Okay, that’s a little bit of wishful thinking, so how about we say that more non-engineers should be tech savvy?
If you’re business and can’t talk tech, can you really expect a technologist to work with you on your startup? It’s hard enough for a business person to recruit a good engineer to build their idea, so if there’s a way to close the gap then it should be pursued.
The Bare Minimum:
A non-engineer should be able to hold a basic technical conversation. If you don’t know the difference between “front-end” and “back-end” development, you have some Googling to do. If you think Python is just a kind of snake, add that to your searches. If you don’t have a smartphone (and don’t plan on getting one), you’re kind of missing the boat.
I’ve been meeting a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs who have experience in business but are much distanced from technology, yet they want to do a tech startup. Something’s missing from this equation.
So what can you do?
The Bottom Line:
There are several tech items that a “business person” can do in the early days of a startup when there’s either no one else to do them, or when there’s someone else who could do them but would spend their time more wisely doing something else. Whether it’s putting together mockups with ideas for a user interface or changing the copy on a webpage, nobody would expect you to do the most polished work in these areas as if they were your specialty — it’s more about your willingness to contribute in areas that are not your specialty.
If you’d like specific recommendations for learning how to do anything in particular, post it in the comments.
2 Comments
I recommend you go to engineering school and stop being a poser
You could certainly learn a lot if you go to school for engineering, but
this post is aimed at business people learning how to speak tech a little
better, since biz & tech folks often speak a different language. Having a
better understanding of what other people are doing in your company can only
help with collaboration, and if you’re able to contribute in a couple of new
areas, all the better.
By the way, this isn’t just a one-way thing — there’s some stuff that
technical talent can do to help with business processes as well, but that’s
a topic for another day.