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What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#31

Post by tolbish »

quicklime wrote: post #18

I've worked at both SV and traditional companies, and I feel like this very closely matches my experience. One of the things I worry about is that even at companies that are doing "Agile transformations" and adopting methodologies like Scrum, in practice have "Product Owners" who are there to give instructions via Jira tickets. Other roles like "Business Analysts" are there to ensure that lowly developers never have…

That would give developers too much power and make them non replaceable/interchangeable.

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#32

Post by peter_d_sherman »

>""SV-like" companies think of software engineers as the people best suited to solve the problems that the organization has. They hire not only for technical skills but communication and problem-solving ability. Their thinking is a bit more like this:

Software engineers are among the highest-paid people in our company.

This is because they can bring some of the highest leverage through coding and problem solving.

We want to expose them to the business, so while they are doing their "normal" work, they can also find more impactful opportunities for the business."

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#33

Post by jedberg »

The best way to tell if a company values engineers is to ask which cost center they are in.

Is it IT? Then they will treat you like a cog and consider you just a cost to the company. Is it Product? Then they will consider you valuable and critical to the company's success.

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#35

Post by loosetypes »

courtf wrote: post #24
opportune wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The proliferation and role of "business people" in traditional companies is IMO their defining characteristic. It shows how much or how little a business trusts engineers (and also engineer's "status" within the company, e.g. are they respected and valued or treated as a disposable resource) to run the business as general problem solvers. The ironic thing about Agile is that it has a cottage industry of "scrum c…

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord. I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

I appreciate your sense of humor

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#36

Post by klipt »

courtf wrote: post #24
opportune wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The proliferation and role of "business people" in traditional companies is IMO their defining characteristic. It shows how much or how little a business trusts engineers (and also engineer's "status" within the company, e.g. are they respected and valued or treated as a disposable resource) to run the business as general problem solvers. The ironic thing about Agile is that it has a cottage industry of "scrum c…

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord. I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

Why settle for scrum lord when you could be scrum king? Scrum emperor? One day even scrum Pope?

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#37

Post by jrott »

courtf wrote: post #24
opportune wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! The proliferation and role of "business people" in traditional companies is IMO their defining characteristic. It shows how much or how little a business trusts engineers (and also engineer's "status" within the company, e.g. are they respected and valued or treated as a disposable resource) to run the business as general problem solvers. The ironic thing about Agile is that it has a cottage industry of "scrum c…

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord. I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

not sure you're going far enough there. Obviously we need a scrum king to guide our scrum lords as they help our scrum masters transform our organization.

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#38

Post by courtf »

klipt wrote: post #36
courtf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord. I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

Why settle for scrum lord when you could be scrum king? Scrum emperor? One day even scrum Pope?

> scrum Pope

his holiness will make his presence known in due time

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#39

Post by gnusty_gnurc »

klipt wrote: post #36
courtf wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long imagined a position just above the scrum masters: the scrum lord. I see this position as a critical component of any agile strategy that seeks to maximize scrum master productivity, while still allowing scrum masters all the autonomy they need for their day-to-day duties.

Why settle for scrum lord when you could be scrum king? Scrum emperor? One day even scrum Pope?

Let's just call them all scrumbags

Re: What Silicon Valley gets about engineers that traditional companies do not

#40

Post by gamblor956 »

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10
esoterica wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people keep pretending like Silicon Valley engineers aren’t one of the single highest paid demographics in the entire country?

Pay is nowhere remotely close to being proportional to impact on revenue though. Many engineers are much more offended by unmeritocratic pay than by absolute value of pay being low - hence why you can convince amazing engineers to work for peanuts at start-ups. I want the greatest share of the returns of my own labor I can get. If that results in very high salary, great, it’s earned. If I take a risk at a place where…

Hollywood executives get paid more than most actors. Only the absolute elite talent are making above scale let alone more than what the executives are making, and their managers (aka recruiters) are negotiating that for them.
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