Programmers are definitely worth it, if you spend $10K on a programmer to build a system who writes a system that makes a process that used to take 3 people 2 days and now takes 1 person an afternoon to complete then the RoI is clear (the last system I put into production actually saved that amount of time).
Silicon Valley and the start-up scene grossly distorts the whole argument because of the insane salaries paid to developers on "It's facesmash right..but for dachshunds".
Outside of the reality distortion field, there are thousands (if not millions) of developers building unsexy workmanlike products that supply a need for a business and reduces costs by more than they cost to develop.
My "startup" is not sexy, I don't care about j-curves, accelerators, user trends or anything else, it is simply a well engineered (hopefully!) solution to a regulatory requirement for a specific industry, in theory I can reduce several days worth of tedious and error prone paperwork to an hour at most and make it an intrinsic part of the company and project.
When it comes to hiring I won't by hiring "coders", I'll be hiring programmers.
Programmers are definitely worth it, if you spend $10K on a programmer to build a system who writes a system that makes a process that used to take 3 people 2 days and now takes 1 person an afternoon to complete then the RoI is clear (the last system I put into production actually saved that amount of time).
Silicon Valley and the start-up scene grossly distorts the whole argument because of the insane salaries paid to developers on "It's facesmash right..but for dachshunds".
Outside of the reality distortion field, there are thousands (if not millions) of developers building unsexy workmanlike products that supply a need for a business and reduces costs by more than they cost to develop.
My "startup" is not sexy, I don't care about j-curves, accelerators, user trends or anything else, it is simply a well engineered (hopefully!) solution to a regulatory requirement for a specific industry, in theory I can reduce several days worth of tedious and error prone paperwork to an hour at most and make it an intrinsic part of the company and project.
When it comes to hiring I won't by hiring "coders", I'll be hiring programmers.
Now get off my lawn ;).