Re:Why are so many successful founding CEOs software engineers?
by munk-a on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:58PM
(#26468458)
> You'd probably be the lawyer who can code and any lawyer-adjacent tech company would love you.
Being able to natively express and review logic related to some legal software would be useful indeed, but honestly your team will need someone good at gathering requirements from non-technical folks either way and my guess would be that a lawyer that can vaguely code would likely be retained as an expert in the field but offered compensation like an entry-level to mid- developer by a startup.
I think that SMEs are great to have on the team, and I'd happily jump at the chance to contract with one that's got some vague coding experience as well - but I'd contract that out to pick their brains specifically on their specialty rather than try and shoe-horn them into a dev role. If I found a lawyer that had returned to development full time that's a different jazz - but you also need to keep in mind if the now-lawyer that used to be a developer actually wants to go back to full time development.
Being able to natively express and review logic related to some legal software would be useful indeed, but honestly your team will need someone good at gathering requirements from non-technical folks either way and my guess would be that a lawyer that can vaguely code would likely be retained as an expert in the field but offered compensation like an entry-level to mid- developer by a startup.
I think that SMEs are great to have on the team, and I'd happily jump at the chance to contract with one that's got some vague coding experience as well - but I'd contract that out to pick their brains specifically on their specialty rather than try and shoe-horn them into a dev role. If I found a lawyer that had returned to development full time that's a different jazz - but you also need to keep in mind if the now-lawyer that used to be a developer actually wants to go back to full time development.