I definitely want to become an owner and learn about the business. I've even conceived and executed projects to improve the bottom and top line revenue. That being said, as a developer in a small business, the thought is that I'm too expensive an employee to not be coding even if I had a lot of impact on my own initiatives. The thinking is that a lot of people can think about strategy but very few people can code so I get pigeonholed into just executing. This has been my experience at multiple startups at various stages of their lifecycle.
hattmall|1 year ago
What you are saying is true, because coding is the high value work that relies heavily on the individual effort and productivity. The team effect of coding is effectively the sum of each coders productivity.
The business side is the opposite, it can be much lower value individual work, but the team efforts combined is exponential. If you want good software you can't really just throw more developers at something, in fact doing so can often lead to declining returns. But this is the idea behind things like SCRUM, Agile, Stand up etc. It's a way to try and figure out how to scale development by effectively just adding more manpower. It simply isn't a fit for development though.
On the business side however you can scale just by adding more people.
At the end of the day you can have excellent software that makes no money, and you can also have excellent business strategy that makes money and fails to deliver a product.
HalcyonicStorm|1 year ago