Are product managers replacing the engineers as the core line role these days?
Product managers talk to the CEOs more than software engineers do.
The other kind of staff software engineer
61–70 of 201 posts
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#62The promotion issue doesn’t sound super plausible to me. If you’re part of an internal software development team at an energy company, you’re likely considered part of a cost center not top of mind to the company’s business. Promotions to higher levels are more likely to come from people part of the core sector.
Sometimes the core sector makes a boatload of money, and the people supporting that work in turn get promotions. Companies tend to try to minimize churn in "staff" roles as there are fewer people ready to step in and replace the person who left. Similarly, recruiting for staff positions is often harder than line positions as folks often want to work on the core product mission of a company.
As an analogy, consider the lone sysadmin maintaining the lone linux server hosting a multi-billion dollar companies ERP, Billing Software, and website. The company probably cares enough to ensure this person has a backup, and is paid well enough not to leave. If the everything works the company probably doesn't care enough to do a migration to a SaaS provider, replacing this admin is likely very expensive.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#63Curiously, the term "line manager" denotes the person that is in charge of promotion, development, review and vacation request approval + expenses approval of a report (rather than the development of new product lines, which is nowadays done by distributed team in matrix settings led by a "project lead" or "technical lead"), so one would classify them as support, perhaps.
To confuse things further, the "project manager" isn't the most senior manager of the project, but its _administrator_(the "project owner" is responsible for the project).
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#64The promotion issue doesn’t sound super plausible to me. If you’re part of an internal software development team at an energy company, you’re likely considered part of a cost center not top of mind to the company’s business. Promotions to higher levels are more likely to come from people part of the core sector.
Yes. Most of the generals in the Air Force are former pilots and many of the executives at Big Oil are chemical or petroleum engineers.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#65Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible.
His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a maximum of 100% (but obviously much lower in practice). So in his mind, a business-wide focus on growing revenue is always better than a focus on cutting costs. If you are in the second boat, it means the company is struggling and maybe it's time to get out.
Obviously, a rational CEO would see $1m cost savings the same as a $1m gain in profits, but CEO's are not rational beings (nor is any human) and understanding that they usually prefer higher revenue to lower costs is fundamental to understanding how they value different parts of the company. It's not fair, it's just truth (at least in many companies).
There's something refreshing about some hedge funds where portfolio managers are rewarded exclusively on their own performance. For example, if the fund loses money, but you continue to bring in great revenue, you can bet that any sane hedge fund will pay you a lot to stay around, regardless of how they are doing overall. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), profit in most companies isn't directly attributable in the way it is at hedge funds. But the same truth holds. If you are bringing in good profit, it's hard to get rid of you (or not pay you well) regardless of how the company is doing overall. Try to be in one of those profit centers, if you can.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#66Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…
The 'line' vs 'staff' distinction makes a ton of sense to me. I've been reading Will Larson's blog about staff engineers and trying to articulate what sets staff engineers apart, and I think you've nailed it. "Staff" more or less equals "support", but on an executive or strategic level. A problem I deal with personally is growing into "Staff" style work. I'd love to have bigger, wider impacts on a more strategic leve…
> My perception is that I'm considered too good on the "line"; I'd be a loss to the org to move up a notch.
At a previous company, they moved a lot of their top performer “line” engineers to staff level and they all felt unproductive and eventually quit.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#67Fascinating insight.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#68Related to this article: The owner of a company (non-startup, but growing and profitable) I used to work for gave me great career advice. He said to always focus on things that produce revenue. If you aren't doing things that produce revenue, try to move into those areas if possible. His view was that revenue can soar 100%, 200%, 1,000%, 10,000% or however high. Cost savings, on the other hand, can only go down to a…
If you can save 99% on cost, but sell at the same price, you've got a 10,000% profit, isn't it?
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#69The promotion issue doesn’t sound super plausible to me. If you’re part of an internal software development team at an energy company, you’re likely considered part of a cost center not top of mind to the company’s business. Promotions to higher levels are more likely to come from people part of the core sector.
Sometimes the core sector makes a boatload of money, and the people supporting that work in turn get promotions. Companies tend to try to minimize churn in "staff" roles as there are fewer people ready to step in and replace the person who left. Similarly, recruiting for staff positions is often harder than line positions as folks often want to work on the core product mission of a company. As an analogy, consider th…
> As an analogy, consider the lone sysadmin maintaining the lone linux server hosting a multi-billion dollar companies ERP, Billing Software, and website. The company probably cares enough to ensure this person has a backup, and is paid well enough not to leave. If the everything works the company probably doesn't care enough to do a migration to a SaaS provider, replacing this admin is likely very expensive.
Eh, I've seen people like this and maybe they get paid well, but the company also can't afford to promote them or move them around. One person I know was an expert in Fortran and worked at a large Wall Street bank doing processing of very large transactions (systems that process trillions of dollars yearly). Technically, there were "backups" who could do parts of his role, but realistically he was the only person who really understood the whole system. He would threaten to leave every so often and they'd bump his pay to an absurd level that made it hard to leave. But there was also no path the promotion for him and he got bored. At a certain point, he ended up leaving anyway.
Re: The other kind of staff software engineer
#70Author here. Working at a tech company as a developer vs working at a non-tech company are very different. These two types of roles were called line vs staff when I took a business school class and I think the differences between these two types of roles have a big impact on what the job is like, even if doing the same type of work. It's a bit confusing because it overlaps with 'staff software engineer' term. I recal…
Two thing. One, I always hated the cost center vs profit center distinction. These are accounting terms. It's super common in places that have embedded software (auto industry is close to me) where any manufacturing plant is considered a profit center, and engineering is often a cost center. When things are tight they tend want to reduce "costs" not realizing that engineering can also be seen as an investment in the…
“ I always hated the cost center vs profit center distinction.” You may hate it but ignore it at your peril. It’s how the company sees you.