3 ms·

It is weird how I get persistently drummed out of engineering because when I write cron jobs, SQL queries, and React dashboards I make special effort to connect

It is weird how I get persistently drummed out of engineering because when I write cron jobs, SQL queries, and React dashboards I make special effort to connect them to business outcomes. Businesses, to a first approximation, don’t care about their tech stack except to the extent that it drives business outcomes. Can you articulate those pros/cons in a way a business cares about? Can you impact your deliverables to reduced costs or (much better) increased revenue? Then you, too, can look forward to a bright future where HN tells you you’re not really an engineer anymore because your rates are too high.

edraferi 9y ago
Some folks get nervous when they have to justify the actual value of their work. Sometimes it’s because doing irrelevant work well or relevant work poorly. More often, I think the business impact connection is just difficult to make. The further you get from pure sales, the harder it is. Regardless, you should always consider answering this question as part of your job.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
md224 9y ago
You really don't see why the example you gave above was marketing rather than engineering? All of the recommendations you gave were related to selling the product, not improving it. That's not a bad thing; it just means it was a marketing consultation.
- ewjordan 9y ago
  I think a clearer way to say what a lot of people are bothered by with that example is that in order to sell those recommendations you need: a) to have a lot of marketing expertise b) to be known well enough for your marketing expertise that people will take your suggestions as valid Most tech people have neither one. Hell, most marketing people have neither one, half of the rest on my have b) but are actually incompetent in their recommendations, and only the last little bit have both.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Being a consultant is marketing, there is no way to be an engineering consultant. Engineers work for consultants, not as consultants. If you want to make the big bucks, you have to do what businesses care about, not what you care about.

edraferi 9y ago

Some folks get nervous when they have to justify the actual value of their work. Sometimes it’s because doing irrelevant work well or relevant work poorly. More often, I think the business impact connection is just difficult to make. The further you get from pure sales, the harder it is. Regardless, you should always consider answering this question as part of your job.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

md224 9y ago

You really don't see why the example you gave above was marketing rather than engineering? All of the recommendations you gave were related to selling the product, not improving it. That's not a bad thing; it just means it was a marketing consultation.

ewjordan 9y ago
I think a clearer way to say what a lot of people are bothered by with that example is that in order to sell those recommendations you need: a) to have a lot of marketing expertise b) to be known well enough for your marketing expertise that people will take your suggestions as valid Most tech people have neither one. Hell, most marketing people have neither one, half of the rest on my have b) but are actually incompetent in their recommendations, and only the last little bit have both.
vinceguidry 9y ago
Being a consultant is marketing, there is no way to be an engineering consultant. Engineers work for consultants, not as consultants. If you want to make the big bucks, you have to do what businesses care about, not what you care about.