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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 peopl

by 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.
ShroudedNight 4y ago
As an engineer, I've had both a fantastic people manager, and a fantastic project manager. They were godsends. They were also abnormally engaged and empathetic. They both sweated the technical details of the project we were working on and used that understanding to operate as very effective negotiators and shit umbrellas. As a result we were clear to move forward very quickly on multiple fronts and ended up having the capacity to pick up a whole bunch of slack from peer teams that had marooned themselves. Good ones have tremendous amounts of value to contribute. Bad ones are the productivity equivalent of a ball-and-chain. Unfortunately, the cross-over point into net positive seems to be located noticeably higher than mean competence.
quickthrower2 4y ago
You summed it up well about planning. Translations: “Plan” = Stretch Goal “Stretch Goal” = Not gonna happen
xiphias2 4y ago
While I agree with you, I think sales is the most important job category besides engineering, and the usual problem is with the people who put themselves between sales and engineering. To know how important sales is, just see what is the most important talent to be paired with a programmer in a 2-person startup. The ratio of sales to engineering at the same time depends on the required growth / burn rate of the company, which depends on the interest rates. When interest rates go up, growth has to be sacrified to focus on survival / short term revenue generation without significant sales/marketing spend.
- Doxin 4y ago
  The real trouble starts when sales can dictate what engineering works on. I did an internship at a company with a 10:1 sales:engineering ratio and it was living hell. You'd have salespeople coming in three times a day with the equivalent of "I sold such and such feature to a client, we need it next week.' Everything was rushed. Nothing worked right.

by 015a 4y ago

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.

ShroudedNight 4y ago

As an engineer, I've had both a fantastic people manager, and a fantastic project manager. They were godsends. They were also abnormally engaged and empathetic. They both sweated the technical details of the project we were working on and used that understanding to operate as very effective negotiators and shit umbrellas. As a result we were clear to move forward very quickly on multiple fronts and ended up having the capacity to pick up a whole bunch of slack from peer teams that had marooned themselves. Good ones have tremendous amounts of value to contribute. Bad ones are the productivity equivalent of a ball-and-chain. Unfortunately, the cross-over point into net positive seems to be located noticeably higher than mean competence.

quickthrower2 4y ago

You summed it up well about planning. Translations: “Plan” = Stretch Goal “Stretch Goal” = Not gonna happen

xiphias2 4y ago

While I agree with you, I think sales is the most important job category besides engineering, and the usual problem is with the people who put themselves between sales and engineering. To know how important sales is, just see what is the most important talent to be paired with a programmer in a 2-person startup. The ratio of sales to engineering at the same time depends on the required growth / burn rate of the company, which depends on the interest rates. When interest rates go up, growth has to be sacrified to focus on survival / short term revenue generation without significant sales/marketing spend.

Doxin 4y ago
The real trouble starts when sales can dictate what engineering works on. I did an internship at a company with a 10:1 sales:engineering ratio and it was living hell. You'd have salespeople coming in three times a day with the equivalent of "I sold such and such feature to a client, we need it next week.' Everything was rushed. Nothing worked right.