4 ms·

eh, in most cases I have seen, it is the product org that is dysfunctional, not the engineering org. The people who are paid to know how to make money are often

eh, in most cases I have seen, it is the product org that is dysfunctional, not the engineering org. The people who are paid to know how to make money are often not good at making money. That leads to poor morale, loss of trust of eng team, and the rise of bullshit work.

morelisp 4y ago
Bay Area / startup engineering culture is an absolute dysfunctional mess. No consequences, either you land the next funding round on promises of scaling up or just jet off to the next job before any of your decisions matter. One of the main reasons I was happy to leave.
skippyboxedhero 4y ago
Ah, ofc...it is someone else's job to grub for money. You just like people to give you the money...a bit like pre-Revolutionary France, someone else gets their hands dirty, gives you the money for cultural reasons. The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons). There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.

morelisp 4y ago

Bay Area / startup engineering culture is an absolute dysfunctional mess. No consequences, either you land the next funding round on promises of scaling up or just jet off to the next job before any of your decisions matter. One of the main reasons I was happy to leave.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago

Ah, ofc...it is someone else's job to grub for money. You just like people to give you the money...a bit like pre-Revolutionary France, someone else gets their hands dirty, gives you the money for cultural reasons. The purpose of my comment wasn't to suggest how to remedy the situation but your answer is indicative: there is no separation between money-making and non-money making (engineers' viewpoint, as with everyone else, on who is making the money tends to vary quite significantly...when it is pay discussions, they are responsible...when a product has gone wrong, I can't believe these managers did this to me), if you work at a company your job is to make money...that is where your salary is coming from, customers. The precise problem is that so many engineers are paid for specialising in arcane knowledge unrelated to any revenue or consumer demand. In my experience, companies that move this responsibility over to engineers do better (indeed, companies that don't, won't survive at all...the only reason these jobs exist is because some tech companies happen to have monopoly products and choose to overhire...if banks had a monopoly product, you would see a profusion of very over-educated people specialising in some arcane area of finance with no consumer demand but which get hired for cultural reasons). There is no-one else to blame. The distinction between product and engineering is a function of dysfunction.