5 ms·

I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard

I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and perspective, and of course the fact that there is definitely such a thing as 'bad management' ... but Engs do have a tendency to think they know what's best for the product roadmap, and have really strong views about all sorts of things. Some of this is good, in a way, but I really wish somehow the culture of development could be professionalized, both in terms of general approach to working at a company - but also in terms of the artisanal aspects of development itself. It's important to set tone and expecations early, with smaller units it might work ... but as Eng teams get big, then they always end up reporting to Eng and not product, so it really depends on the culture that the VP Eng / CTO has established.

sridca 8y ago
What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  + A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has his 'teamwork' hat on upside down. Sometimes you need teamwork to focus on hyper specific issues. It may seem wasteful often it's not. + A general disregard for the talents and value of other groups. (Funniest example: 'ice cream day' at work and these devs cam to sit by us just as we were sitting down and a dev sneers: "Ugh, marketing". We just laughed.) Eng. talent is more classically academic, and yes, marketing is full of fluff, but good marketing, operations, finance is really hard. Basically an intellectual condescension that bleeds into a lot of things. + Failing to internalize that ultimately, they work for a business. Sometimes that means doing a lot of things an Eng would never do, like bolt-ons or weird add-ons to address specific customer needs. Cringing around metrics or optimizations that are ROI oriented and maybe not perfectly suited to their vision of what a 'good product' should be. This one can be a real problem in terms of attitude ... because they can get rally angry and stuffy. It's almost an existential debate over who really 'owns' the product in a sense - the business, or the people 'making it'? It really bothers me sometimes the cynical take that many Engineers have in this area - because the presumption is that 'they know better' or 'it's their thing' but really it's not at all. Basically, their view of 'raison d'etre' is often upside down. It depends on the organization. + Engs without management experience have a disrespect for how hard management actually is ... more so than in other groups. Marketing specialists are generally not like that. + Getting caught up in ideological wars about architecture, or 'bike shedding' - we're all guilty of this, but it's funny how ridiculous and perverse this is when you step outside of it. We're 'building something' not making some kind of 'functional art'. As techies we all love 'new toys' so this one is more understandable. + On the business side, if I ask staffers to get something figured out, to give me a quick analysis, to make some slides for the Veep, if they are good, they'll nail it down and move forward. On the dev side, if they even move to it, I get a lot of academic prose as though they don't know the language of business. It's almost as though it's a little existential: so many on the business side play on 'sports teams' etc. are are very extroverted and team oriented, confident, and natural communicators. Often devs are not. So there's almost a natural cultural clash as well. You don't have to strongly convince or persuade team players. They don't have tidbits of antagonism, or 'special needs'. They show up early, bang stuff out, realize that the world is somewhat political, that nothing is perfect, that we have to bend for customers, we do 'what needs to be done'. Edit: hugely generalizing here. Everyone and every team is different. Re-reading it I make it seems like devs are this terrible bunch! Not at all, most of this is subtle, it's nuanced, it's not like we have gross dereliction, just some different patterns of culture and behaviour.
  - qw 8y ago
    I think many of these issues are caused by a "silo" mentality. Decisions often flow from the business end through product before finally ending up as a story in the developers backlog. How can the devs understand the business decisions and learn to make less academic slides if they are not exposed to the business? I worked at a medium sized business where devs had lunch with sales/product/marketing and was treated as more than just coders. That has helped me a lot when it comes to the business side of work. If you have problems with the developers in your company, it may be that the real problem is with the company culture.
    - sonnyblarney 8y ago
      I agree with your points about exposure - however - these problems generally do not exist in other parts of organizations. Devs are unique in their peculiar aspect disdain for 'management and business'. And unfortunately it's very rare that devs get such exposure but we agree it'd be great if they could.
      - UK-Al05 8y ago
        Have you considered that the disdain comes from not being treated with respect? I don't know what comes first. But the places where engineers get on well with management are the ones where their opinions matter. Otherwise resentment comes in.
      - tixocloud 8y ago
        Devs are unique but I would argue it's less of the dev mentality and more about how management and business can incorporate them as part of the decision-making process. Granted technical folk are a special breed but being technical myself and having moved over to the business side of things, it's still equally important to think about motivation for devs. To maintain engagement, I bring my technical guys with me to meetings where they can add value. And I always press about the value of meetings and what we're trying to get out of it.
  - purplezooey 8y ago
oldboyFX 8y ago
I would say that many developers often sweat about minute technical details but completely ignore business goals. I'm involved in the local dev community and after meetups we often go for drinks. You almost never hear people talking about their company's successes, growth, strategy etc. It's all about the new hot tech they've recently had a chance to use. This mentality is reflected in the way they carry themselves and make development related decisions.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  Thank you; a concise way of articulating what I had to write 10 paragraphs (below) to say.
  - lowry 8y ago
    Are developers really allowed to to think about business?
- UK-Al05 8y ago
  Because it's self selecting, if your more interested growth and business strategy it's unlikely you would become a developer.
- baud147258 8y ago
  > completely ignore business goals Well, if they are not implicated in the business side of things, I don't see how they could be interested in. For example in my case, we're just getting feature requests for the next version, with no indication of business goals.

sridca 8y ago

What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?

sonnyblarney 8y ago
+ A general disregard for any activity that isn't specifically development. Like 'meetings'. Of course meetings can be overdone, but they can have a lot of value even if the topic being discussed at any moment isn't hyper-relevant to the developer himself. There's a commenter below who said he has a dev who'll bring in competitive offers if he's asked to go to more than two meetings a week for example. This dev has his 'teamwork' hat on upside down. Sometimes you need teamwork to focus on hyper specific issues. It may seem wasteful often it's not. + A general disregard for the talents and value of other groups. (Funniest example: 'ice cream day' at work and these devs cam to sit by us just as we were sitting down and a dev sneers: "Ugh, marketing". We just laughed.) Eng. talent is more classically academic, and yes, marketing is full of fluff, but good marketing, operations, finance is really hard. Basically an intellectual condescension that bleeds into a lot of things. + Failing to internalize that ultimately, they work for a business. Sometimes that means doing a lot of things an Eng would never do, like bolt-ons or weird add-ons to address specific customer needs. Cringing around metrics or optimizations that are ROI oriented and maybe not perfectly suited to their vision of what a 'good product' should be. This one can be a real problem in terms of attitude ... because they can get rally angry and stuffy. It's almost an existential debate over who really 'owns' the product in a sense - the business, or the people 'making it'? It really bothers me sometimes the cynical take that many Engineers have in this area - because the presumption is that 'they know better' or 'it's their thing' but really it's not at all. Basically, their view of 'raison d'etre' is often upside down. It depends on the organization. + Engs without management experience have a disrespect for how hard management actually is ... more so than in other groups. Marketing specialists are generally not like that. + Getting caught up in ideological wars about architecture, or 'bike shedding' - we're all guilty of this, but it's funny how ridiculous and perverse this is when you step outside of it. We're 'building something' not making some kind of 'functional art'. As techies we all love 'new toys' so this one is more understandable. + On the business side, if I ask staffers to get something figured out, to give me a quick analysis, to make some slides for the Veep, if they are good, they'll nail it down and move forward. On the dev side, if they even move to it, I get a lot of academic prose as though they don't know the language of business. It's almost as though it's a little existential: so many on the business side play on 'sports teams' etc. are are very extroverted and team oriented, confident, and natural communicators. Often devs are not. So there's almost a natural cultural clash as well. You don't have to strongly convince or persuade team players. They don't have tidbits of antagonism, or 'special needs'. They show up early, bang stuff out, realize that the world is somewhat political, that nothing is perfect, that we have to bend for customers, we do 'what needs to be done'. Edit: hugely generalizing here. Everyone and every team is different. Re-reading it I make it seems like devs are this terrible bunch! Not at all, most of this is subtle, it's nuanced, it's not like we have gross dereliction, just some different patterns of culture and behaviour.
- qw 8y ago
  I think many of these issues are caused by a "silo" mentality. Decisions often flow from the business end through product before finally ending up as a story in the developers backlog. How can the devs understand the business decisions and learn to make less academic slides if they are not exposed to the business? I worked at a medium sized business where devs had lunch with sales/product/marketing and was treated as more than just coders. That has helped me a lot when it comes to the business side of work. If you have problems with the developers in your company, it may be that the real problem is with the company culture.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    I agree with your points about exposure - however - these problems generally do not exist in other parts of organizations. Devs are unique in their peculiar aspect disdain for 'management and business'. And unfortunately it's very rare that devs get such exposure but we agree it'd be great if they could.
    - UK-Al05 8y ago
      Have you considered that the disdain comes from not being treated with respect? I don't know what comes first. But the places where engineers get on well with management are the ones where their opinions matter. Otherwise resentment comes in.
    - tixocloud 8y ago
      Devs are unique but I would argue it's less of the dev mentality and more about how management and business can incorporate them as part of the decision-making process. Granted technical folk are a special breed but being technical myself and having moved over to the business side of things, it's still equally important to think about motivation for devs. To maintain engagement, I bring my technical guys with me to meetings where they can add value. And I always press about the value of meetings and what we're trying to get out of it.
- purplezooey 8y ago

oldboyFX 8y ago

I would say that many developers often sweat about minute technical details but completely ignore business goals. I'm involved in the local dev community and after meetups we often go for drinks. You almost never hear people talking about their company's successes, growth, strategy etc. It's all about the new hot tech they've recently had a chance to use. This mentality is reflected in the way they carry themselves and make development related decisions.

sonnyblarney 8y ago
Thank you; a concise way of articulating what I had to write 10 paragraphs (below) to say.
- lowry 8y ago
  Are developers really allowed to to think about business?
UK-Al05 8y ago
Because it's self selecting, if your more interested growth and business strategy it's unlikely you would become a developer.
baud147258 8y ago
> completely ignore business goals Well, if they are not implicated in the business side of things, I don't see how they could be interested in. For example in my case, we're just getting feature requests for the next version, with no indication of business goals.