Engineer++
December 4, 2007
You can't be a corporate programmer and only know how to write code.
If writing code is all you can, you are doomed to oblivion in a dark corner of a forgotten underground office. Your social network will be the size of a handkerchief. Your job might be every programmer's wet dream, but you will not be a corporate programmer.
Being a corporate programmer is really about having at least two full time jobs.
One is about knowing half the computer languages ever created, understanding computers down to their tiniest cell tissues and mastering uplifting issues such as deadlocks, atomicity, float representation, mutexes and all their small friends, who all together make Kasparov chess games look like baby play. That's the easy part, mostly because it's fun.
Then there is your other job.
If you are developing a travel search engine, you will have to know everything there is to know about the travel business. Everything. And you will know it even better than the people whose only job is to work in travel agencies. Down to the smallest details.
If you are developing software for automatic trading on stock exchanges, you will end up being a financial analyst. You could even teach the damn stuff to financial analysts!
And that's the only way your job can be done. Anything less, and you work would be just sloppy.
If writing code is all you can, you are doomed to oblivion in a dark corner of a forgotten underground office. Your social network will be the size of a handkerchief. Your job might be every programmer's wet dream, but you will not be a corporate programmer.
Being a corporate programmer is really about having at least two full time jobs.
One is about knowing half the computer languages ever created, understanding computers down to their tiniest cell tissues and mastering uplifting issues such as deadlocks, atomicity, float representation, mutexes and all their small friends, who all together make Kasparov chess games look like baby play. That's the easy part, mostly because it's fun.
Then there is your other job.
If you are developing a travel search engine, you will have to know everything there is to know about the travel business. Everything. And you will know it even better than the people whose only job is to work in travel agencies. Down to the smallest details.
If you are developing software for automatic trading on stock exchanges, you will end up being a financial analyst. You could even teach the damn stuff to financial analysts!
And that's the only way your job can be done. Anything less, and you work would be just sloppy.
