This is the reason why I am trying to move away from being a software engineer.
I don't like to complain but it is honestly degrading how SE are treated in some places. I've been on teams with 4 project managers/analysts and 3 developers. They will expect you to do all the real hard work while they sit in meetings all day making UI mockups and architecture diagrams. There is just no way in winning this.
What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#12It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. IMO there’s probably a good reason for it, namely some institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. But it also makes me a little sad that other white collar jobs don’t have the same benefits. There are probably a ton of jobs wh…
Not a miracle. Things fuck up extremely quickly when you the systems are
not maintained and it takes competence. A lot of businesses value (most perhaps?) goes to zero in a flash sans - IT. There is a developer behind all of that.
That combination of needing talent which is in short supply and being essential.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#13This is the reason why I am trying to move away from being a software engineer. I don't like to complain but it is honestly degrading how SE are treated in some places. I've been on teams with 4 project managers/analysts and 3 developers. They will expect you to do all the real hard work while they sit in meetings all day making UI mockups and architecture diagrams. There is just no way in winning this.
What is degrading about that? Would you rather sit in meetings than develop?
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#14Of the three places I’ve been a full time employed dev I only enjoyed working at the first. This was a UK retailer, the other two were “tech” companies. The retailer operated in the way the article describes, direct contact with the business, ability to unearth a problem and run with it, understanding that dev work isn’t just fingers on keyboard and sharing of full business context. The other two had strict comms lin…
I've been in the first type of work my whole academic career. I'm definitely more of an informatician/sysadmin than a scientist, and despite being entrenched in the science for almost a decade I can tell you that I never developed a 'feel' for it - it was too specialised, and I lacked the ground knowledge to bridge the gap. A smarter man would have found the time, but in my defense even in a single field has too many subfields to delve into, and you simply cannot master them all.
The best projects, and when I'm most efficient at work, is when someone explains the input and describes the desired output in as most abstract way possible.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#15You can always rely on Gergely to cut to the heart of the matter with his articles. What he's written largely chimes with the (many) diverse engineering environments I've collected a paycheck from. Some, usually the worst ones, have that "just stick to shipping PRs code monkey" mentality based off zero wiggle room in terms of defining the problem scope. At these kinds of companies and teams, the seeping lethargy and disillusion has otherwise talented folks building out code they know has limited impact on the business.
The best places, in fact my current role in an SV-adjacent tech company, encourages a kind of consulting approach to help define and solve business problems, not just JIRA tickets. This results in much better engagement with engineering overall, and getting better things built quickly.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#16This is the reason why I am trying to move away from being a software engineer. I don't like to complain but it is honestly degrading how SE are treated in some places. I've been on teams with 4 project managers/analysts and 3 developers. They will expect you to do all the real hard work while they sit in meetings all day making UI mockups and architecture diagrams. There is just no way in winning this.
What is degrading about that? Would you rather sit in meetings than develop?
I would like to work in a place where communication is a two way thing.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the realities of capitalism is that people are not paid proportionally to how hard they work.
That's good, in fact. People should be compensated for the value they generate. Why should a fast food worker be compensated equivalently to a doctor or engineer? I do not want to live in a world where that could exist.
CEO compensation vs returns:
> We find evidence that industry and size adjusted CEO pay is negatively related to future shareholder wealth changes for periods up to five years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next five years of approximately -13%. The effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results are consistent with high-pay induced CEO overconfidence and investor overreaction towards firms with high paid CEOs.
https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/CEOperformanc...
Employee compensation vs Output:
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-6/pdf/understanding-the-...
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#18It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. IMO there’s probably a good reason for it, namely some institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. But it also makes me a little sad that other white collar jobs don’t have the same benefits. There are probably a ton of jobs wh…
One of the realities of capitalism is that people are not paid proportionally to how hard they work.
Or in proportion to how much value they create.
They're paid in proportion to how much unique value they gatekeep.
Hence why Silicon Valley's masters were so keen on everybody learning to code in primary school and getting more women into the profession. They dream of making us more of a commodity, so that as the chief gatekeepers of the tech economic engine, they get to keep a larger slice of the pie we create.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#19Of the three places I’ve been a full time employed dev I only enjoyed working at the first. This was a UK retailer, the other two were “tech” companies. The retailer operated in the way the article describes, direct contact with the business, ability to unearth a problem and run with it, understanding that dev work isn’t just fingers on keyboard and sharing of full business context. The other two had strict comms lin…
I've been in the first type of work my whole academic career. I'm definitely more of an informatician/sysadmin than a scientist, and despite being entrenched in the science for almost a decade I can tell you that I never developed a 'feel' for it - it was too specialised, and I lacked the ground knowledge to bridge the gap. A smarter man would have found the time, but in my defense even in a single field has too many…
Well, science is more specialized than business, for example there is only one "MBA" but at least a hundred masters in science.
Re: What Silicon Valley “gets” about software engineers
#20It’s kind of a miracle engineers are treated as well as we are compared to most traditional office jobs. IMO there’s probably a good reason for it, namely some institutional memory of when engineers would just defect en-masse and literally destroy your company if you pissed then off enough. But it also makes me a little sad that other white collar jobs don’t have the same benefits. There are probably a ton of jobs wh…
Not a miracle. Things fuck up extremely quickly when you the systems are not maintained and it takes competence. A lot of businesses value (most perhaps?) goes to zero in a flash sans - IT. There is a developer behind all of that. That combination of needing talent which is in short supply and being essential.
Even comparing traditional sysadmin work — where operations are even more crucial — to software engineering, it’s easy to see that engineers tend to get paid more, get treated better and have more freedom.
Obviously there are reasons for this, but it seems to boil down to broad generalizations in how the C-Suite sees your role, and very little in the particularities of the org or employee.