Are they _always_ mutually exclusive? I do not think so. Then again, the managers I have worked with are people who either came up the ranks (i.e. were not hired from outside) or have had previous experience working with software developers and thus had a good grasp of the complexities of software development.

I suppose it would also depend on what exactly your company is doing. If your company produces software as a product, then it would have a different perspective on developers compared to a company wherein the developers are doing IT / support. In the case wherein your company sells a software product, then developers are generally more valued as the the creators of the product you are attempting to sell. Revenue can be generated by the software products hence the developers help in bringing money in. If you are developing software for internal support use only, then there is no revenue directly generated by it so it is a cost.

Perhaps another factor worth considering is the number of developers out there nowadays. Prior to the burst of the IT bubble, there were so many jobs out there and not enough developers hence developers were more valued due to the high demand and inadequate supply. Now, the situation is reversed; there are a lot of out-of-work software developers out there and the number of jobs available is low. Hence, the current set of developers a company has is not valued as highly as in times past because in the current situation, there are a lot of available choices for replacements.

I take your point, Leo.

When I went into university, IT developers were the upper class of career. Everyone were jealous of programmers. But after graduation, it was not easy for me to find a programmer job ads however.
After the burst of the IT bubble, I visited my friend in San Jose for a month. I still remembered what I had seen in the streets over there. Some beggars walked around in the whole day and held a piece of paper stating: " many yrs of C++, VB, Perl, database and web programming..."
I believe programmers need not beg jobs in such way now.

Hi Gloria,

While I must admit, I never saw programmers begging in the streets of San Jose (though there was a hilarious send-up of this phenomenon in the movie Office Space), I do remember that for quite a while it was very hard to get a programming job. I was lucky in the sense that (1) I joined Borland in 1998, which was before the IT bubble burst, and (2) once I had my job I decided to stay with it instead of allowing myself to be lured to a startup.

IT is starting to pick up now, but it will still be awhile before software developers become a high-demand profession again.

So, when are you going to come to San Jose again? The Borland campus is not far from San Jose. :)

I hope soon :>

Well, please come and pay us a visit if ever you are in the area. :)