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That isn't how it works at all. As per TFA, marketing interviews and hires their own talent, and there isn't any crossover between the engineering and marketin

by jontas 12y ago

That isn't how it works at all. As per TFA, marketing interviews and hires their own talent, and there isn't any crossover between the engineering and marketing team staffing.

enraged_camel 12y ago
Right, that's how it should work in theory. In practice though, marketing doesn't have the capability to interview and hire their own engineering talent. How can they, when they are marketers? How is a marketing manager supposed to do, say, a code review? So what happens in practice is exactly what smacktoward described: the B-level engineers are sent to the marketing department because Engineering doesn't want them around.
- apalmer 12y ago
  Thats making a lot of assumptions here. Honestly the opposite is just as likely to happen. If marketing has a better 'manager'/'lead'/'architect' and is offering better pay and more interesting work, I have seen where the 'B' team becomes more effective than the 'A' team. What it does always do is bifurcate your technical staff...
- jontas 12y ago
  I don't understand how you can say that is what happens in practice when the article (and me, personally) is proof of the exact opposite. As I mentioned in a different comment, I am the developer working for the marketing team described in this article. My boss, the director of marketing, knows when to reach out for assistance and wouldn't presume to make technical decisions that are outside of his area of expertise. He happens to be one of the more technically proficient marketers I've worked with, but even if he wasn't that doesn't mean he is doomed to make poor decisions in isolation. At Knewton, someone who was not up to standards wouldn't be shifted out of the way to another department, they would be let go. That is a pretty rare occurance because the hiring standards are strict (in my opinion, maybe too strict, I think we get a lot of false negatives, but that is another topic). Any company that had a policy of sticking another department with an employee they disliked would not last long because you'd end up with a lot of poor talent being shuffled all over the place.
- drumdance 12y ago
  It doesn't necessarily have to be "b" talent. A more common case is probably young talent. When I first started coding a lot of my projects were marketing oriented: landing pages, email signup forms and the like. After a few years of doing that I had developed the skills to do more core engineering tasks. Edit to add: not necessarily at the same company. Creating marketing automation applications is a great entry level job that makes your resume more attractive to future employers.
- nmcfarl 12y ago
  I don't know – I once was a marketing Dev. And I like to think that I'm good. In that case how they found a dev team for marketing was to go trolling for the best Devs from their previous companies (the marketing team being very deep in start up experience). That's how they found me, that's how they found my coworkers and I like to think that we were the best engineers in that company. Or at least the most pragmatic, and profitable. Anyhow - every single company that isn't founder by a coder has this problem, and many of them make it past it somehow. --- I would say that there were political problems in this company, and if wouldn't do it this way myself. For unclear reasons, engineering a policy was to hire only c coders in 2003. And there was a need for full fledge ecommerce site - for which they were quoting multiyear lead times. Which is why marketing just built it. And a bunch of other stuff.

by jontas 12y ago

That isn't how it works at all. As per TFA, marketing interviews and hires their own talent, and there isn't any crossover between the engineering and marketing team staffing.

enraged_camel 12y ago

Right, that's how it should work in theory. In practice though, marketing doesn't have the capability to interview and hire their own engineering talent. How can they, when they are marketers? How is a marketing manager supposed to do, say, a code review? So what happens in practice is exactly what smacktoward described: the B-level engineers are sent to the marketing department because Engineering doesn't want them around.

apalmer 12y ago
Thats making a lot of assumptions here. Honestly the opposite is just as likely to happen. If marketing has a better 'manager'/'lead'/'architect' and is offering better pay and more interesting work, I have seen where the 'B' team becomes more effective than the 'A' team. What it does always do is bifurcate your technical staff...
jontas 12y ago
I don't understand how you can say that is what happens in practice when the article (and me, personally) is proof of the exact opposite. As I mentioned in a different comment, I am the developer working for the marketing team described in this article. My boss, the director of marketing, knows when to reach out for assistance and wouldn't presume to make technical decisions that are outside of his area of expertise. He happens to be one of the more technically proficient marketers I've worked with, but even if he wasn't that doesn't mean he is doomed to make poor decisions in isolation. At Knewton, someone who was not up to standards wouldn't be shifted out of the way to another department, they would be let go. That is a pretty rare occurance because the hiring standards are strict (in my opinion, maybe too strict, I think we get a lot of false negatives, but that is another topic). Any company that had a policy of sticking another department with an employee they disliked would not last long because you'd end up with a lot of poor talent being shuffled all over the place.
drumdance 12y ago
It doesn't necessarily have to be "b" talent. A more common case is probably young talent. When I first started coding a lot of my projects were marketing oriented: landing pages, email signup forms and the like. After a few years of doing that I had developed the skills to do more core engineering tasks. Edit to add: not necessarily at the same company. Creating marketing automation applications is a great entry level job that makes your resume more attractive to future employers.
nmcfarl 12y ago
I don't know – I once was a marketing Dev. And I like to think that I'm good. In that case how they found a dev team for marketing was to go trolling for the best Devs from their previous companies (the marketing team being very deep in start up experience). That's how they found me, that's how they found my coworkers and I like to think that we were the best engineers in that company. Or at least the most pragmatic, and profitable. Anyhow - every single company that isn't founder by a coder has this problem, and many of them make it past it somehow. --- I would say that there were political problems in this company, and if wouldn't do it this way myself. For unclear reasons, engineering a policy was to hire only c coders in 2003. And there was a need for full fledge ecommerce site - for which they were quoting multiyear lead times. Which is why marketing just built it. And a bunch of other stuff.