What Do Software Developers Need to Know about Business?

A recent discussion with colleagues from my university\´s business school and computer science department focused on identifying the most critical knowledge for software developers. My computer science colleagues\´ perspective was quite interesting. They acknowledged that once a software developer has managed to climb into a second- or third-level management position, maybe an MBA wouldn\´t be such a bad idea. But for the most part, they held the strong belief that anyone smart enough to be a computer science graduate must be able to easily pick up this "business stuff" on the side. I felt the same quick surge of irritation that I usually get when dealing with students who want to bypass prerequisite courses and enroll directly into an upper-division software engineering course. They seem to think that software engineering can\´t be all that difficult compared to the mysteries of homomorphisms and context-free grammars. It\´s either (a) the height of conceit or (b) the height of ignorance about the depth of the field to suggest that, without serious study, someone could pick up a field that has taken others years to master. Over the years, I\´ve come to realize that type b is more common than type a.So, whenever I hear someone talk about either business or computing issues as things to be "picked up on the job," I can\´t help but wonder whether the person is type a or type b. That\´s not to say that someone can\´t learn material from either discipline through self-study--but it requires a serious application of discipline and effort.