A team of super-smart skilled BA/PMs will produce zero, zilch, nada if there are no programmers.
"super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes" would figure out their priorities and the needs of their architecture. That's why Valve said that the single most important task is hiring - if you don't have super-smart people who can put egos and politics aside in favor of actually shipping something great, then you need BAs/PMs.
It's only when "who's doing what" becomes a problem that BAs etc are needed. If programmers were willing to spend some time doing "BA-work" and are willing to be bombarded by customers with inane queries and are willing to ask them questions to elicit their needs, then there'd be no need for BAs/PMs.
The only reason BA/PMs exist is because there are only 24 hours in a day and programmers can't do the above.
Linux is actually a good example of how a manager who is technically adept can do wonders for a project. It is NOT an example of how you do not need PMs.
Developing a business model is very different from doing customer support, planing and managing programming, and doing business inteligence/marketing.
Software BA/PMs have nothing to do with business models and strategic planning.
Yes. But Valve is a bit of an extreme case.
If anything, things always deliver on schedule and within budget. This is due to massive scope creep (scope reduction) and reduced quality.
Can you say the opposite for BAs/PMs? These positions are introduced after an organization or project reaches a certain size. It's simple specialization, you don't want everybody to do everything. When this transition happens, some programmers might become BAs or PMs. Alas, what about the opposite? How people that started as BAs ever make the transition to programmer? There is an obvious trajectory here.
As for project management, that's, well, a management position. Tends to have a better salary, prestige and career prospects than non-management positions. That fully explains why many people want to move into management and hardly anyone who's chosen it as their original career wants to move out of it.
This makes no sense to me, what makes you think that?
Many of them may be able to do some of that, but most will be really bad at one or more aspects of it. What exactly is the problem with having people who specialize in these things?
> Seen any freelancing PMs or BA?
Lots.
Seen many.If you understand business domains, have experience dealing with lines of business, managers, executives, you can freelance. Not everyone needs to (or should) write code.
That's exactly the same kind of self-bullshitting your parent comment was arguing against. NONE of the parts of a business can really work effectively without the others. A bunch of super-smart skilled programmers with attitudes, no leaders and no clear requirements is going to produce a lot of efficient, scalable, well-designed code that represents a handful of sub-projects that can't be integrated and don't do anything useful to end users.