Salespeople And Other Devils

In an answer to my previous post, Dave Hoover has pointed :

You said, "It is vital we keep this knowledge among programmers and out of salespeople's hands." Why would we want to keep knowledge out of anyone's hands? I feel like this statement fosters an "us versus them" dynamic.

Dave - thank you for your note. It made me think. Hard :^)

So...

> Why would we want to keep knowledge out of anyone's hands?

I realize it has more to do with my personal history than anything else. I've struggled hard in the past to get out of messy situations connected to this. After passing on knowledge within my company (whichever company it was then) I'd have to deal with half-baked subcontracts concluded by salespeople who would throw in keywords while not understanding the context.

With some hindsight, it looks to me now I was trying to get some validation from others in my company, the more validation the better. What was unsensible was, I was caring more about others' validation than my own sense of self-validation. So in a sense, I was inviting others to throw in keywords to feel happier. And I realize now how generous they actually were, daring talking about things they wouldn't fully understand instead of staying on safe grounds.

And I'm past this now (well - most of the times ;^) ).

These days, I tend to seek the company of people prefering acting rather than talking and speculating, and I focus on working with doers - essentially programmers. And although it's where my preference currently lies, you're right: keeping knowledge out of non-programmers will foster an "us versus them" dynamic. This won't help bringing balance and improvement to our field.

This brings interesting opportunities. There's no need to keep our technical knowledge out of non-technical people, and we may use the saved energy for other purposes. Such as sharing not only technical knowledge among programmers, but also relational knowledge - so that we have the ability to be centered talking about what we know and don't let others define what we're doing without our consent.