Seeking advice from programmers for non-programmers
endtime: I'll answer the ones I have answers for:- How do software engineers perceive business types?The stereotype is that you guys are a bit jockish, and/or that you tend to have good social skills but less hard/technical skills.- How do they come to respect or disrespect someone in this role?I'll respect a business person who makes the effort to understand the engineering (and I don't mean humoring me by asking for a one hour programming lesson - it's more important that you understand technical issues on a high level), as well as give comprehensible and straightforward answers to any questions I have about his.  A smart programmer has to know when to put business before his sense of engineering elegance or desire to make a cool product, and if you can be sensitive to how hard/frustrating that can sometimes be, so much the better.- What can a business type do to build trust with a programmer?Try to understand what I'm doing and what's hard about it, and explain to me the same about what you're doing.- What motivates programmers? Success? Personal fulfillment? Money?Depends, but I'd say success and money in a startup are nearly, if not, the same thing.  Desire for personal fulfillment is probably a little more common among programmers than business types, but that might be my own stereotype of business types talking (though I knew a lot of business students as an undergrad, and dated one for two years, so it's not totally unjustified).- What do programmers think motivates business types?Money.