18 ms·

I would love to find a full-time position of just doing this kind of work. Nearly every place I've worked had some hacked together system that mostly worked, bu

I would love to find a full-time position of just doing this kind of work. Nearly every place I've worked had some hacked together system that mostly worked, but wasn't enough of a pain for management to dedicate time to. I'd have to steal time away from the feature mill to make some little improvement, and everyone would agree that, yes, it did make things a easier for the devs, but no, we can't just have you out there working on things willy-nilly when there are features to churn out!

Ozzie_osman 4y ago
We carved a role for that at my current startup (dev team ~10 people). We maintain a technical roadmap, which includes platform improvements, dev tooling, infra, etc. Other team members jump in to help out if there's something they're particularly excited about or can do well, but one person is dedicated to this work. Most large companies have teams for this. I've found that the earlier in a company's life you add someone dedicated to this the better.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  Are you hiring? ;)
bbqbbqbbq 4y ago
arohner 4y ago
We're hiring for this role in the UK and parts of the EU: https://boards.greenhouse.io/griffin/jobs/5252742003 https://boards.greenhouse.io/griffin/jobs/5252742003
cwalv 4y ago
PE at Meta is a bit like this. When people ask what it is, my best description is "SWE that focuses on non-functional requirements" (called 'better engineering' internally)
- firstSpeaker 4y ago
  What does PE stand for?
  - cwalv 4y ago
    Production Engineer https://engineering.fb.com/category/production-engineering/ https://engineering.fb.com/category/production-engineering/
endtime 4y ago
A lot of companies have this role! EngProd at Google, Eng Efficiency at Roblox (let me know if you're interested), and I'm sure plenty of others as well.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  I'm certainly interested! If you wouldn't mind emailing me at iam@zachgarwood.com, I'd love to learn more about this type of position.
  - endtime 4y ago
    Just sent you an email. :)
daggersandscars 4y ago
I created this role at my current firm. While I don't know your circumstances, here's what I did to get it funded: * Got buy-in from my coworkers * Collected data on how much wasted dev time there was * Collected data on what we would gain (be specific: time to live, faster release cadence, more releases, whatever is real and appropriate) * Collected data on what clients would gain (errors more likely to be caught before release, more features, etc) * Present to boss, refine message, keep going up the ladder MVP for a PoC, in my opinion: * Come up with project goals as a team * Sane branching strategy. Can be done at the team level if needed by making a team-level "main" * Standalone (meaning no-deploy, "devops" framework independent) unit testing system. Use the one that comes with your language if it doesn't stink. Add unit tests to new code. * Basic build & test system. TeamCity is easy to deploy, configure, and maintain on-prem, Jenkins supports complex use cases. Automatically run on commit to the team-level main. Allow devs to run on-demand for their feature branches. Use other systems (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, etc) if you have the budget. Keep it simple. Don't worry about pull requests and approval chains at this point. Automatically build it, test it, and put it someplace it could be deployed.

Ozzie_osman 4y ago

We carved a role for that at my current startup (dev team ~10 people). We maintain a technical roadmap, which includes platform improvements, dev tooling, infra, etc. Other team members jump in to help out if there's something they're particularly excited about or can do well, but one person is dedicated to this work. Most large companies have teams for this. I've found that the earlier in a company's life you add someone dedicated to this the better.

zach_garwood 4y ago
Are you hiring? ;)

bbqbbqbbq 4y ago

arohner 4y ago

We're hiring for this role in the UK and parts of the EU: https://boards.greenhouse.io/griffin/jobs/5252742003 https://boards.greenhouse.io/griffin/jobs/5252742003

cwalv 4y ago

PE at Meta is a bit like this. When people ask what it is, my best description is "SWE that focuses on non-functional requirements" (called 'better engineering' internally)

firstSpeaker 4y ago
What does PE stand for?
- cwalv 4y ago
  Production Engineer https://engineering.fb.com/category/production-engineering/ https://engineering.fb.com/category/production-engineering/

endtime 4y ago

A lot of companies have this role! EngProd at Google, Eng Efficiency at Roblox (let me know if you're interested), and I'm sure plenty of others as well.

zach_garwood 4y ago
I'm certainly interested! If you wouldn't mind emailing me at iam@zachgarwood.com, I'd love to learn more about this type of position.
- endtime 4y ago
  Just sent you an email. :)

daggersandscars 4y ago

I created this role at my current firm. While I don't know your circumstances, here's what I did to get it funded: * Got buy-in from my coworkers * Collected data on how much wasted dev time there was * Collected data on what we would gain (be specific: time to live, faster release cadence, more releases, whatever is real and appropriate) * Collected data on what clients would gain (errors more likely to be caught before release, more features, etc) * Present to boss, refine message, keep going up the ladder MVP for a PoC, in my opinion: * Come up with project goals as a team * Sane branching strategy. Can be done at the team level if needed by making a team-level "main" * Standalone (meaning no-deploy, "devops" framework independent) unit testing system. Use the one that comes with your language if it doesn't stink. Add unit tests to new code. * Basic build & test system. TeamCity is easy to deploy, configure, and maintain on-prem, Jenkins supports complex use cases. Automatically run on commit to the team-level main. Allow devs to run on-demand for their feature branches. Use other systems (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, etc) if you have the budget. Keep it simple. Don't worry about pull requests and approval chains at this point. Automatically build it, test it, and put it someplace it could be deployed.