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I think some teams could do really well to have an embedded developer- someone who can understand both fields decently enough.

analog31 3y ago
I've been in that role. It's utterly thankless. You will experience every way that the devs and non-devs can't work together. The devs will treat you like a scab. You'll discover all of the non-technical reasons why it's hard to be a dev, without being paid like one. Today, my rule is that I only code for myself, and share my code with others who are also good coders. I'll use code to produce a result and share the result. This also lets me off the hook from all sorts of things like UI's, installers, etc. Anybody who's a good enough dev to do it for money, and can stand doing it, should be. Edit: Thinking about it more, it's not that we can't work together as people but that the organizational culture makes it hard.
jwsteigerwalt 3y ago
I’ve been in that role and it’s incredibly rewarding. The satisfaction from delivering something valuable to the sales leaders I partner with when they get something they genuinely appreciate trumps any commit dashboard.
Sylamore 3y ago
While I agree in principal, speaking as someone who's been that person it creates a lot of stress when it's just one person. You never get a break from enhancing or fixing and maintaining the tools that the rest of the team is using, and probably lose opportunities in your "other" skills. You'll probably get no support from the actual dev groups in the company, never get funding to hire a contractor (which almost never works out anyway), potentially end up stuck career wise because if the tools are really useful your manager isn't gonna want to lose you to a promotion. A small "tools" team shared across some related disciplines under common leadership would be more ideal in my experience, but normally it's either beg for the real dev teams scraps or go rogue. I like using code to solve problems and automate things, but I have no desire to be a full time coder just like I don't have a strong desire to be a people manager.

analog31 3y ago

I've been in that role. It's utterly thankless. You will experience every way that the devs and non-devs can't work together. The devs will treat you like a scab. You'll discover all of the non-technical reasons why it's hard to be a dev, without being paid like one. Today, my rule is that I only code for myself, and share my code with others who are also good coders. I'll use code to produce a result and share the result. This also lets me off the hook from all sorts of things like UI's, installers, etc. Anybody who's a good enough dev to do it for money, and can stand doing it, should be. Edit: Thinking about it more, it's not that we can't work together as people but that the organizational culture makes it hard.

jwsteigerwalt 3y ago

I’ve been in that role and it’s incredibly rewarding. The satisfaction from delivering something valuable to the sales leaders I partner with when they get something they genuinely appreciate trumps any commit dashboard.

Sylamore 3y ago

While I agree in principal, speaking as someone who's been that person it creates a lot of stress when it's just one person. You never get a break from enhancing or fixing and maintaining the tools that the rest of the team is using, and probably lose opportunities in your "other" skills. You'll probably get no support from the actual dev groups in the company, never get funding to hire a contractor (which almost never works out anyway), potentially end up stuck career wise because if the tools are really useful your manager isn't gonna want to lose you to a promotion. A small "tools" team shared across some related disciplines under common leadership would be more ideal in my experience, but normally it's either beg for the real dev teams scraps or go rogue. I like using code to solve problems and automate things, but I have no desire to be a full time coder just like I don't have a strong desire to be a people manager.