Okay, so what would you call someone who delivers half of the functionality they're asked to deliver, but has instead created a very robust test suite?
I'd call them an underperformer. At some point it no longer is your job to reframe a discussion, it's your job to write code.
One tends not to make money off a reframed discussion, and besides, programmers often have a very poor view into the rest of the business, so a programmer taking it upon themselves to decide how the business should be run is a programmer who will find themselves without a job after a short while.
I think I was unclear. I was not referring to a hypothetical developer. I was characterizing your caricature as that reframing of the discussion because the way you're approaching this verges on disingenuity.
Ah yes, taking a comment not about you and making it about you. This feels like a productive way to handle online conversations. I'm sure you're going to be a productive person to engage with...
If programmers keep wanting to make bad business decisions, maybe it would be better to teach them the rest of the business and turn them into engineers and tech leads.
Someone's got to actually implement the design, and if they're doing that well and at speed, they don't usually have time to absorb the full context of why, and that's okay.
Everyone has a role, not everyone needs to make strategy calls.
Sure, but it's easier to stay motivated and effectice in whatever role you have when you have enough context. And some roles are too small for some people as they develop in their careers.
I totally agree, however there are only 8 hours in a work day, and programmers need to understand that their 8 hours have to be focused on producing code, not on understanding the business, if the choice ever does come up (and it ought to).
Pretending like every single employee needs to have a complete view of the entire business is absurd, I hope that's not what you're suggesting.
