# On Business Guys

By Randall Degges · September 18, 2011 · https://rdegges.com/2011/on-business-guys/

> A tech guy's rant: good engineers can learn business and marketing, so they have little reason to team up with business guys. My advice: learn to code.

![Old Man Monster Sketch][]


**Disclaimer**: This post is going to be a bit different than my usual.
Instead of discussing technical or philosophical stuff, I'm going to be doing
a bit of ranting.

Before I go any further, I'd like to clear up any misunderstandings: I'm a tech
guy.  I'm currently the lead programmer at a small technical startup in the
telephony industry.  I've always had technical jobs, and most of my friends are
engineers.  I have met and known quite a few business and marketing guys in my
life, and feel like my opinion as a tech guy is validated by my personal
experiences.  Furthermore: I'm not saying I'm right--I'm simply arguing my
point of view.  Feel free to disagree with me!


## Why Now?

As most of you know, I'm a pretty big fan of [Hacker News][].  I've been
extremely interested in the startup and tech community for many years, and the
topics discussed there typically hit close to heart.  One of my lifelong dreams
is to build a successful technical empire, and as I feel I'm finally
approaching a level of development in my life that will allow me to start
building this empire, I've been paying closer and closer attention to relevant
discussions online.  It seems as if every week the same few questions come up
in one form or another online:

>   Hi guys!  I'm a business guy, and I'd like to know how to find a technical
>   co-founder for my company.  I've got some great ideas, and I'm awesome at
>   selling things, but I'm having lots of trouble meeting technical people who
>   will give me the time of day.  What do I need to do?

Or...

>   Hi guys!  I'm an engineer.  Why do business guys continuously approach me
>   with their ideas, and expect me to spend all my free time building a
>   product for them for no pay?

Or my favorite...

>   Hi guys!  I'm an engineer working on a startup in my free time with another
>   dude who is handling the business side of things.  I've been writing code
>   for months now, and the product is beginning to look decent, but I feel
>   like my partner isn't putting in a fair amount of work.  He's been telling
>   me that he's been *"working"* on getting customers, but I see nothing
>   being done that I couldn't automate with a shell script.  What do I do?

There have been some awesome discussions online surrounding these questions /
situations, with very heated debates on both sides of the table.  Since I see
the same patterns emerge over and over again, I figured now is as good a time
as any to throw my thoughts out there into the mix, so here it goes.


## Technical Guys are Fucking SMART

The kind of techies who work at startups, read Hacker News, and build side
projects on their free time are *SMART*.  The amount of passion, dedication,
discipline, and time required to master technologies is astounding.  Building
software today requires immense knowledge spread across numerous domains.  Even
building the *"simplest"* of web services requires a wide array of technical
skills, that are the result of years worth of studying and practice.

The type of technical guys who can build entire products and companies in just
a few months (or less!) are the type of people who are extremely dedicated to
their craft, and are among the top tiers of professional development.  As
someone who frequents Hacker News, I find it is often the case that
non-technical people assume the sort of technical people described above are
abundant.  This is simply not true.  In small, niche communities like Hacker
News, it seems this way only because the overall quality of members and users
is extremely high in comparison to that of the "real world", and thus gives the
impression that *"most"* engineers are amazing.

Furthermore, these awesome software developers aren't *just* good at technical
stuff--they're good at everything.  The type of person who is continuously
learning, questioning, and creating things of value has extremely useful,
deeply ingrained character traits:

-   They have a desire to understand why and how things work.
-   They have a desire to solve problems in an elegant manner.
-   They have and exercise critical thinking skills in all aspects of life.
-   They think logically.
-   They realize what limitations they have, and know how to work around them.
-   They know how to create things.
-   They know where and how to get information they don't already have.

These traits are, in and of themselves, possibly the most useful skills of all.
People who exhibit those qualities are practically unstoppable.  They're able
to identify problems and build solutions to those problems in an elegant
manner.

What I'm trying to get at here is this: if these developers are so smart, what
is stopping them from simply learning how to incorporate a company, advertise
online, and sell stuff?  The answer is: *"nothing"*.  These people are more
than capable of learning the necessary skills to build successful companies
completely solo.  In comparison to learning the vast amounts of technical
knowledge they've already acquired--learning business and marketing concepts
are astoundingly simple in comparison.


## Business Guys... Not So Much

As a non-technical business guy, your knowledge is at best extremely limited.
You're at a severe disadvantage:

1.  Engineers can easily learn what you know.
2.  Good engineers have character traits that make them likely to succeed at a
    myriad of activities, including business.
3.  Engineers understand how things work.  Instead of making assumptions about
    problems, engineers **know** about problems, why they exist, and how to
    solve them.
4.  Engineers know the best way to find and build solutions to problems.
5.  Engineers are more creative: their understanding of how and why things work
    gives them a large pool of creative ideas which would not be available to
    non-technical folk.

Regardless of whether you exhibit useful character traits, you are lacking the
necessary skills to build solutions to your problems.  This means that you are
essentially replaceable by technology.


## No Incentive

What it comes down to is that technical guys really don't have any incentives
to work with business guys.  Let's say that in a best-case scenario, a business
guy:

-   Is passionate about the problem.
-   Wants to help customers solve this problem by selling them your solution.
-   Has a proven track record for selling to customers in this industry.
-   Is in contact with a large amount of customers who are willing to give
    feedback on your potential solution.
-   Knows how to advertise this solution.

Ignoring the fact that this is a best-case scenario, the business guy is still
not needed by the engineer. Why?

-   The engineer must also be passionate about this problem in order to devote
    time (without pay) to working on it.
-   The engineer knows how to find customers to get feedback from.  He knows
    that he can do an hour or two of research and collect this information.
-   The engineer is able to adapt his solution to the customers problem without
    a middleman.  This leads to faster development, more precise solutions, and
    happier customers.
-   The engineer can easily advertise his solution in a pragmatic fashion using
    tech tools to do so: A/B testing, online marketing, buisness analytics
    tools and programs, etc.

Furthermore, the deal is not appealing to the engineer because the amount of
work he has to put into developing the actual solution far outweighs the amount
of time that is needed to do equal amounts of marketing and sales by the
business guy.

To engineers it is far more profitable and enjoyable to simply build solutions
to problems without business guys, as the engineers will have:

-   Complete ownership of the solution.
-   Deep understanding of the problem, and solution.
-   The skills necessary to build a solution, and maintain it over time.
-   The smarts to market, grow, and continuously evolve the solution to make it
    more successful over time.


## What to Do

Although this post comes off as extremely hostile towards "business guys", that
is really not my intention.  Instead, I hope to give "business guys" some true
understanding of business from a "tech guy's" perspective.

What I'd suggest business guys do, in order to develop the traits discussed in
this article, is to become a "tech guy".  Learn to program.  Learn how to use
Linux.  Build a passion for understanding how and why things work.  People can
change.  Even the most non-technical person in the world can use their
willpower to "retrain" themselves.  While it definitely involves a lot of work
and dedication, the benefits are lifelong.


## TLDR;

If you're a "business guy", instead of trying to find a "tech guy" to work
with, consider working on yourself to become a "tech guy".


[Old Man Monster Sketch]: old-man-monster-sketch.png "Old Man Monster Sketch"
  [Hacker News]: http://news.ycombinator.com/ "Hacker News"