What do you think when you hear the term "Enterprise developers"

Hi @dev-committee!

We’re trying to formulate a widely accepted definition of Enterprise developers. What do you think when you hear the term “Enterprise developers”

Of course, the first thing that came to mind was USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)Glassdoor has a reasonable definition: “Enterprise developers design, build, implement, and maintain applications and systems intended for use in an organization as opposed to the consumer market. These technologies often are designed to serve a function that is specific to business operations, such as tasks related to payroll or supply chain management. They configure the technologies with the particular needs of business users in mind, and often consult with stakeholders throughout the planning and implementation process. They may also provide maintenance and tech support services.”

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Definitely! Enterprise developers are Gene Roddenberry and those people, like Lucille Ball (Desilu Studios).

Otherwise, I agree with the Glassdoor definition that annoyingmouse (Dominic) already posted.

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I feel like we need all enterprise developers to have a special badge like one of the Star Trek badges :slight_smile: Thanks both.

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Interesting thoughts @annoyingmouse , @CacheProgrammer , similar to me, when I read the term Enterprise Developer, I often relate it to someone working on B2B projects to support other industries, and it might not be just in software per se, for ex, an elevator company making elevators for offices which runs programs to interface with building PLC and SCADA system is enterprise development for me.

Also, we’ve observed lately it might be used to define developers working in big teams > 1000 developers , WDYT about that?

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That is interesting; I guess Enterprise in this context (apart from the Starship) relates to larger businesses where thousands of developers might be employed, so - to a greater or lesser degree - a developer might be classed as an Enterprise Developer if the business which employs them is of sufficient size. Having said that, eurostat defines an enterprise as “An enterprise is an organisational unit producing goods or services which has a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making.”. Further, they have identified several different sizes of enterprises: small and medium-sized enterprises (comprised of micro enterprises : fewer than 10 persons employed, small enterprises : 10 to 49 persons employed and medium-sized enterprises : 50 to 249 persons employed) abbreviated as SMEs : fewer than 250 persons employed. And then there are large enterprises : 250 or more persons employed Glossary:Enterprise size - Statistics Explained (europa.eu).

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@ayan.pahwa :
“An enterprise developer is employed by an organisational unit producing goods or services with a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making”?

That doesn’t parse for me; while I know I’m saying the organisation has a “certain degree of autonomy in decision-making”, it might be thought that the developer has a “certain degree of autonomy in decision-making” - whereas I’d suggest that is not always the case…

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The “enterprise” focus definitely implies to me that the objective is to support an organization’s internal staff, workflows, or processes, not the organization’s customers.

On a more practical level, this means you’ll get to see Windows at its best (preserving their investment by running all their software with the finest commitment to backwards compatibility) and Windows at its worst (unpackaged and undisclosed runFullTrust applications holding us back from ditching antivirus / antimalware services for good, so this will be a fun exercise / puzzle for me to count how many Microsoft Store policy violations there would be if it were hypothetically submitted for publication).

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Just please, no red shirts!

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Yes, big teams (or big companies). I do internal work where I am, but do not consider myself an Enterprise Developer, as the things I do serve one or two users at a time. I just seem to do them for most of the 16,000+ employees, sooner or later! :smiley: I’m just (?) a programmer/developer who likes to figure out the mystery of how to get the data they need in a form they want to see at a frequency they appreciate. One user at a time…

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Enterprise Developer is somewhat of an oxymoron. While the term seems to imply work on large-scale systems, a developer normally works on a smaller-scale component (microservices, remember?). The larger scale design and thought leadership would come from the enterprise architects.
However, in practice, it is very difficult to avoid situations where developers, and sometimes a single developer, would be responsible for the architecture, design and coding of a huge system that addresses the core requirements of an organisation.