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> They are able to discern and avoid work that does not provide value (this is often their greatest skill) junior dev here...could elaborate a little on what t

> They are able to discern and avoid work that does not provide value (this is often their greatest skill) junior dev here...could elaborate a little on what this means? Generally speaking the PM is the one creating a roadmap and informing what is the highest value item to work on. I must be misunderstanding what you're referring too.

aste-risk 6y ago
There are some teams that only work on high impact projects. If you feel that your current team is only doing work that's not valuable, you need to change teams or at least let your manager know to change your project. Ask for projects that you think will bring revenue to the company. Revenue = impact or increase in productivity of other engineers (this may involve writing an internal tool, etc.)
mkinsella 6y ago
This is the biggest difference between a Junior Engineer and a Senior (or Staff Engineer). A Senior Engineer knows what the highest-value work is and is influencing/driving the roadmap. A Senior Engineer says 'no' more often than 'yes' and backs it up with a 'why.'
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Most Seniors are driving the roadmap simply by virtue of being a Senior, and most Juniors have no opportunity to influence the roadmap because Seniors control the decisions. Of course ideally everyone can contribute, but I think that's relatively rare.
  - mixermachine 6y ago
    If the structure of a work place is very strict, then yes this is 100% true. I how ever could already experience a more open scrum process in which we all have a say. For me it all started in an university project with four (incl me) people. I denied a good portion of the requests my supervisor gave me there, not because they were bad, but because they simply did not fit into the time budget or were not realistic. She was actually very happy about that because she was not that tech savy back then and learned a lot threw the process. Very good experience for me and we finished the project on time and exceeded expectations.
DougWebb 6y ago
I can give you an example from my career. We were building out a new webapp feature to deliver medical textbooks, which we had as xml documents direct from the publisher. Our customers, mostly large academic libraries and medical research companies, would get the electronic access to the books for much less than it would cost to get sufficient physical copies, and our cost for supplying the books would be minimal. A problem came up. Many of the libraries were government funded, and required physical possession of any books they purchased. I was in a meeting with the c-level execs, sales directors, and pms, and they were planning out the cost of building an organization that would produce a cd-rom version of the textbook products. They were going to need a large team to manage creating the books on cd, and for managing the production and mailing of the CDs when orders were received. It was going to cost a fortune. I told them to hang on a minute: I'm already converting the xml for these books into html for display in the app. I can easily generate static html too, write it to disk, and generate an iso file, every time we publish a new book. Then I can add a download link in the webapp, and if they need a physical copy they can download and burn it to disk themselves. We'll include instructions. This will take me maybe an extra week, and we'll have no ongoing operational costs. I think I got a $50 Amazon gift card for that suggestion. Or maybe a Starbucks card.
- banner2018 6y ago
  Precisely the reason why next time you would consider debating what's in it for me, prior to blurting out a solution.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    I hope you are joking: “I, a paid employee, have a wonderful solution to our problem that will save the company a lot of money, but I won’t tell you if you don’t pay me even more.” I think the answer to that would be something like “hmm, if you aren’t willing to do your job for the salary we already pay you, I don’t think there’s any reason to pay you at all.”
- hiimtroymclure 6y ago
  Thank you for the story, I definitely understand now. I am also relieved that you were compensated for this critically important pivot! /s I am hoping this will be an area I can eventually excel in. I was a senior PM for a while and decided I wanted to write code instead. Been going down this crazy career change for about 6 months now. Right now I am just trying to survive and learn the basics of software development. When I was PM I certainly had the luxury of working with invaluable devs I could brainstorm with on ways to optimize a feature idea that maintained customer value in the shortest time possible. I need to learn how to become that invaluable dev I had.
arrosenberg 6y ago
> Generally speaking the PM is the one creating a roadmap and informing what is the highest value item to work on. I must be misunderstanding what you're referring too. Experience flips this equation around. The PM is creating the roadmap based on my input and expertise to decide what will be the most valuable use of resources. You move from construction worker to architect.
jmchuster 6y ago
As stated by a previous head of product, great senior engineers can choose to switch jobs and instantly become a great PM.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
P_I_Staker 6y ago
It's very easy to get distracted as a developer on something that adds little to no value. You will do this repeatedly throughout your career. Try not to :) It may also depend how much you're micromanaged vs. picking your own path. Sounds like you're saying none of your work is self directed, and you don't participate in design decisions yet? Anyway, even if you don't have much say there's still ways to direct your work. You can push back against whatever is demanding the low value work.

aste-risk 6y ago

There are some teams that only work on high impact projects. If you feel that your current team is only doing work that's not valuable, you need to change teams or at least let your manager know to change your project. Ask for projects that you think will bring revenue to the company. Revenue = impact or increase in productivity of other engineers (this may involve writing an internal tool, etc.)

mkinsella 6y ago

This is the biggest difference between a Junior Engineer and a Senior (or Staff Engineer). A Senior Engineer knows what the highest-value work is and is influencing/driving the roadmap. A Senior Engineer says 'no' more often than 'yes' and backs it up with a 'why.'

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Most Seniors are driving the roadmap simply by virtue of being a Senior, and most Juniors have no opportunity to influence the roadmap because Seniors control the decisions. Of course ideally everyone can contribute, but I think that's relatively rare.
- mixermachine 6y ago
  If the structure of a work place is very strict, then yes this is 100% true. I how ever could already experience a more open scrum process in which we all have a say. For me it all started in an university project with four (incl me) people. I denied a good portion of the requests my supervisor gave me there, not because they were bad, but because they simply did not fit into the time budget or were not realistic. She was actually very happy about that because she was not that tech savy back then and learned a lot threw the process. Very good experience for me and we finished the project on time and exceeded expectations.

DougWebb 6y ago

I can give you an example from my career. We were building out a new webapp feature to deliver medical textbooks, which we had as xml documents direct from the publisher. Our customers, mostly large academic libraries and medical research companies, would get the electronic access to the books for much less than it would cost to get sufficient physical copies, and our cost for supplying the books would be minimal. A problem came up. Many of the libraries were government funded, and required physical possession of any books they purchased. I was in a meeting with the c-level execs, sales directors, and pms, and they were planning out the cost of building an organization that would produce a cd-rom version of the textbook products. They were going to need a large team to manage creating the books on cd, and for managing the production and mailing of the CDs when orders were received. It was going to cost a fortune. I told them to hang on a minute: I'm already converting the xml for these books into html for display in the app. I can easily generate static html too, write it to disk, and generate an iso file, every time we publish a new book. Then I can add a download link in the webapp, and if they need a physical copy they can download and burn it to disk themselves. We'll include instructions. This will take me maybe an extra week, and we'll have no ongoing operational costs. I think I got a $50 Amazon gift card for that suggestion. Or maybe a Starbucks card.

banner2018 6y ago
Precisely the reason why next time you would consider debating what's in it for me, prior to blurting out a solution.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  I hope you are joking: “I, a paid employee, have a wonderful solution to our problem that will save the company a lot of money, but I won’t tell you if you don’t pay me even more.” I think the answer to that would be something like “hmm, if you aren’t willing to do your job for the salary we already pay you, I don’t think there’s any reason to pay you at all.”
hiimtroymclure 6y ago
Thank you for the story, I definitely understand now. I am also relieved that you were compensated for this critically important pivot! /s I am hoping this will be an area I can eventually excel in. I was a senior PM for a while and decided I wanted to write code instead. Been going down this crazy career change for about 6 months now. Right now I am just trying to survive and learn the basics of software development. When I was PM I certainly had the luxury of working with invaluable devs I could brainstorm with on ways to optimize a feature idea that maintained customer value in the shortest time possible. I need to learn how to become that invaluable dev I had.

arrosenberg 6y ago

> Generally speaking the PM is the one creating a roadmap and informing what is the highest value item to work on. I must be misunderstanding what you're referring too. Experience flips this equation around. The PM is creating the roadmap based on my input and expertise to decide what will be the most valuable use of resources. You move from construction worker to architect.

jmchuster 6y ago

As stated by a previous head of product, great senior engineers can choose to switch jobs and instantly become a great PM.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

P_I_Staker 6y ago

It's very easy to get distracted as a developer on something that adds little to no value. You will do this repeatedly throughout your career. Try not to :) It may also depend how much you're micromanaged vs. picking your own path. Sounds like you're saying none of your work is self directed, and you don't participate in design decisions yet? Anyway, even if you don't have much say there's still ways to direct your work. You can push back against whatever is demanding the low value work.