12 ms·

For many years I gave a talk titled "Questions Engineers Should Ask" This list is missing the two most important [busines] questions: 1. How do you make mone

by sanj 7y ago

For many years I gave a talk titled "Questions Engineers Should Ask" This list is missing the two most important [busines] questions: 1. How do you make money? If you can't understand, or the interview can't explain, then I'd run away. This can also lead to interesting questions about risks, competitors, etc. 2. What's preventing you from making more money? The answer that you want to hear is engineering effort. If not, you're (at best) a wallflower at the party. Don't be the chump that's at Goldman Sachs acting as a code monkey for the traders. Don't be writing code at a company (like Enron) which has its success based on digging holes in the ground. I can dig up the slides if anyone is interested.

viraptor 7y ago
I'd love to include those questions with links to the talk if you can find it! (Like the siblings comment, I may disagree with "The answer that you want to hear is engineering effort", but the questions are definitely valid in some situations)
- opendomain 7y ago
  I would appreciate it as well. Thank you!
uniclaude 7y ago
That's highly disrespectful to software engineers working outside of software companies. There are many of them and they are not necessarily less smart than others. Working in the profit center of a company is often enviable, but let's not forget that cost centers in large companies can also offer benefits in things like work/life balance.
- smashface 7y ago
  I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser. I think the point that was made was that working at companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software is a better company to work for. If your role is a cost you're treated (explicitly or implicitly) as such. It's a lot easier to show your value to a company by being part of the revenue side of the equation. Reducing costs is great but there is a bias towards investing to generate revenue vs investing to reduce cost.
  - JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    > I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser. Why not? That's a prevailing opinion. SWE: Works for a startup. HN: RESPECT! SWE: Works for FAANG. HN: Respect. SWE: Works in an industry that's not related to the web. HN: Wait, what? I don't understand. SWE: Works anywhere else. HN: Crickets.
    - kgraves 7y ago
      Comment of the decade.
  - busterarm 7y ago
    I've been at companies that were "engineering-driven" that were total disorganized messes and totally immature workplaces. I've also worked somewhere at a "lesser" company where I was firmly on the cost-center side of things, but my work was seen as absolutely business-critical, I was treated well, I survived all reorgs and department layoffs and had my salary tripled from the time I started. Working in unsexy companies is a tremendous opportunity because if you're good at what you do, people literally think you work miracles.
    - packetlost 7y ago
      This. I've worked for an ISP as a software engineer for almost 3 years and even though the company doesn't directly make money from what we do, we are quite respected for the value that we provide. Also that last statement hits way too close to home.
      - busterarm 7y ago
        I had the same experience working as a developer doing marketing and data analytics for a (very large) personal injury lawfirm. Also I used to work at an ISP too! :D
  - gonzo41 7y ago
    --companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software. You can get vibe of a company by asking if IT is seen as a cost center. If software is a competitive advantage you know that it's green pastures for your and yours. But places where culture holds back engineering, like being slow on the uptake of GIT or CI/CD which is often talked about online, these are places to be wary of. Those latter companies are either going to have growing pains or will die out as digitization starts to take them on.
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
Related: How long ago did you give raises? How long before that was the last time you gave raises?
rajacombinator 7y ago
Seems very rare that it will be the case that engineering effort is what’s stopping a company from making more money ... almost all companies will have sales pipeline or finding pmf as the answer to that. (If they know the answer.) Trading firms actually seem like one place where there is often a direction connection between code = money.
EnderMB 7y ago
I often see your response to #2 brought up, and I would generally agree with it. With that being said, in my experience of working at companies that actively sell software, whether it's as a product or a service, you are still incredibly likely to be as much of a wallflower as you are at a non-tech company. Your perception of freedom is higher, but ultimately your time and budget is limited by whoever manages you. I'd be interested in the slides to see if your questions dig into one of the most common issues I see at tech-centric companies - micromanagement? Is it a thing - and if you say no, would a random selection of three of your developers tell me the same thing?
carlsborg 7y ago
Good questions, lousy choice of counter-example. Financial markets companies are now engineering and quant driven. Machines place 80% of orders in US equities exchanges, not humans. The company you mention just announced a $100M project to rewrite its core equities trading platform to optimize latencies at scale across markets. Great engineering culture too. Meritocratic, respectful, and you won't find people there going around referring to developers in other industries with the disrespect you do, for example.
sanj 7y ago
In response to folks feeling that I'm being disrespectful of developers in other fields: you're right. And I apologize. By way of explanation, this phrasing came out the slide deck itself, which was used as part of a recruiting effort at colleges for new hires. In many cases we were competing with offers from finance firms and felt the need to distinguish ourselves to compensate for their salaries Having said that, I stand by much of my statement: assuming you have a choice between those two types of roles, you'll end up in a better place where your job is a path to more revenue rather than a cost to be minimized.

by sanj 7y ago

viraptor 7y ago

I'd love to include those questions with links to the talk if you can find it! (Like the siblings comment, I may disagree with "The answer that you want to hear is engineering effort", but the questions are definitely valid in some situations)

opendomain 7y ago
I would appreciate it as well. Thank you!

uniclaude 7y ago

That's highly disrespectful to software engineers working outside of software companies. There are many of them and they are not necessarily less smart than others. Working in the profit center of a company is often enviable, but let's not forget that cost centers in large companies can also offer benefits in things like work/life balance.

smashface 7y ago
I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser. I think the point that was made was that working at companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software is a better company to work for. If your role is a cost you're treated (explicitly or implicitly) as such. It's a lot easier to show your value to a company by being part of the revenue side of the equation. Reducing costs is great but there is a bias towards investing to generate revenue vs investing to reduce cost.
- JustSomeNobody 7y ago
  > I don't think the GP intended to call engineers at those kinds of companies lesser. Why not? That's a prevailing opinion. SWE: Works for a startup. HN: RESPECT! SWE: Works for FAANG. HN: Respect. SWE: Works in an industry that's not related to the web. HN: Wait, what? I don't understand. SWE: Works anywhere else. HN: Crickets.
  - kgraves 7y ago
    Comment of the decade.
- busterarm 7y ago
  I've been at companies that were "engineering-driven" that were total disorganized messes and totally immature workplaces. I've also worked somewhere at a "lesser" company where I was firmly on the cost-center side of things, but my work was seen as absolutely business-critical, I was treated well, I survived all reorgs and department layoffs and had my salary tripled from the time I started. Working in unsexy companies is a tremendous opportunity because if you're good at what you do, people literally think you work miracles.
  - packetlost 7y ago
    This. I've worked for an ISP as a software engineer for almost 3 years and even though the company doesn't directly make money from what we do, we are quite respected for the value that we provide. Also that last statement hits way too close to home.
    - busterarm 7y ago
      I had the same experience working as a developer doing marketing and data analytics for a (very large) personal injury lawfirm. Also I used to work at an ISP too! :D
- gonzo41 7y ago
  --companies where the company makes more revenue by having better software. You can get vibe of a company by asking if IT is seen as a cost center. If software is a competitive advantage you know that it's green pastures for your and yours. But places where culture holds back engineering, like being slow on the uptake of GIT or CI/CD which is often talked about online, these are places to be wary of. Those latter companies are either going to have growing pains or will die out as digitization starts to take them on.

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

Related: How long ago did you give raises? How long before that was the last time you gave raises?

rajacombinator 7y ago

Seems very rare that it will be the case that engineering effort is what’s stopping a company from making more money ... almost all companies will have sales pipeline or finding pmf as the answer to that. (If they know the answer.) Trading firms actually seem like one place where there is often a direction connection between code = money.

EnderMB 7y ago

I often see your response to #2 brought up, and I would generally agree with it. With that being said, in my experience of working at companies that actively sell software, whether it's as a product or a service, you are still incredibly likely to be as much of a wallflower as you are at a non-tech company. Your perception of freedom is higher, but ultimately your time and budget is limited by whoever manages you. I'd be interested in the slides to see if your questions dig into one of the most common issues I see at tech-centric companies - micromanagement? Is it a thing - and if you say no, would a random selection of three of your developers tell me the same thing?

carlsborg 7y ago

Good questions, lousy choice of counter-example. Financial markets companies are now engineering and quant driven. Machines place 80% of orders in US equities exchanges, not humans. The company you mention just announced a $100M project to rewrite its core equities trading platform to optimize latencies at scale across markets. Great engineering culture too. Meritocratic, respectful, and you won't find people there going around referring to developers in other industries with the disrespect you do, for example.

sanj 7y ago

In response to folks feeling that I'm being disrespectful of developers in other fields: you're right. And I apologize. By way of explanation, this phrasing came out the slide deck itself, which was used as part of a recruiting effort at colleges for new hires. In many cases we were competing with offers from finance firms and felt the need to distinguish ourselves to compensate for their salaries Having said that, I stand by much of my statement: assuming you have a choice between those two types of roles, you'll end up in a better place where your job is a path to more revenue rather than a cost to be minimized.