There's still a stigma that marketing somehow equals snake oil salesmanship. It's supported by myths that certain products became immensely popular without any marketing that ironically you read about in media that promotes the same product.

Marketing and programming map to different personality types. You program a machine, alone, and it's predictable. Marketing is based on understanding and dealing with people, their needs, emotions and inner drives. No wonder our first geek reaction is to shy away.

But in my experience most people with engineering background who are given the job of marketing, eventually understand what's the deal, and either become what it takes or find and support someone to do the job well.

TLDR: Good marketers can be rare.

Marketing is, by definition, a profession where you try to get someone to do something they weren't going to do. Many people don't like that.

Good marketers are driven by user engagement and satisfaction metrics.

Bad marketers are often driven by sales or budgets and might do whatever it takes to meet those numbers, even to the detriment of applications and users. They have to hit those budget numbers. Think of the stereotypical marketer from the Dilbert comics. Bad marketers might lie or bend the truth. I've worked with several marketers who will lie to get what they want or to keep their jobs.

From a programmer's perspective, marketers might not understand the complexities of programming. "I want this change and I want it yesterday. What do you mean it's going to take 5 weeks to implement?"

From a designer's perspective, marketers might want what is flashy and attention getting no matter how much it litters a design and renders it unusable. Designers want what is appropriate based on the design hierarchy, established guidelines, or industry best-practices.

From the perspective of both programmer and designer, marketers don't always understand deadlines and might change things at the last minute or after it's too late. Bad marketers have no respect for the process of other teams because they only care about their team.

That said, I've worked with both good and bad marketers. I'm always sad to see a good teammate leave, no matter what department they work in. I've worked building marketing websites for 10+ years and love working with marketers.

Ignorance? Apple; DeBeers; Cigarette companies; Celebrity endorsments; annoying adds that give brand recognition; Marketing can and does work. They have a job to do too.

In my experience most seasoned developers don't hate marketing; they hate Sales. ;-) I cannot count the number of times sales has made commitments to customers without any idea of the Level of Effort involved or if the project is even feasible given ROI requirements.

WARNING - I may use politics and religion as examples in my answer. I am not implying a practical preference for/against any one stance, I am merely using them as textbooks on the topic of marketing and advertisting would. You will find when opinions are stated they attack both sides in equal measure.

I really don't think it's a dislike of marketING. MarketING is an essential part of having any product.

The problem -- as others have implied -- is marketERS. I'm sure some of them are fine and decent people, but finding the good ones in the sea of two bit snake oil peddlers and circus side-show barkers often feels impossible.

They generally lack the technical knowledge to understand what you tell them, lack the knowledge of web technologies to properly handle web based campaigns or even grasp the POINT of having a website, oversell the capabilities, make unrealistic promises, often dictate unrealistic timelines, and have this nasty habit of flat out LYING to everyone in earshot.

As a whole, programmers due to working with logic have a very low tolerance for bullshit. It's why the best programmers I've ever known are rarely political, social, or religious extremists (though they can be quite active in same, rest in peace Aaron), and equally insusceptible to scammers like Paltrow or the Avacado. This is since ALL of those prey upon mental failings like confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and a lack of critical thinking skills.

ALL of which are a untenable burden for a proper software developer. Critical thinking is the cornerstone of good logic.

NOT that it stops nubes and rubes alike from being scammed in the industry -- just look at the popularity of mind-numbingly dumbass asshat scams like front-end frameworks, WYSIWYGS, etc, etc.

But on the whole you work a decade or two in the field, the less and less you see any legitimate reason for those as the logic you learn from programming makes you more and more of a skeptic; and skeptics are the marketer's worst enemy. MUCH like how political and religious leaders have a rabid passionate distaste for FACTS. Much less the outright "evil" of that pesky "science". As was so aptly put just recently, a good propagandist will burn facts to ash so it can be used to create the perfect "smokey eye" makeup. If anything, THAT'S THEIR HUFFING JOB!!!

This stems from the fact that all three -- marketers, political leaders, and preachers -- rely on one core methodology to get their job done. PROPAGANDA. Something that relies by its very nature on valuing feelings over facts, and exploiting the ignorance of the audience as a whole.

Marketers DEAL in ignorance, its their bread and butter. Naturally people who know things -- like programmers -- are going to come into conflict with that.

There are seven core propaganda techniques any competent marketer, advertiser, or other such promoter should know inside, out, up, down, forwards, backwards, in, out, and every other conceivable direction. Once you know these seven techniques you'll begin to see them EVERYWHERE in EVERYTHING and more often than not, they are used to LIE TO YOU!

... and I cover them in this specific order for a reason.

#1 Name Calling

By this I'm not referring to the simple run of the mill in your face "you sleazy f-ing dirtbag". No, in this sense it is far, FAR more insidious as the words themselves are generally NOT offensive to those who aren't the target. Religion uses the term 'non-believer' when trying to be polite, but it helps establish an 'us and them' mentality. When politicians throw out terms like 'alt-right', 'leftist', 'liberal' and so forth, that's name calling. Using non-inflammatory words in a derogatory fashion.

One of the more complex of these is the "negative corollary" -- by saying that what you are promoting is 'good' or 'better' you are implying that everything else is 'bad' or 'evil' or 'worse'. We see this one in programming all the time with BS like "bootstrap is easier". Implying by default that flat HTML and CSS are magically harder to use. THEY AREN'T!

Mind you, full blown name calling isn't off the table -- just look at all the attempts to imply that people in need of public assistance are all drug addicts (when they're too poor to afford drugs), lazy mooch's who don't work (when most non-retired non-disabled adults on food stamps work more than one job), and so forth. It's an attempt to use name calling to say that if the poor are poor it's all their fault... because the truth that it could happen to anyone at any time with no wrongdoing is too scary a reality to deal with. It amounts to nothing more than an attempt to wage war upon the poor themselves instead of the harder fight of eliminating poverty. Class warfare, nothing more, nothing less -- and it's sold to the middle class through disinformation, name calling, and a "us or them" mentality.

There's a reason propaganda is synonymous with warfare.

But really name calling is at it's scariest when its so carefully crafted and worded you don't even see it. Crass blatant name-calling is far too obvious to be practical as a marketing technique.

#2 Glittering Generalities

The use of a phrase that sounds really good, but cannot be proven and/or is meaningless. This often goes hand in hand with the negative corollary since you're suggesting something about what you are promoting that other things are not. "Easier", "Better", and so forth result in your having to ask "compared to WHAT exactly?!?".

The classical example found in textbooks is the phrase "A real American" -- you'll often see this applied to a candidate during an election... when you have to ask "what makes this one more of a real American than the other candidate?" Were they both born here? Educated here? Pay their taxes? Willing to defend the concepts of the Constitution?

#3 Transfer

This too plays VERY nicely with the other techniques. It is the use of words and symbols the majority of people have feelings for (good or bad), and to try and 'transfer' that feeling to your topic.

Again "A real American" works as transfer. In a campaign for an American political office, you would think MOST people would "love" a "real American", so they try to transfer that feeling. Putting symbology like the flag into the materiel is an attempt to transfer your love of your country to the candidate.

Likewise pictures of nature unrelated to the product, or happy people is an attempt to transfer the natural positive feelings of such things to the product.

Transfer ALSO has a negative as it can be used to create negative feelings about everything BUT what you are promoting. You talk about "immigrants" in a TV spot whilst running a picture of nesting cockroaches in the background -- you're using transfer and name calling without even using any negative words. That's an over-the-top example as when it's done properly you might not even realize that they found a way to trigger your revulsion and transferred that feeling to a topic they want to convince you is bad.

"Guilt by association" is also a form of transfer. "Well they're friends with so and so" being one of the all-time great attacks that is mudslinging, but can be crafted to not FEEL like mudslinging.

#4 Plain Folks

Just using normal "down to earth" mannerisms and language. When Trumpsters say "He speaks our language" that's plain folks in action. Even as non-Trump supporters wonder just what the {expletive omitted} language that is. When politicians attack the 'intellectual and cultural elite" that's plain folks in action -- with a hint of name calling as they try to transfer your feeling of 'people just like you' to themselves -- even when they are in fact themselves part of the group they are pointing at.

It is a technique that smart, trained, learned people react negatively to even though they may not know why -- but Joe Sixpack and Susie Sunshine on the street will line up with their spoons to yum down whatever manure you're trying to serve them as the newest flavor of soft-serve.

bonus points for those who see what I just did there.

#5 card stacking

Cherry picking facts, omitting facts that contradict the viewpoint, etc, etc... Your garden variety quack snake-oil peddlers LOVE this one.

A great example of this is the whole anti-vax movement where they cling to ONE discredited research paper by someone who had their medical license revoked linking autism to vaccines whilst rejecting the thousands of papers from credible sources backed by actual research saying it's bullshit.

Card stacking can also include preying on the ignorance of the audience -- sharing much in common with glittering generalities on that front. Again (not to single them out) look at anti-vaxxers and how they piss and moan about mercury -- when if you know the first damned thing about chemistry you know the elements properties usually has dick-all to do with the properties it has when combined in another molecule. Comparing the ethyl mercury in vaccines to the elemental mercury which is a heavy metal poison, is like saying water is dangerous because it contains hydrogen, which can be used as an explosive.

But because most people are too stupid to handle basic junior high school chemistry (or at least what WAS junior high chem in the early 1980's for me) you can card stack them into thinking that water is a dangerous chemical that needs to be banned just by calling it dihydrogen monoxide!

That whole "Yoga mat material in bread" thing being a STUNNING example of this level of preying upon ignorance through card stacking.

In general conspiracy theories, faith, homeopathy, and every other form of quackery THRIVES on card stacking. It is the core of the old saying "the best place to put a lie is between two truths".

#6 Bandwagon

I'm doing it, she's doing it, you should do it too! Don't miss out, this is your last chance! You don't want to be in the minority do you?

Bandwagon is EVIL. Pure and simple. Just because all the other lemmings are running off the cliff... and yet it is one of the most common techniques used and unlike name-calling it doesn't matter how crass and obvious it is, it still works. Worse it can fuel the mob mentality allowing you to get entire groups of people to make decisions together -- no matter how nonsensical or even immoral -- that they would NEVER make as an individual.

A person is smart. People are dumb panicky dangerous animals, and you know it!

-- Agent K

Mankind is a social animal. The vast majority of people are hardwired to WANT to belong, to be accepted, to be a part of the pack. This lets the bandwagon technique EASILY manipulate the masses to work against their best interests.

... and its brother is our final core technique.

#7 Testimonial

Testimonials are a common tool for bandwagon, generally use plain folks methodology, are used a good deal to card stack, attempt to transfer one's person's ALLEGED success into making you think you can do it to, and are often chock-full of glittering generalities.

They are blatantly obvious when used, are often labelled as testimonial flat out telling you what they are! Yet, when it comes to FACTS they are often little more than anecdotal; REGARDLESS of who is being cited. They are one of the easiest things to get, even easier to fake, and rarely if ever actually mean anything!

But again the normal Joe yums it right up.

Whilst used in all sorts of marketing and propaganda, the number one place it is used is in what for all intents and purposes are pyramid scams -- no matter how much they might skirt consumer protection and trade laws by calling themselves "multi-level marketing".

Testimonial also doesn't have to be a full quote of text from a specific individual. A form of testimonial that is less obvious or insidious is "partners". We've all seen those sections of websites where a flat list of clients or those using the product is there for all to see. That is BOTH bandwagon and testimonial rolled into one, often with a bit of transfer if 'big names' in the industry are listed. It is designed to make you think "If it's working for these bigwigs, what can it do for my little crap"

BUT it can be legitimate too -- see the public review areas on places like Amazon or NewEgg ... but even when legitimate they can be card stacked by simply deleting negative reviews.

See the asshat shenanigans going on with the new "BattleTech" game being review bombed on Steam resulting in 90%+ of negative reviews being deleted even when they don't violate Steam's alleged rules. Laughably a long-time hallmark of the franchise and those running it dating back decades.

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Because they use these easily recognized techniques that work on the 'masses' it is hardly a surprise for most software developers to walk into a marketing department and... well... to their eyes this is what is seen:

Because the critical thinking skills needed to be a good programmer can be as powerful as Hoffman lenses.

ALSO, notice I say "Software developer" -- since in marketing "development' means something entirely different. In fact I know most of this as I worked closely with a "development office" at a non-profit for a few years in the early 1990's. In finance and marketing "development" is their sick euphemism for "fundraising"... which is this absolutely disgusting twisted world where finance meets the ugliest parts of marketing, advertising, and propaganda. I worked with a lot of "developers" in a very short period of time, not one of them were programmers -- unless the machine being programmed was the human mind and the wallet so attached.

-- edit -- Actually in that way marketers and software developers have a lot in common. Software dev's program machines. Marketers program people.