Chapter 5
Inside the Company

One of my favorite children’s books is Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day? I still wonder that sometimes. As I write this, for example, IBM has 426,751 employees.^[41] What do they do all day?

Well, let’s aim a little lower.

I’ll be honest; you don’t need to know everybody. Many programmers never venture to the other parts of the building; they saw the “Now Entering Marketing: Two Drink Minimum” banner and thought it best to turn back.

That said, a master (and master-to-be) programmer benefits tremendously from a more-traveled perspective. Marketing and sales can tell you all about customers and how the product is selling with them. PR can tell you how the press is responding. Support can tell you what customers are complaining about.

This chapter has only two tips, but they’re meaty ones:

• Tip 25, ​Know Your Peeps ​ starts on your home turf. There are lots of roles within the engineering department besides the programmers. This tip covers the common ones and gives a few pointers on how to snag one of those roles for yourself.

• Then it’s time to steel your confidence and trek into the lands previously unknown. Tip 26, ​Know Your (Corporate) Anatomy​ gives you the major landmarks outside of engineering: Where do press releases come from? Who keeps the lights on? And why do I keep hearing that the sales guys have all the fun?