While this is not a universal truth, developers who have academic backgrounds have been trained on and understand the fundamentals of how software and computers work. This gives them a deep understanding of the choices, and often times trade-offs, of your technology platform decisions. In addition, a view of software as a engineering as a practice, with rules and methodologies causes software engineers to author cleaner, more maintainable code – resulting in a lower Total Cost of Ownership for you!
These firms often come in the form of a former professional who “just picked up programming” while working in a particular industry. Commonly engineers, accountants and IT guys will “just learn programming” then become it the in-house programmer at their firm, eventually to leave and “go on their own.” While a self-taught programmer who had a career in your industry may seem like an advantage, good software consultants learn new businesses every day. It is not necessary to work as an engineer at an oil company to understand the data and processes specific to petroleum engineering.
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