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Thanks for this manifesto patio11! I read it a couple of times and thought how I could apply it to my career. There are 2 parts in it that I have difficulties

by cool-RR 15y ago

Thanks for this manifesto patio11! I read it a couple of times and thought how I could apply it to my career. There are 2 parts in it that I have difficulties with, and I'd appreciate clarifications: ----------------------------- "In the real world, picking up a new language takes a few weeks of effort and after 6 to 12 months nobody will ever notice you haven’t been doing that one for your entire career." How can you say that? Sure, an experienced and intelligent programmer can learn to program in Language X in a few weeks, but do you think that after a year he will reach the same level of efficiency of a similarly experienced and intelligent programmer who has 8 years of experience programming? Sure, you'd know most of the important things that the 8-year guy knows, but I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services? ----------------------------- "Profit Centers are the part of an organization that bring in the bacon [...] Cost Centers are, well, everybody else. You really want to be attached to Profit Centers." I don't understand this. Let me see if I got the terms right: Profit Centers are "where the money comes in from", and Cost Center are "where the money comes out of". But of course, Cost Centers do not exist because CEOs are looking for ways to flush money down the tubes-- it's just that Cost Centers bring in money in indirect ways. For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment. So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner? You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is. ----------------------------- Thanks again for the post!

barry-cotter 15y ago
Cost centres are to be minimised as far as possible. This occasionally means they will be minimised more than is wise and there will be an emergency when this shows up and someone has to fix it. Nevertheless a Cost Centre is a kind of janitor, an absolutely necessary thing that should be done, at the minimum cost that lends itself to an acceptable standard. Another concept that might enlighten you in this context is Core Competency. Everything that is not this can in theory be outsourced. In practice it may not be worth outsourcing because it would cost too much in time, money or communications overhead but the company exists to charge money to do its Core Competency and everything else is detail. Don't be detail. If you are hired to work on a cost centre you attempt to make or save money and either get a raise/bonus for doing so, or move to where you can, whether in the company or in another one. Finally, being only "kinda douche-y" makes you vastly less douche-y than just about everybody in the executive suite. Your colleagues are mostly not your friends. Your manager is definitely not your friend. Your manager's manger's job is partly to get as much value (work) out of people like you for the least money possible. If you are ever in a job where you and your (over)manager are directly antagonistic run like hell, but 100% aligned incentives are very, very rare. If you want keywords try "principal agent problem". You are not a sarariman, you will never have either job security or loyalty from above so don't act loyal from below, it just makes you a chump.
Ralith 15y ago
I'm not OP, but I think I can address your concerns a bit: In the former case, I think OP's point was that being exceptionally familiar with a given language or technology is not what ultimately makes a programmer exceptionally good: that factor is platform-independent, so to speak. Being one of the 10 programmers in the world most familiar with X might be a neat thing to put on your resume (if you could prove it) but probably isn't as important to getting your job done well as the elements of your skills which apply regardless of language. In the latter case, yes, cost centers are valuable, otherwise they wouldn't exist at all, but they're not the company's primary business, and if something needs to be cut, they'll consider ancillary stuff like this first. This is really just a repeat of the age-old advice to work at a company whose primary business is whatever it is you want to do, as that will usually get you the best treatment.
Huppie 15y ago
I'm not patio11, but I'll try to answer them from my perspective: "I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services?" This sounds good in theory, however, there are only so many businesses that actually are in need of 'a programmer in the 99th percentile of language X'. You can find a lot more that are looking for 'a programmer that helps me make more money'. The problem is that there's a big gap between 'being sufficient in language X' and being in the 99th percentile. If you are in the 90th percentile of language X developers, there's not much people looking for you (they need the 99th percentile guy). "For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment. So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner?" As far as I understood the article, the point would be to look how you could communicate about the job so it would be attached to the Profit Center. Let me give it a (probably bad) try: _"I make sure company X saves 10K on manual backup verifications, which are in place to make sure they don't lose millions when a backup is required."_ A normal CEO would probably only hire you for $AMOUNT_OF_MONEY if he believes it would save him >$AMOUNT_OF_MONEY on e.g. manual labor. "You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is." The trick in 'transferring' to the Profit Center is part communication about your job (to your manager, CEO, clients, etc.) and the other part asking the question _"How does what I'm doing right now makes my boss money?"_ because if it doesn't make him money some how, you're probably messing around. That said, it's really hard to connect 'bugfixes on other people's applications' to the Profit Center.

by cool-RR 15y ago

barry-cotter 15y ago

Cost centres are to be minimised as far as possible. This occasionally means they will be minimised more than is wise and there will be an emergency when this shows up and someone has to fix it. Nevertheless a Cost Centre is a kind of janitor, an absolutely necessary thing that should be done, at the minimum cost that lends itself to an acceptable standard. Another concept that might enlighten you in this context is Core Competency. Everything that is not this can in theory be outsourced. In practice it may not be worth outsourcing because it would cost too much in time, money or communications overhead but the company exists to charge money to do its Core Competency and everything else is detail. Don't be detail. If you are hired to work on a cost centre you attempt to make or save money and either get a raise/bonus for doing so, or move to where you can, whether in the company or in another one. Finally, being only "kinda douche-y" makes you vastly less douche-y than just about everybody in the executive suite. Your colleagues are mostly not your friends. Your manager is definitely not your friend. Your manager's manger's job is partly to get as much value (work) out of people like you for the least money possible. If you are ever in a job where you and your (over)manager are directly antagonistic run like hell, but 100% aligned incentives are very, very rare. If you want keywords try "principal agent problem". You are not a sarariman, you will never have either job security or loyalty from above so don't act loyal from below, it just makes you a chump.

Ralith 15y ago

I'm not OP, but I think I can address your concerns a bit: In the former case, I think OP's point was that being exceptionally familiar with a given language or technology is not what ultimately makes a programmer exceptionally good: that factor is platform-independent, so to speak. Being one of the 10 programmers in the world most familiar with X might be a neat thing to put on your resume (if you could prove it) but probably isn't as important to getting your job done well as the elements of your skills which apply regardless of language. In the latter case, yes, cost centers are valuable, otherwise they wouldn't exist at all, but they're not the company's primary business, and if something needs to be cut, they'll consider ancillary stuff like this first. This is really just a repeat of the age-old advice to work at a company whose primary business is whatever it is you want to do, as that will usually get you the best treatment.

Huppie 15y ago

I'm not patio11, but I'll try to answer them from my perspective: "I was taught that the worth of programmers is exponential to their talents. Say that if you're at the 99% percentile of Language X developers, there are (say) about 1,000 people like you in the world. If you're in the 99.99% percentlie, there are now only 10 people like you worldwide. Wouldn't that result in a much bigger price that you could put on your services?" This sounds good in theory, however, there are only so many businesses that actually are in need of 'a programmer in the 99th percentile of language X'. You can find a lot more that are looking for 'a programmer that helps me make more money'. The problem is that there's a big gap between 'being sufficient in language X' and being in the 99th percentile. If you are in the 90th percentile of language X developers, there's not much people looking for you (they need the 99th percentile guy). "For example, let's say that you're a CEO, and you have hired an expensive programmer to write a script that periodically checks that your backups are valid. That would qualify for a "Cost Center", right? And everyone would agree that this is a wise investment. So what am I supposed to do if I'm hired to do this kind of job? Decline it because it's a Cost Cetner?" As far as I understood the article, the point would be to look how you could communicate about the job so it would be attached to the Profit Center. Let me give it a (probably bad) try: _"I make sure company X saves 10K on manual backup verifications, which are in place to make sure they don't lose millions when a backup is required."_ A normal CEO would probably only hire you for $AMOUNT_OF_MONEY if he believes it would save him >$AMOUNT_OF_MONEY on e.g. manual labor. "You also suggest to "engineer your transfer [from Cost Center to Profit Center] after joining the company". Wouldn't that be kinda douche-y? I mean, I'd be pretty pissed if I hired a guy to do Job X and then he was trying to engineer his way into Job Y because that's where the money is." The trick in 'transferring' to the Profit Center is part communication about your job (to your manager, CEO, clients, etc.) and the other part asking the question _"How does what I'm doing right now makes my boss money?"_ because if it doesn't make him money some how, you're probably messing around. That said, it's really hard to connect 'bugfixes on other people's applications' to the Profit Center.