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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

#201

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

LimaBearz wrote: post #185
bigiain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditional companies that are doing Agile. Aka "Wagile". "We have a standup every morning, where you're required to report on how many of your assigned Jira tickets you completed yesterday and get berated for any incomplete ones no matter the cause! No excuses! We've committed to these deadlines and budgets, that you know nothing about having not been consulted on anything."

That’s just the tip of the ice berg... I call it the tyranny of project managers. When I worked for a large multinational in SF, 100M+ users we operated very much in the “SV” style the article describes. I got to see how our satellite offices in other parts of the world operate; EVERYTHING was in calendar, work was tracked in 15 minute intervals, meeting about meetings, and follow up meetings after the meeting, and a…

How about “people over process”? Yet we are slaves to Agile Scrum process and procedure.

Double talk.

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

#202

Post by ramzyo »

achow wrote: post #187

No focus on a structured product definition and leaving it to engineers to 'figure it out' does not bode well for the end user or business itself. This is a real experience in a FAANG company - we were developing a new product in enterprise space targeted to small enterprise IT admins who may not be highly trained or experienced. One of tiny feature was the ability to download and self manage security certificates (u…

This is an informative counter-example to those presented in the article. Thank you for sharing.

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

#203

Post by ta988 »

irishloop wrote: post #177
ShamelessC wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting... I think. Could you give an example (as contrived as you wish) to illustrate this point?

My guess is that if developers understood the business, they would understand how simplistic a lot of the business models are, and how much of the profit is derived directly from their skilled labor and yet how much of the profit goes directly towards someone else, and developers would suddenly realize they have leverage because they are essentially the profit model.

Note that this is the case in most industries, not just software. And that's why the "patrons" "bosses" "chiefs" whatever they are named over time always fought to keep their employees silenced, non-organized... Maybe now is the time to consider cooperatives and getting rid of all or part of the hierarchies (some cooperatives work well with simpler hierarchies). They want disruption, we cut the ties.

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

#204

Post by stevegalla »

jedberg wrote: post #33

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.

If development is in product, how long has development been in product? Is this a recent change where development was transitioned from IT to product during a recent transformation?

Not directed at you, just some general comments.

As someone hinted at in another comment, it seems a better (less dichotomous) framing is:

- tech first (developer lead, selling software or hardware),

- tech enabled (developers are a key collaborator with the business, e.g., logistics, manufacturing, ecomm, marketing, really every company should be), or

- tech as a cost center (the “traditional” company in the article).

What about the trifecta of product, engineering, and design advocated for by Marty Cagan?

I think the same argument that’s being made for giving developers more weight in the development process could be argued equally as well from the side of design.

Edit for formatting.

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

#205

Post by throwawaybbqed »

q845712 wrote: post #109
throwawaybbqed wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please describe how you had a Jira/ticket system that you felt gave you autonomy? Very curious how it could be implemented in a research setting.

not the GP, but I've had multiple times in my career when I and the team I was on were given pretty high-level problems to solve and left alone to solve them. The request to use JIRA was basically our managers and the product people wanting some vague reassurance that progress was being made, but nobody was concerned with the details of the tickets, etc. This included early-phase 'R&D' work on a medical device. Of co…

Thx for your thoughts. You mentioned R&D flavor tickets. Really curious about the mechanics of this. Does the responsible engineer update once a sprint, weekly? I've seen junior staff spend months on dead ends .. curious how to manage that via process.

Also, if the R&D project is a team project involving multiple people, what is a reasonable update/sprint cadence?

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

#206

Post by wolco5 »

mark-r wrote: post #137
jedberg wrote: post #33

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.

That's a good theory, but it doesn't always work that way. I was working on the most profitable product the company had, but was laid off anyway. The new 6 month CTO had a new idea for how software development should be done and I wasn't part of it. Meanwhile at my prior job in IT my boss begged me to stay, I think because I made him look good.

I've found if you are good at your position being part of the cost centre operation side means you will be left alone and ignored. Because of that you are less likely to be promoted. The profit side often gets random kudos, awards and probably bigger salaries.

For me being unimportant enough that money spent on a scrum master doesn't make sense is the right work-life balance.

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

#208

Post by ta988 »

LimaBearz wrote: post #185
bigiain wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> traditional companies that are doing Agile. Aka "Wagile". "We have a standup every morning, where you're required to report on how many of your assigned Jira tickets you completed yesterday and get berated for any incomplete ones no matter the cause! No excuses! We've committed to these deadlines and budgets, that you know nothing about having not been consulted on anything."

That’s just the tip of the ice berg... I call it the tyranny of project managers. When I worked for a large multinational in SF, 100M+ users we operated very much in the “SV” style the article describes. I got to see how our satellite offices in other parts of the world operate; EVERYTHING was in calendar, work was tracked in 15 minute intervals, meeting about meetings, and follow up meetings after the meeting, and a…

There is a reason why they pay that much, they have trouble finding people comfortable with their insanity. That's also what I think is the real reason behind why the interview processes are so contrived and kafkaesques, they reflect the place.

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

#209

Post by ta988 »

coredog64 wrote: post #195
LimaBearz wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just the tip of the ice berg... I call it the tyranny of project managers. When I worked for a large multinational in SF, 100M+ users we operated very much in the “SV” style the article describes. I got to see how our satellite offices in other parts of the world operate; EVERYTHING was in calendar, work was tracked in 15 minute intervals, meeting about meetings, and follow up meetings after the meeting, and a…

I think you just described my current employer.

Run! There are a lot of places that yes will pay you less and not have free Lacroix but you will not feel bad working for.

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

#210

Post by dpeck »

danielheath wrote: post #162
celim307 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a large disconnect between product and engineering. The directors solution was to have mandatory 8 hours of sprint ceremonies a week where we would review the definition of “bug” and “epic”, every week. We also were required to sit in on all team meetings regardless if it was your team. We had two full time scrum masters for a team of six engineers. I suggested instead engineers get looped earlier into the pro…

In many companies, the 'product' department exists to protect the owners from the leverage developers would have if they had access to the business context.

In my experience it is the opposite of that. Many ‘product’ groups exist because engineering teams kept complaining about meetings and just wanted to be told what the build. Collectively as a profession we have ceded away many of the things that made software development unique and powerful over the last 10 or so years.
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