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Earlier quoted context omitted.
No developers are often terrible. Source: developer
I can't tell if there is a comma missing or you really mean that noone is terrible?
Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things.
It's a matter of culture and perspective, and of course the fact that there is definitely such a thing as 'bad management' ... but Engs do have a tendency to think they know what's best for the product roadmap, and have really strong views about all sorts of things.
Some of this is good, in a way, but I really wish somehow the culture of development could be professionalized, both in terms of general approach to working at a company - but also in terms of the artisanal aspects of development itself.
It's important to set tone and expecations early, with smaller units it might work ... but as Eng teams get big, then they always end up reporting to Eng and not product, so it really depends on the culture that the VP Eng / CTO has established.
It's hard to know how to apply the appropriate 'grain of salt' when reading things like this thread. I worked for a small (~40 person) start-up before where there was rampant religious discrimination and inappropriate workplace behavior by executives, even the head of HR who functioned more like a culture gatekeeper to enforce the particular overt religious cultural aspects of the founder. When developers pushed back…
I disagree. Both sides can have issues, and it's not primarily the fault of "managers." You can see some issues that I list elsewhere in this thread. The part I do agree with is that responsibility to address the issues often is in management. I do wonder if every tribe thinks they're good, and it's the other side at fault? ... I think about this a lot in my media literacy work, where I explore the empathy gap: https…
I think as an abstract sociology problem, there is every reason to believe the dynamics of the situation make it far more likely to be problems with management or executives, and that it ought to require extraordinary evidence to overturn that prior point of view and instead believe it's sincerely an attitude / effort / tone / culture fit sort of problem on behalf of employees.
This isn't really special to companies where employees are developers. It's just a general property of the phenomenon of a corporation, period.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is exactly right , I feel like a lot of problems mentioned in this thread are a result of hiring the cheapest engineer/developer/etc.
I don't buy it, easy to blame developers. Why not blame poor communication and specs?
I have interacted with off-shore development teams from a specific country 3 times now. I'll say the country later. Every time the development team could not grasp what was required. You literally had to exchange 20 emails with them for each specific point. Of course, this just increased the length of time for scope and in all cases furthered the time of the project. Each stage of the application was over engineered…
> In every single time, management outsourced and took the bid from the lowest priced company. Turns out good engineers make good money. I've worked with some brilliant engineers from India-based consulting teams, and they were not cheap.
I have had good experiences with outsourcing in India itself as well, there are some serious teams there too. But there were some bad cases as well.
Money is definitely an indicator of quality, expensive might not mean good but cheap almost always means they're not top talent.
Was working with a developer through Upwork who claimed to be from Japan. Was in fact from China. Upwork terminated their account without warning, and we owed the individual money. Was a legal and logistical pain in the ass. I guess this is a bad experience with Upwork as much as with a developer.
I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and…
I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and…
So, in all those cases, I believe, the only way is to say thank you and let go.
And i’m IC
I find a lot of developers seriously lack a professional mentality (I think I'm guilty of this in my youth though I made up for it in dedication and sheer hard work.) Moving towards the business side I hired a lot of interns from commerce/marketing and they made my devs seem like little babies, it was shocking how capable, committed, team-oriented they were. It changed my view of things. It's a matter of culture and…
What are some specific (behavioral) examples of "lacking professional mentality"?
+ A general disregard for the talents and value of other groups. (Funniest example: 'ice cream day' at work and these devs cam to sit by us just as we were sitting down and a dev sneers: "Ugh, marketing". We just laughed.) Eng. talent is more classically academic, and yes, marketing is full of fluff, but good marketing, operations, finance is really hard. Basically an intellectual condescension that bleeds into a lot of things.
+ Failing to internalize that ultimately, they work for a business. Sometimes that means doing a lot of things an Eng would never do, like bolt-ons or weird add-ons to address specific customer needs. Cringing around metrics or optimizations that are ROI oriented and maybe not perfectly suited to their vision of what a 'good product' should be. This one can be a real problem in terms of attitude ... because they can get rally angry and stuffy. It's almost an existential debate over who really 'owns' the product in a sense - the business, or the people 'making it'? It really bothers me sometimes the cynical take that many Engineers have in this area - because the presumption is that 'they know better' or 'it's their thing' but really it's not at all. Basically, their view of 'raison d'etre' is often upside down. It depends on the organization.
+ Engs without management experience have a disrespect for how hard management actually is ... more so than in other groups. Marketing specialists are generally not like that.
+ Getting caught up in ideological wars about architecture, or 'bike shedding' - we're all guilty of this, but it's funny how ridiculous and perverse this is when you step outside of it. We're 'building something' not making some kind of 'functional art'. As techies we all love 'new toys' so this one is more understandable.
+ On the business side, if I ask staffers to get something figured out, to give me a quick analysis, to make some slides for the Veep, if they are good, they'll nail it down and move forward. On the dev side, if they even move to it, I get a lot of academic prose as though they don't know the language of business.
It's almost as though it's a little existential: so many on the business side play on 'sports teams' etc. are are very extroverted and team oriented, confident, and natural communicators. Often devs are not. So there's almost a natural cultural clash as well.
You don't have to strongly convince or persuade team players. They don't have tidbits of antagonism, or 'special needs'. They show up early, bang stuff out, realize that the world is somewhat political, that nothing is perfect, that we have to bend for customers, we do 'what needs to be done'.
Edit: hugely generalizing here. Everyone and every team is different.
Re-reading it I make it seems like devs are this terrible bunch! Not at all, most of this is subtle, it's nuanced, it's not like we have gross dereliction, just some different patterns of culture and behaviour.