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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

#331

Post by eru »

throw_away wrote: post #242
ta988 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be interested if you have a few names of software cooperatives (still running or not). I don't think a company's purpose is necessary to eat the world but that's going into opinions so I will refrain.

This book had an interesting take on the subject: https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony It asked why couldn't development firms be organized like how doctors or lawyers often organize themselves, as partnerships with the PMs, etc like nurses or paralegals.

On a more macro level, doctors and lawyers use regulation to keep the competition at bay.

In some jurisdictions, there are limits that make it harder for outsiders to employ doctors or lawyers and sell their services like you would employ programmers.

(In eg Germany, that even applies to pharmacists.)

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

#332

Post by valuearb »

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…

I was a lead developer on an agile team at a $10B+ 50,000 employee pet store chain for 9 months, and never met the product owner.

All backlog was generated by having two analysts or their boss meet with the product owner, a direct marketing exec, writing down what she wanted, then meet with team to give marching orders.

Being a direct marketing exec, all she cared about was “engagement”, so our product was mainly just feeds of pet advice, tips and tricks along with a game (that the bored analysts played all day).

The app also allowed booking store services such as grooming, vet visits, and boarding. But the implementation of the service bookings was so poor it took over a dozen steps with lengthy spinners for network requests. Our metrics showed less than one third of service booking attempts completed.

I pointed out that since the company was terrified of Amazon, that store services were a key differentiator and margin producer and we could make booking services far faster and easier with some design changes.

The response was, that’s not in our backlog. So next build after completing my work, and helping other devs complete theirs, I worked over a weekend and cached some booking data in the app to eliminate spinners on entry into the booking system.

I proudly showed it to the analysts that Monday and they nearly had heart attacks. That wasn’t in the backlog!

All they cared about was making the product owner happy (she was a teller, apparently) and all my efforts did was make me unpopular with them and their boss.

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

#333

Post by engineeringwoke »

ndiscussion wrote: post #322
engineeringwoke wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh. A lot of engineers really don't have the social skills to navigate the business situations. Some do, sure, and should be given the opportunity to shine. But I would still say the majority don't. And what kind of "high level physics" do engineers know? A typical masters track doesn't cover the hard maths like in GR, sounds more arrogant than anything... kind of proving my point ;)

Doesn't this basically argue that "business" is basically the same thing as schmoozing?

You could argue that people are a more complicated system than any software system you would see in a talented shop, and people change in real time.

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

#334

Post by tinix »

danielheath wrote: post #316
v8engine wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Won't this change mean we operate at a loss to subsidize your other company, which will affect staff bonuses". I don't get it. Can you explain?

Boss owns two companies. Staff at company A have negotiated a profit share / performance bonus. Boss directs company A to provide services “below cost” to company B. Company A now has no profit to share; it has been funnelled elsewhere to avoid paying the staff their bonus.

This is a dirty tactic, but I've seen it used... a lot.

It has slimy tax advantages too, for the company.

If you're getting profit sharing, you should be able to see the books, and have controlling shares, too... IMO.

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

#335

Post by tabtab »

This kind of reminds me of Paul Graham's article on how "suit culture" ruined Yahoo, a company poised to be bigger than Google but squandered it by being engineer-unfriendly.

http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

A quote: Hacker culture often seems kind of irresponsible. That's why people proposing to destroy it use phrases like "adult supervision." That was the phrase they used at Yahoo. But there are worse things than seeming irresponsible. Losing, for example.

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

#336

Post by romwell »

ColFrancis wrote: post #269
romwell wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some of the good remains (code & documentation transparency) Not after the infamous need-to-know memo. Team docs visibility defaulted to "only to people I explicitly share with" for almost a year now. It's only a question of time until code branches follow suit.

> Not after the infamous need-to-know memo. I couldn't find that memo, could you please link to a copy?

Here you go[1].

The audacity of that email was that it made accessing "need-to-know" documents internally (!!!) a fireable offense.

In a kafkaesque move, "need-to-know" was not determined by labeling or access restrictions. Therefore, you can't know you are accessing a "need-to-know" document until you do.

In short, this made using internal search engine fireable. It made clicking any link on the mail list fireable.

That was a year and a half ago.

[1]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google...

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

#337

Post by throw_away »

eru wrote: post #331
throw_away wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book had an interesting take on the subject: https://leanpub.com/developerhegemony It asked why couldn't development firms be organized like how doctors or lawyers often organize themselves, as partnerships with the PMs, etc like nurses or paralegals.

On a more macro level, doctors and lawyers use regulation to keep the competition at bay. In some jurisdictions, there are limits that make it harder for outsiders to employ doctors or lawyers and sell their services like you would employ programmers. (In eg Germany, that even applies to pharmacists.)

Even if they use regulation to limit how many and who is a practitioner, this doesn't give a satisfying answer to why they organize themselves that way and we do not.

Just because anyone can be an engineer, it doesn't follow that we can't form partnerships. I could be wrong, but those doctors and lawyers who are in partnerships don't seem to be using that structure due to lack of employment opportunities under other structures.

Another argument I heard was that partnerships are required in certain fields due to liability concerns so that risk can be contained to individual partners. But this only explains why they must, not why we can't.

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

#338

Post by 6510 »

6510 wrote: post #80

Nice article, short and to the point. I hear a more general version a bit like it: There are 2 types of employees Saint Bernard's and Hyenas. The Saint Bernard needs to be told what to do all the time. Everything needs to be planned and organized for him. If he doesn't have a pen he cant write. If there is one pen in the building all the hyenas can write. If you chose the Saint Bernard's, as a manager your job is to…

Clearly old-world type of reasoning.

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

#339

Post by eru »

throw_away wrote: post #337
eru wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a more macro level, doctors and lawyers use regulation to keep the competition at bay. In some jurisdictions, there are limits that make it harder for outsiders to employ doctors or lawyers and sell their services like you would employ programmers. (In eg Germany, that even applies to pharmacists.)

Even if they use regulation to limit how many and who is a practitioner, this doesn't give a satisfying answer to why they organize themselves that way and we do not. Just because anyone can be an engineer, it doesn't follow that we can't form partnerships. I could be wrong, but those doctors and lawyers who are in partnerships don't seem to be using that structure due to lack of employment opportunities under other…

> I could be wrong, but those doctors and lawyers who are in partnerships don't seem to be using that structure due to lack of employment opportunities under other structures.

A big part of the regulation of doctors and lawyers is the part that keeps the competition out. Google or your favourite startup can't just train up a few neural networks and start dispensing legal or medical advice; even if that advice was much better than what you'd get from your median human lawyer or doctor.

The organisation into partnerships might be more about who's excluded, than what the people in the club are allowed to do?

You are right about liability concerns playing a role, too. And then there's also tax issues.

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