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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

#111

Post by jedberg »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #104
jedberg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't done it myself, but I've hired people who were stuck in IT. Just don't talk negatively about your old job. "I'm looking to move because I want to have more impact". "The work I'm doing now is not core to company's success and I want to have more impact". Etc. I never looked down on someone who was doing boring work if that is what they were supposed to be doing. I'm looking for people who can communicate we…

I guess I’m worried about talking about how we have really poor development practices. It’s hard to describe what I do, they try to block people from learning about what their kanban card is for. I just write proprietary scripting language functions then fill out a Word document “unit test” about them. I guess I can editorialize and try to steer the conversation towards what I can bring to the company. Thanks for the…

If I was interviewing you and you told me "my current company has very bad development practices" and then gave me a list of all the things you think they are doing wrong and all the ways it could improve, I'd probably be really impressed. Then I'd ask you why you don't change those things, and I would hope you'd tell me a story about how you tried to change it but got blocked, or maybe small changes you are making to make things better.

This would tell me that you're really engaged, up to date on the latest methods, and motivated to make things around you better.

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

#112

Post by chris11 »

plorkyeran wrote: post #29
opportune wrote: post #16

I have noticed that as SV companies get larger they tend to adopt the more "old school" approach. Not that it's a binary - it's a spectrum, and depending on management chain/how an org runs, people can have different experiences. I think it's caused by 1. When you have very deep management chains you start to have lots of people with opinions on what you should do, how you should do it, who you should do it with. Eve…

The "SV style" runs into scaling problems. Engineers making product decisions requires that they have a solid grasp on everything the business cares about, which gets harder as the business gets bigger. Direct engineer -> engineer communication between teams is O(N^2) to organize things between N engineers. As you grow I think reducing engineer autonomy is unavoidable, and the goal is merely to stick to reducing it a…

It's not the only solution for building products. But you can still maintain dev autonomy. Instead of having senior team-members break apart work into story-sized pieces a system can be broken apart into smaller pieces. Devs can still be working towards a specific business goal, but they can own a larger portion of their work, and they can work with longer deadlines.

Also, I think dealing with those large scale issues is what separates a staff/principal dev from a senior dev.

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

#113

Post by bigiain »

KaiserPro wrote: post #54

The article uses JIRA is a touchstone that seems to equate to no autonomy. I think this is wrong. I have worked at a good number of places, including a FAAMG. The freedom that was given to me directly correlates to company size & seniority. When I was younger, I didn't get much autonomy, why? because I was a naive arrogant prick. I would dream up solutions to problems that didn't exist. I would make existing problems…

Jira, for all it's warts, is a massively configurable piece of software that can be deployed/used in a hugely broad variety of ways.

I once worked at a place where Jira was without doubt a positive force within the company. There was an Altassian-trained Jira specialist working there who collaborated setting up each Jira project, and provided ongoing advice/assistanece to users (both PMs and devs). This was in a company of around 40 devs, 8 QAs, and 6 PMs, running perhaps 10-12 concurrent projects (almost all websites/webapps). It worked _really really_ well. (And I've spent th3e last 5-6 years looking for excuses/opportunities to poach that specialist...)

The key takeaways I learned from her was to identify and get leadership agreement right up front about whether a particular project was going to be "agile" or "waterfall" - because if you are going to be agile, Jira wants to be set up as a high level todo list of features/functions. If _any_ of the Jira tickets start to decree (from a PM/BA/manager) _how_ a feature or function is to be accomplished, you're fooling yourself and should have set it up as a waterfall project full of disposable-worker-bee style tickets.

I'm sure my takeaway was only scratching the surface of the deep understanding she had about project planning and managements styles, but that has work OK for me over the years. Either provide Jira tickets for features, and let the devs create their own sub tickets to document how they're doing things (and to get discussion/signoff on thing they ask for input on), or have the PM/BAs document a project in minute detail and fill each dev's schedule with sprints full of tickets representing 2 hours work or less.

I guess my point here is "Don't blame Jira. It's widely criticised flaws are largely a problem with the way it's used rather than a fundamental flaw in the tool. Poor project management results in shitty Jira use. Great project management will shine even if using postit notes stuck to devs laptops every day."

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

#114

Post by peteradio »

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.

The scrum lord spends most his day in his office making spunk charts. The making of spunk charts is an intensely personal task that uniquely suits them for office ownership. There have been cases where two or more scrum lords create spunk charts together but it is more rare.

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

#115

Post by sidlls »

jtdev wrote: post #86
abalashov wrote: post #58

It all depends on who you're hiring and what you're building. Definitely applicable to startups and innovators coming up from the bottom. But, there are absolutely companies maintaining low-growth Clunky Java Accounting Application for Insurance Companies #574 for whom this approach is contraindicated. Those companies can hire relatively entry-level, average graduates, at commensurate salaries, and assign them highly…

Those companies will die...

Those companies have been around forever, and have will be around longer than most SV-like companies.

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

#116

Post by bigiain »

jedberg wrote: post #93
bigiain wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but Le Creuset will never describe themselves as "a software business"... (And if they did, I'd immediately be looking for a different cookware supplier.)

Ah yeah I don't think asking if they are a "software business" is actually a good question. But I'd still be wary of working for them if their software engineers were in IT.

On the other hand, would you _ever_ have even _considered_ working for Juicero?

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

#117

Post by sidibe »

codesnik wrote: post #15
markalexander wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. Often a big chunk of your CoL is going into a massively appreciating asset. People always seem to ignore this when talking about the top n most expensive cities in the world. You can literally sell your apartment and go live in a mansion most other places on the planet when you feel like it.

hm. do many people in silicon valley buy their apartment or house there these days? Is it even accessible?

Well if you're just renting the CoL difference is nowhere near the salary difference you'd get in other locations/careers.

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

#118

Post by juancn »

The engineering job (regardless of specific engineering discipline) is essentially solving business problems using applied science. That's it.

If you don't let your engineers understand the business problem they're supposed to solve, you're wasting valuable resources.

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

#119

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

gamblor956 wrote: post #40
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nowhere did I suggest executives shouldn’t be paid more than engineers.

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

#120

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

dilyevsky wrote: post #26
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Depending on your budget the min SAG rate can be anywhere from ~100-1000/day so many sw engineers in fact make much more than most actors

I’m exclusively drawing the comparison with high demand actors / athletes. Perhaps athletes has the better clarity - many NBA players are paid more than their head coach, and even those paid less are still paid much more competitively to their revenue contribution than engineers by comparison.
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