ton of things to learn, and I prefer those that stimulate my brain before anything that stimulates my wallet (and yes, business administration may stimulate someone's brain, just not me).

I prefer to have a 9-to-5 job that pays the bills and then, back home, study anything else.

Alternatively, some people realize that a statistically significant impact on billions of people matters more than the fuzzies you get from a good review or a personal email.

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