4 ms·

Holly fuck balls this is all bullshit. You're a cost center. Servers, staff, throw product and design in there. Do you know why the metrics are all bullshit.

Holly fuck balls this is all bullshit. You're a cost center. Servers, staff, throw product and design in there. Do you know why the metrics are all bullshit. Because the metrics are the ones that marketing and sales use to show off. They dont fucking matter one bit to tech. How much does each user of your system cost on a monthly basis? Is that an average? Do you have clients that are higher or lower cost (because they pay the same rate and consume more services?) ... If your sales team brings you growth in that group is it doing any one any good? Can you tell me per user how much of that cost is going to cloud or infra? How much of it is going to staff? Is what your staff working on going to move the needle on one of those numbers? No? Is your engineering effort going to lower the cloud bill? Is it going to shorten your testing and release cycle? "Value" is not some abstract concept, Its very concrete and very real. Put those numbers up, make them fucking real time numbers. Tell your engineering team that their bonus is tied to making those numbers better. Empower your team to tell sales and marketing NO, Or tell them that they need to raise the dam prices. You want to super charge your engineering team. Get them out socializing with the other nerds in the building, that's everyone who works for the CFO. Embed an accountant in every tech team to figure out how to account (literally) for the changes they are making.

deleted 2y ago
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engineers_unite 2y ago
"Holly fuck balls this is all bullshit." TOTALLY. Never seen someone so wrong be so celebrated. This guy makes horrid engineering orgs.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  Engineering? By what metric do we even call ourselves engineers any longer? What are we measuring against? what standard are we holding ourselves to? The advice the poster is giving leads to stories like this: "I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38069710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38069710 If your goal is to have better engineering then then just tie all their work to the only metric that matters, the bottom line.
itsanaccount 2y ago
Its absolutely hilarious to me that in software we have all these computers and yet "management"/"leadership" tracks things by some combination of gut feelings and bullshit spreadsheets/wiki pages. Its deer in the headlights when I suggest we use the computers to audit and track the computers. But we know why that is. Tech is the last bastion of the middle class in this rape and pillage extractionist economy we have. Tech is backwards enough, built in the artistic ruins of techno-libertarian dreams of silicon valley and we don't dare change it. Just like medieval farms with their strange rules on who got to use what land and harvest what trees, rules so complex that you need a collection of managing lower lords who knew the local customs for the king to extract value from the land (software). This industry is kept in its insane state a means of protecting all of our jobs that don't have to exist. When running computers ceases being bullshit, most of us are going to join the ranks of everyone else in the overly optimized manufacturing and service jobs all scraping to get by.
- skydhash 2y ago
  The fact is that computers automate most tedious parts of business and personal workflows. But not everyone can "computer-speak". Here come the programmers and for a time, it was sane. Then people wanted more automation and tech companies started selling software. Productivity ramped up, but the foundation is mostly porcelain, fragile to any changes in business workflow. Whenever we got a more resilient piece of software, that because it went back to "computer-speak". So the choice is either a horde of programmers maintaining the fragile machinery or getting everyone to know "computer-speak". We were getting to the the second option when everyone knew that you have to take a training course to use a computer properly, but now they're presented as "intuitive" (aka magic, so no need to learn anything) and we're back to the first option. Now they're emphasizing the "magic" aspect with AI, meaning bullshit can happen. I'll be worried when people chose the bullshit instead of getting results.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  I recently listened to a CEO go on and on about Generation Z and Millennials this and that. He read a bunch of articles and is trying to shift the org to welcome in Gen Z who want: "a million dollars for nothing", "the company to adapt to them" etc. And thats why we have bring your dog to work and unlimited PTO. I would say he needs to hire a consultant instead but that sounds worse. It's abject panic in CEO world these days. After that rant and a lecture on being engaged, he banned gym shoes and T-shirts. I looked around and noticed that all the people wearing T-shirts and gym shoes were 50+.

deleted 2y ago

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engineers_unite 2y ago

"Holly fuck balls this is all bullshit." TOTALLY. Never seen someone so wrong be so celebrated. This guy makes horrid engineering orgs.

zer00eyz 2y ago
Engineering? By what metric do we even call ourselves engineers any longer? What are we measuring against? what standard are we holding ourselves to? The advice the poster is giving leads to stories like this: "I Accidentally Saved Half A Million Dollars" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38069710 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38069710 If your goal is to have better engineering then then just tie all their work to the only metric that matters, the bottom line.

itsanaccount 2y ago

Its absolutely hilarious to me that in software we have all these computers and yet "management"/"leadership" tracks things by some combination of gut feelings and bullshit spreadsheets/wiki pages. Its deer in the headlights when I suggest we use the computers to audit and track the computers. But we know why that is. Tech is the last bastion of the middle class in this rape and pillage extractionist economy we have. Tech is backwards enough, built in the artistic ruins of techno-libertarian dreams of silicon valley and we don't dare change it. Just like medieval farms with their strange rules on who got to use what land and harvest what trees, rules so complex that you need a collection of managing lower lords who knew the local customs for the king to extract value from the land (software). This industry is kept in its insane state a means of protecting all of our jobs that don't have to exist. When running computers ceases being bullshit, most of us are going to join the ranks of everyone else in the overly optimized manufacturing and service jobs all scraping to get by.

skydhash 2y ago
The fact is that computers automate most tedious parts of business and personal workflows. But not everyone can "computer-speak". Here come the programmers and for a time, it was sane. Then people wanted more automation and tech companies started selling software. Productivity ramped up, but the foundation is mostly porcelain, fragile to any changes in business workflow. Whenever we got a more resilient piece of software, that because it went back to "computer-speak". So the choice is either a horde of programmers maintaining the fragile machinery or getting everyone to know "computer-speak". We were getting to the the second option when everyone knew that you have to take a training course to use a computer properly, but now they're presented as "intuitive" (aka magic, so no need to learn anything) and we're back to the first option. Now they're emphasizing the "magic" aspect with AI, meaning bullshit can happen. I'll be worried when people chose the bullshit instead of getting results.
datavirtue 2y ago
I recently listened to a CEO go on and on about Generation Z and Millennials this and that. He read a bunch of articles and is trying to shift the org to welcome in Gen Z who want: "a million dollars for nothing", "the company to adapt to them" etc. And thats why we have bring your dog to work and unlimited PTO. I would say he needs to hire a consultant instead but that sounds worse. It's abject panic in CEO world these days. After that rant and a lecture on being engaged, he banned gym shoes and T-shirts. I looked around and noticed that all the people wearing T-shirts and gym shoes were 50+.