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The other kind of staff software engineer

earthly.dev

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Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#121

Post by chadash »

belter wrote: post #108
nunez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That owner was absolutely correct. If you can make the company money and you can prove how, the sky's the limit. You're much more likely to get a cut of profits over a cut of savings.

I worked as Consultant for several years and instead of a daily rate, always proposed for each of my large projects, that companies would pay me 0.5% of the money my activities made the company or 0.1% of the money I saved the company. Not one ever took up on this offer...

Probably because it's ambiguous and opens them up to legal headaches when there's disagreement over how much was made or saved.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#122

Post by pgodzin »

chadash wrote: post #65

Related 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…

> Obviously, a rational CEO would see $1m cost savings the same as a $1m gain in profits

This is generally incorrect, especially at SaaS companies where revenue is recurring. It's very likely that you'll see much of that $1m gain again in future years, possibly even growing, while cost savings are hard to repeat consistently without impacting future growth.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#123

Post by robertlagrant »

trimbo wrote: post #101

> Someone at Thoughtworks sold Dominion Energy on the idea that Thoughtworks... if things go well, they will get follow-on business and maybe even a whitepaper. ... > Market pressures don’t apply to internal teams Market forces are constantly applied against internal IT teams, particularly in non-tech companies. The market force is replacing them with consultants. Sometimes they will make those employees train their…

Also 10 years ago you'd have employed IT staff to run an Exchange server and AD; now it's all in an Office 365 subscription (for better or worse). 2 years ago same for VPN; now Tailscale/Cloudflare are picking that up.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#124

Post by devoutsalsa »

didibus wrote: post #111
chadash wrote: post #65

Related 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…

Cutting cost can often bring in revenue. If you can provide the same product or service but with a smaller margin, you can out price your competitors and win the customers over. I think Jeff Bezos is famous for saying: Your margin is my opportunity.

That’s essentially just a race to the bottom in most cases. There aren’t too many cases where you can realistically lower your price below your competitor’s cost AND have your competitor be unable to make the necessary changes to match you.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#125

Post by jimmaswell »

iguanayou wrote: post #113
jimmaswell wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work at a non-tech company. I mostly write/maintain unexciting components for a website's CMS, and any tertiary work around that. Easygoing, remote, great work/life balance, good pay. Often go fishing or work on projects like an ebike for a lot of the day, sporadically checking the work chat and tuning into meetings from my phone. On the rare occasion something really important comes up I'm always ready to jump in…

I've got the same type of deal here. I just worry about skills getting outdated since I'm only working on an in-house system and doing mostly maintenance. But perhaps that fear is overblown. I could easily hop to a gig with more responsibility and more opportunity for increasing my skills - but also more stress.

I feel like you'll never be out of a job long with a good work history, good references, and knowing your way around overall web development. Might not be enough for Facebook but it seems like enough for us.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#127

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

hathym wrote: post #107
nunez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That owner was absolutely correct. If you can make the company money and you can prove how, the sky's the limit. You're much more likely to get a cut of profits over a cut of savings.

unless you work in sales, it is very hard to prove how lines of code can translate in more money for the company. maybe easier in startups but nearly impossible in big corps where everyone is just a cog in the machine

I wouldn't say "nearly impossible", although big companies do tend to have a few teams in that position. Everywhere I've worked, large or small, there have been a substantial number of engineers who justify their work in terms of money for the company and rocket up the career ladder because of it. (And I've seen a lot of seemingly "cog in the machine" tasks that have large dollar amounts attached as far as management is concerned.)

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#128

Post by whimsicalism »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #124
didibus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cutting cost can often bring in revenue. If you can provide the same product or service but with a smaller margin, you can out price your competitors and win the customers over. I think Jeff Bezos is famous for saying: Your margin is my opportunity.

That’s essentially just a race to the bottom in most cases. There aren’t too many cases where you can realistically lower your price below your competitor’s cost AND have your competitor be unable to make the necessary changes to match you.

This happens all the time. Your objection around competitors could equally apply to revenue growing areas of work.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#129

Post by triyambakam »

cushychicken wrote: post #89
kleinsch wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I’d try to mix those things together. Same word, completely different things. In this article, a new grad who works on basic HR IT tasks for a factory is doing staff work. That’s not staff level scope in the Will Larson sense. There are plenty of “staff software engineers” in the Will Larson sense who create strategy for new product lines and launch them - “line” level work. Also plenty who work on DevX…

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. My takeaway from much of Larson's writing is that staff engineers can do the line work required to launch new product lines, but generally don't, because the impacts of their strategic work is much higher than that of line style coding. They direct and advise on technical strategy, but delegate execution to others, because having the 10k foot view is typically more valuable wh…

I think you're missing what the above is saying, i.e. that the featured article uses staff in a different way than Larson and most discussions around "staff".

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#130

Post by anoy8888 »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #3

Author 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…

I am a Staff software engineer in a consumer goods company. I got quickly promoted to it manger , head of it and then CIO. The tech is shallow but it exposes me to production, supply chain , sales , finance and pretty much every aspect of the operations. I report directly to CEO. We typically buy erp but small softwares , I choose to write myself so that I got some practice on coding. I go to home before 6 and enjoy my weekends
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