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Every few months or so we get these really circle jerky posts by engineers who believe the world of business is them just pumping out code and somehow getting p

Every few months or so we get these really circle jerky posts by engineers who believe the world of business is them just pumping out code and somehow getting paid. 1) that’s the difference between a job and a hobby. You do the hard parts you’re paid to do sometimes. 2) decisions you don’t like by stakeholders you don’t like aren’t always wrong just because you see some way to “code it”. A product is not just its code base. It’s is also the design, marketing, revenue and growth strategies. Sometimes even more than the code base. Sometimes code can solve these issues but more often it can’t. 3) this view often attracts comments from engineers who seem to have very limited experience in building and running successful products that can pay the bills. It requires a lot of hard work you don’t love. Yes you can find others to do that work but that’s you. You’re the one hired to do the work higher ups don’t. If you disagree you can start your own business and learn for yourself. A business is a lot more that solving interesting problems and calling it a day. It’s building, growing and managing a business and the tasks that go along with it.

busterarm 4y ago
It's kind of like all of the threads that I've been reading from smart, well-paid engineers lately bemoaning that unprofitable startup companies should be offering softer landings for mass layoffs. They have all of this fuzzy thinking around how in this economy broken companies that can't raise any more money are going to somehow take out loans to give people a year of severance... No profession is immune from practitioners being completely disconnected from reality. We are not geniuses simply because we do X.
- DAVer98 4y ago
  [dead]
riceman1864 4y ago
Thank you for commenting this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading some of the other comments on this post, e.g. "I think we need to get nontechnical people OUT of our process" There are so many engineers out there that are basically coddled children who get paid handsomely to sit in a chair and write code, and have no concept of where their handsome pay comes from. Thankfully, this era is coming to an end and companies will be/are already taking a hard look at who is driving business value and who is not.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  You're perpetuating this assumption that engineers are incapable of providing business value without all these nontechnicals that I am complaining about. When I started my career I was working directly with stakeholders and building them exactly what they wanted. I did design, I wrote the code, I handled the infra, I triaged the issues. I was happy, my stakeholders were happy, and my process was not all that different than what LEAN prescribes. Amazingly, we didn't practice scrum or agile or any of that crap. I'd have a meeting with stakeholders at the beginning of the project, then I'd go to work on it, and they would keep in touch. If there were major issues, another meeting. But that was it. My manager would check in periodically for more detailed status updates, or to weigh in on technical decisions, and provide additional feedback from stakeholders and VIPs. But that was it, we all owned our given areas. Next company, same thing. Outgoing CTO drops literally the entire codebase in my lap and my boss says, pretty much, "it's your baby now". I clean it up, refactoring and rearchitecting as needed, and now, something like 8 years later, it's still running. In fact, that company got bought by another company in Europe, they've fired all of their staff, and yet somehow my infra still runs and drives business value. (Granted, I am a little nervous that they don't seem to have anyone supervising it, but I quit them years ago and only know this because they are asking me to rewrite the documentation that they lost after I left.) Last I checked annual revenues were around $20mil, and I know this because my code is the scorekeeper. None of this could have happened if I was on a team with code school alum and a product manager and a scrum manager and all that bullshit. Whatever we would have made would have likely been leaky and broken and required the ongoing commitment of an entire team of people to run what should be an afterthought for one SWE. A competent, talented programmer with deep knowledge of the machine can be a force to be reckoned with. But the business cabal cripples us, just as they like to blow out the kneecaps of anything that threatens their jaundiced power base. There are numerous successful projects out there that nontechnicals view as run by anarchy, yet, these things live on. The Pirate Bay is my favorite example, but you could say the same for a lot of open-source that is both important and lacking in a foundation or supervisory organization. Nobody can truly "own" the product any more, and all of software suffers. I think that it is vitally important that every project be understandable and implementable by one person, because when you throw a team of technical halfwits at it important details get forgotten. And the machinery that has been built to cover for this: endless ticket threads, neverending meetings, the Office Space-esque interactions between a manager and their reports... all of this just goes away when you replace it with a handful of smart, motivated, talented folks that can operate independently. As much as the business world hates them, there are a variety of one-man shops out there driving real business value and making real products, but my bet is they aren't making much use of all the bullshit "modern" tech (serverless, a bajillion AWS services, etc) because of the very real cost of needing massive teams of people just to keep these clockwork code contraptions running.
arcturus17 4y ago
I have my own solo consulting business. I outsource a lot of implementation so I don’t code boring bits in production and don’t have to touch technologies that I don’t like. I code a little kata every morning, and do hobby projects as means of research, promotion, and to keep my skills sharp. On rare occasion I make individual contributions to production, but mostly when I choose to. This could all be fun for OP. But then I have to manage customers, project/products and above all, sell. I prefer technical stuff but I’ve learnt to find sales palatable, sometimes even exciting. More importantly: necessary. I am dedicating a fully focused and intense Monday every week (plus some residual follow-ups) at the moment, but even this moderate amount of dedication to business development (~15% of my working time) would probably horrify a lot of devs. I doubt a perfect job exists. It’s trade-offs all the way down. Some people are suggesting academia but many people there complain about lower pay and lack of action. Like in engineering, choose your trade-offs, and take your mind off them or, hell, embrace them fully.
- shetill 4y ago
  I find this type of business very interesting, could I ask more details on how you begin and what you need to know to start this type of business?
015a 4y ago
And every time these posts come around, someone immediately jumps in and plays a character in Office Space, saying "oh the engineers don't like talking to people, that's why I'm valuable". Look at all the recent layoffs; get the data and ask around "how many Engineers with 1+ years of seniority were impacted by the layoffs". The number is dwarfed by literally every other business function. Dwarfed. Your probability of getting laid off is, actually, seemingly, directly proportional to how close you are to the center of business function, process, and revenue. Sales? Big impact. Marketing? Gulp. HR? Ruh roh. Product and Design? Eh, some get laid off. Engineering? Least of all. Well, except C-Suite; not seeing a lot of CEOs impacted by the layoffs, weirdly. This is LITERALLY the companies saying you're wrong; that a lot of what you just said is a smokescreen fabrication invented by the people who are being laid off to justify their paychecks. Which isn't me asserting that Sales isn't valuable, or Marketing, or any of those other functions. Hella valuable. Its just me going to bat for the other side: That comments like your's are insensitive to the very real fact that, in many organizations, Engineers are treated like extremely well compensated trash. Shit flows downstream, and in software orgs it really doesn't get more downstream than the engineers; so when they say "we need to re-architect this piece of the system" or "we need to add testing" or "we need process improvements around coordination with other teams" oftentimes they're the least-heard voice in the room. "Well, we have room for five epics this quarter, and product wants these four things done, sales wants these two, we'll include this re-architecture as a stretch goal". Your entire worldview of a healthy organization is born from the largest bull market in human history, in the wealthiest country on the planet. Everyone is a genius in a bull market. Whether your opinion will still hold over the next few years is something you'll get to discover. I'll say this, though: There are people who do real work, and there are people who stand next to the people who do real work. I would much rather be the former than the latter. Engineers do real work; product managers oftentimes do real work; designers do real work; sales, marketing, lots of real work; coordinators, project managers, middle managers, scrum specialists, jira consultants, not real work. These are all problems born of too much money.
- tsunamifury 4y ago
  Sir, in complete humility, you need to take a deep breath and shed whatever bad junk is embedded deep inside you. Your response is both: not about what was said, and re-enforcing negative stereotypes people have about engineers being arrogant and naive. I get you might be scared for some reason, or think you're the best most invaluable engineer in the world. But let me introduce you to a team of 1000 more engineers just like you that I've lead, fired, replaced, etc. Be humble, be realistic, know how you contribute and do it. Doing the hard work is a big part of the work, not just the whatever you want to do. Of course people value engineering, but they aren't the only thing that makes a product go.
complex_exp 4y ago
That very well may be true, but what's wrong with trying to cheat the system and do only the fun part? Clearly some people manage to do just that. I generally don't care about making the business fly, I care about what I care about. A better discussion would be about what can you reasonably expect, for example you'll probably never lead a project which puts a limit on your salary. It may still be a good decision.
- Bilal_io 4y ago
  > I generally don't care about making the business fly, I care about what I care about. That's not ethical at all.
  - complex_exp 4y ago
    Oh no! Talk to me when the corporate structure kicks you out with zero day notice.
carom 4y ago
No one is talking about running a business. We're talking about code bureaucracy. I don't like front end, still happy to do it though, the issue is mandatory meetings, code reviews, design docs, and tests to make a simple UI change. Run a business, talk to stakeholders, make sales, but don't make programming so unpalatable that it moves at a glacial pace. Tell me what to do then let me do the thing you pay me to, and that is to puke out high quality code. All of the code bureaucracy features have their place but I don't think they're needed for every change.
- t43562 4y ago
  Code reviews should be at least a chance for other team members to learn the code - and take responsibility for it. If there's a bug they should have spotted it and the heat no longer falls entirely on you. Tests similarly are about allowing other people to change things without fearing that they will break the code you wrote. Without them the pace of change becomes very slow or very buggy. It's just working with other people that's more complex than working on your own. The meetings are usually because nobody has enough information or enough authority to get things decided. We can fix that sort of thing up to a point in many ways including the agile idea of having a product owner to prevent stakeholders annoying developers.
sbochins 4y ago
Totally agree. The non-fun parts are usually the parts that you have to pay someone to do. I work on a pretty complicated piece of software with some interesting technical challenges. But, the most valuable things I can work on are around collaborating with other teams, integrations, and reliability. Would much rather work on some of the unresolved technical challenges. But, that’s more hobby work, not work work.

busterarm 4y ago

It's kind of like all of the threads that I've been reading from smart, well-paid engineers lately bemoaning that unprofitable startup companies should be offering softer landings for mass layoffs. They have all of this fuzzy thinking around how in this economy broken companies that can't raise any more money are going to somehow take out loans to give people a year of severance... No profession is immune from practitioners being completely disconnected from reality. We are not geniuses simply because we do X.

DAVer98 4y ago
[dead]

riceman1864 4y ago

Thank you for commenting this. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading some of the other comments on this post, e.g. "I think we need to get nontechnical people OUT of our process" There are so many engineers out there that are basically coddled children who get paid handsomely to sit in a chair and write code, and have no concept of where their handsome pay comes from. Thankfully, this era is coming to an end and companies will be/are already taking a hard look at who is driving business value and who is not.

pdntspa 4y ago
You're perpetuating this assumption that engineers are incapable of providing business value without all these nontechnicals that I am complaining about. When I started my career I was working directly with stakeholders and building them exactly what they wanted. I did design, I wrote the code, I handled the infra, I triaged the issues. I was happy, my stakeholders were happy, and my process was not all that different than what LEAN prescribes. Amazingly, we didn't practice scrum or agile or any of that crap. I'd have a meeting with stakeholders at the beginning of the project, then I'd go to work on it, and they would keep in touch. If there were major issues, another meeting. But that was it. My manager would check in periodically for more detailed status updates, or to weigh in on technical decisions, and provide additional feedback from stakeholders and VIPs. But that was it, we all owned our given areas. Next company, same thing. Outgoing CTO drops literally the entire codebase in my lap and my boss says, pretty much, "it's your baby now". I clean it up, refactoring and rearchitecting as needed, and now, something like 8 years later, it's still running. In fact, that company got bought by another company in Europe, they've fired all of their staff, and yet somehow my infra still runs and drives business value. (Granted, I am a little nervous that they don't seem to have anyone supervising it, but I quit them years ago and only know this because they are asking me to rewrite the documentation that they lost after I left.) Last I checked annual revenues were around $20mil, and I know this because my code is the scorekeeper. None of this could have happened if I was on a team with code school alum and a product manager and a scrum manager and all that bullshit. Whatever we would have made would have likely been leaky and broken and required the ongoing commitment of an entire team of people to run what should be an afterthought for one SWE. A competent, talented programmer with deep knowledge of the machine can be a force to be reckoned with. But the business cabal cripples us, just as they like to blow out the kneecaps of anything that threatens their jaundiced power base. There are numerous successful projects out there that nontechnicals view as run by anarchy, yet, these things live on. The Pirate Bay is my favorite example, but you could say the same for a lot of open-source that is both important and lacking in a foundation or supervisory organization. Nobody can truly "own" the product any more, and all of software suffers. I think that it is vitally important that every project be understandable and implementable by one person, because when you throw a team of technical halfwits at it important details get forgotten. And the machinery that has been built to cover for this: endless ticket threads, neverending meetings, the Office Space-esque interactions between a manager and their reports... all of this just goes away when you replace it with a handful of smart, motivated, talented folks that can operate independently. As much as the business world hates them, there are a variety of one-man shops out there driving real business value and making real products, but my bet is they aren't making much use of all the bullshit "modern" tech (serverless, a bajillion AWS services, etc) because of the very real cost of needing massive teams of people just to keep these clockwork code contraptions running.

arcturus17 4y ago

I have my own solo consulting business. I outsource a lot of implementation so I don’t code boring bits in production and don’t have to touch technologies that I don’t like. I code a little kata every morning, and do hobby projects as means of research, promotion, and to keep my skills sharp. On rare occasion I make individual contributions to production, but mostly when I choose to. This could all be fun for OP. But then I have to manage customers, project/products and above all, sell. I prefer technical stuff but I’ve learnt to find sales palatable, sometimes even exciting. More importantly: necessary. I am dedicating a fully focused and intense Monday every week (plus some residual follow-ups) at the moment, but even this moderate amount of dedication to business development (~15% of my working time) would probably horrify a lot of devs. I doubt a perfect job exists. It’s trade-offs all the way down. Some people are suggesting academia but many people there complain about lower pay and lack of action. Like in engineering, choose your trade-offs, and take your mind off them or, hell, embrace them fully.

shetill 4y ago
I find this type of business very interesting, could I ask more details on how you begin and what you need to know to start this type of business?

015a 4y ago

And every time these posts come around, someone immediately jumps in and plays a character in Office Space, saying "oh the engineers don't like talking to people, that's why I'm valuable". Look at all the recent layoffs; get the data and ask around "how many Engineers with 1+ years of seniority were impacted by the layoffs". The number is dwarfed by literally every other business function. Dwarfed. Your probability of getting laid off is, actually, seemingly, directly proportional to how close you are to the center of business function, process, and revenue. Sales? Big impact. Marketing? Gulp. HR? Ruh roh. Product and Design? Eh, some get laid off. Engineering? Least of all. Well, except C-Suite; not seeing a lot of CEOs impacted by the layoffs, weirdly. This is LITERALLY the companies saying you're wrong; that a lot of what you just said is a smokescreen fabrication invented by the people who are being laid off to justify their paychecks. Which isn't me asserting that Sales isn't valuable, or Marketing, or any of those other functions. Hella valuable. Its just me going to bat for the other side: That comments like your's are insensitive to the very real fact that, in many organizations, Engineers are treated like extremely well compensated trash. Shit flows downstream, and in software orgs it really doesn't get more downstream than the engineers; so when they say "we need to re-architect this piece of the system" or "we need to add testing" or "we need process improvements around coordination with other teams" oftentimes they're the least-heard voice in the room. "Well, we have room for five epics this quarter, and product wants these four things done, sales wants these two, we'll include this re-architecture as a stretch goal". Your entire worldview of a healthy organization is born from the largest bull market in human history, in the wealthiest country on the planet. Everyone is a genius in a bull market. Whether your opinion will still hold over the next few years is something you'll get to discover. I'll say this, though: There are people who do real work, and there are people who stand next to the people who do real work. I would much rather be the former than the latter. Engineers do real work; product managers oftentimes do real work; designers do real work; sales, marketing, lots of real work; coordinators, project managers, middle managers, scrum specialists, jira consultants, not real work. These are all problems born of too much money.

tsunamifury 4y ago
Sir, in complete humility, you need to take a deep breath and shed whatever bad junk is embedded deep inside you. Your response is both: not about what was said, and re-enforcing negative stereotypes people have about engineers being arrogant and naive. I get you might be scared for some reason, or think you're the best most invaluable engineer in the world. But let me introduce you to a team of 1000 more engineers just like you that I've lead, fired, replaced, etc. Be humble, be realistic, know how you contribute and do it. Doing the hard work is a big part of the work, not just the whatever you want to do. Of course people value engineering, but they aren't the only thing that makes a product go.

complex_exp 4y ago

That very well may be true, but what's wrong with trying to cheat the system and do only the fun part? Clearly some people manage to do just that. I generally don't care about making the business fly, I care about what I care about. A better discussion would be about what can you reasonably expect, for example you'll probably never lead a project which puts a limit on your salary. It may still be a good decision.

Bilal_io 4y ago
> I generally don't care about making the business fly, I care about what I care about. That's not ethical at all.
- complex_exp 4y ago
  Oh no! Talk to me when the corporate structure kicks you out with zero day notice.

carom 4y ago

No one is talking about running a business. We're talking about code bureaucracy. I don't like front end, still happy to do it though, the issue is mandatory meetings, code reviews, design docs, and tests to make a simple UI change. Run a business, talk to stakeholders, make sales, but don't make programming so unpalatable that it moves at a glacial pace. Tell me what to do then let me do the thing you pay me to, and that is to puke out high quality code. All of the code bureaucracy features have their place but I don't think they're needed for every change.

t43562 4y ago
Code reviews should be at least a chance for other team members to learn the code - and take responsibility for it. If there's a bug they should have spotted it and the heat no longer falls entirely on you. Tests similarly are about allowing other people to change things without fearing that they will break the code you wrote. Without them the pace of change becomes very slow or very buggy. It's just working with other people that's more complex than working on your own. The meetings are usually because nobody has enough information or enough authority to get things decided. We can fix that sort of thing up to a point in many ways including the agile idea of having a product owner to prevent stakeholders annoying developers.

sbochins 4y ago

Totally agree. The non-fun parts are usually the parts that you have to pay someone to do. I work on a pretty complicated piece of software with some interesting technical challenges. But, the most valuable things I can work on are around collaborating with other teams, integrations, and reliability. Would much rather work on some of the unresolved technical challenges. But, that’s more hobby work, not work work.