7 reasons software developers should learn marketing

Engineers' career prospects are already excellent. No need to bother based solely on this point.

> 2. It’s not rocket science

Standing on hands while picking one's nose is not one, too. It's not a reason to learn it, though.

> 3. Less reliance on marketing people

This one might be sensible argument, but it's actually a duplicate of 7.

> 4. Number crunching [...] Being good at crunching numbers is a big bonus for some aspects of marketing.

So? It's a reason for one to learn marketing? Because his/her current skills might be useful there? It could be a reason if those were useless everywhere else.

> 5. It’s interesting

No, it's not, it's boring. Like archeology. Some people find it interesting, some do not.

> 6. Diminishing returns on development skills [...] you won’t improve as much between your 9th and 10th year of programming as you did between your 1st and 2nd year.

Oh, you would be surprised. There's so much in software engineering to discover, one just needs to look a little higher than building just another web shopping application.

> 7. You’ll need it if you ever start your own software business

Yes. Or maybe not, if I happen to have a co-founder who already knows it. And not everyone starts their own business, plenty of people just works for somebody else.