4 ms·

I've been both staff and line at various companies. The biggest downside to staff IME is that you are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost and at dan

by kitd 4y ago

I've been both staff and line at various companies. The biggest downside to staff IME is that you are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost and at danger of being cut. OTOH, the biggest upside is the domain knowledge, and in particular, how companies (ie customers of the line engineers) really deploy and run their systems, which IME is often very different from how the line engineers think they run them. Line engineers tend to gloss over the myriad of external influences that affect how easy their systems are to deploy and integrate (eg how many FTEs doe it take to operate your systems, how long is an acceptable maintenance window for applying fixes, how long does it take to roll back if a fix fails, etc). An experienced staff engineer introduced to a line team can be a huge asset, and will ask the right kind of questions, ie those that the customer is often most interested in.

duxup 4y ago
>are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost That was my life working tech support. Now I should say I was well paid, and it was a good job generally, but I worked closely with some of the engineers and you got all of those wonderful informal "hints" about your value at the company that didn't happen with the engineering team. Our back fills would get held up on an off almost infinitely. Even if we wanted to hire someone they'd low ball the new folks absurdly (I was embarrassed I even interviewed these folks). If there were cutbacks our quarterly pizza lunch (maybe cost a couple hundred dollars in so-so quality pizza) would get canceled ... (the engineering team would quietly invite me to their lunches, nice guys). And the quality of management was pretty poor / there was no effort to improve them. We were also the department that got the usual cycle of VPs in and out as they realized nobody cared what they thought and would move on. When the time came I moved on to a new career. It wasn't so much a bad job, but that sense of absurdity and being just a cost wore me down.
Jach 4y ago
> The biggest downside to staff IME is that you are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost and at danger of being cut. It seems like this shouldn't be an absolute that applies to all staff roles, just a sign of a company with an immature viewpoint on costs. Or even just an inconsistent one. Consider the electricity used to keep the office running, it's a cost, but no one would feel the urge to remind the utility company that it's a cost and therefore at danger of being cut. That "and therefore" isn't even true in general anyway. Pre-pandemic most would consider the risk of cutting the office electricity to be no higher than the risk of the company ceasing to exist for whatever reason, i.e. if the company goes the office also goes, and there aren't many other causes for the office to go for most companies so it's mostly vice-versa too. Similarly there are businesses basically entirely supported by staff teams/individuals doing maintenance of some old software, if they go, the business goes, and vice versa. Anyone trying to pull a "don't forget you're a cost and might get cut!" reminder on them would be an asshole. Meanwhile companies like Google have no problem killing off entire products and their teams (though I think they tend to re-purpose the programmers rather than officially lay them off) even though it's making on the order of ("only") $200m/yr in profit. Sure, if people can get something for cheaper than they used to, or get rid of something they realize they don't need/want, there's incentive to do that and "cut costs" by that amount if they can, but this incentive applies regardless of the staff/line division. Maybe the cure is to remind line roles at such places that they too are in some vague danger.

by kitd 4y ago

duxup 4y ago

>are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost That was my life working tech support. Now I should say I was well paid, and it was a good job generally, but I worked closely with some of the engineers and you got all of those wonderful informal "hints" about your value at the company that didn't happen with the engineering team. Our back fills would get held up on an off almost infinitely. Even if we wanted to hire someone they'd low ball the new folks absurdly (I was embarrassed I even interviewed these folks). If there were cutbacks our quarterly pizza lunch (maybe cost a couple hundred dollars in so-so quality pizza) would get canceled ... (the engineering team would quietly invite me to their lunches, nice guys). And the quality of management was pretty poor / there was no effort to improve them. We were also the department that got the usual cycle of VPs in and out as they realized nobody cared what they thought and would move on. When the time came I moved on to a new career. It wasn't so much a bad job, but that sense of absurdity and being just a cost wore me down.

Jach 4y ago

> The biggest downside to staff IME is that you are almost constantly reminded that you are a cost and at danger of being cut. It seems like this shouldn't be an absolute that applies to all staff roles, just a sign of a company with an immature viewpoint on costs. Or even just an inconsistent one. Consider the electricity used to keep the office running, it's a cost, but no one would feel the urge to remind the utility company that it's a cost and therefore at danger of being cut. That "and therefore" isn't even true in general anyway. Pre-pandemic most would consider the risk of cutting the office electricity to be no higher than the risk of the company ceasing to exist for whatever reason, i.e. if the company goes the office also goes, and there aren't many other causes for the office to go for most companies so it's mostly vice-versa too. Similarly there are businesses basically entirely supported by staff teams/individuals doing maintenance of some old software, if they go, the business goes, and vice versa. Anyone trying to pull a "don't forget you're a cost and might get cut!" reminder on them would be an asshole. Meanwhile companies like Google have no problem killing off entire products and their teams (though I think they tend to re-purpose the programmers rather than officially lay them off) even though it's making on the order of ("only") $200m/yr in profit. Sure, if people can get something for cheaper than they used to, or get rid of something they realize they don't need/want, there's incentive to do that and "cut costs" by that amount if they can, but this incentive applies regardless of the staff/line division. Maybe the cure is to remind line roles at such places that they too are in some vague danger.