> They’re strolling into conversations with their CFOs on ‘productivity’ with developer sentiment surveys in hand.
> Their teams are sitting ducks. It’s painful to watch.
Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
11–20 of 81 posts
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#12And here I am thinking the rest of the workforce needs to be treated better, rather than using how poorly the rest of the workforce is treated as the ideal example to go by.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#13"Engineers have been spoiled rotten for the last two decades[...] employers offered unlimited PTO" In what world does unlimited PTO spoil engineers? It removes the companies liability for vacation days and shames employees into taking less time off.
I've had "unlimited PTO" for most of my 15 year career. I've never been able to take at most, 3 weeks off due to the reasons you mentioned.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#14It is crazy the genuine anger that some senior leadership has over the tiniest most inconsequential perks like beer, ping pong tables, work flexibility, and not getting micromanaged to death. They worked their ass off getting up at 4am something something grind corporate ladder to get to play golf and go to sports games as work expenses and these entitled 20-somethings show up expecting to not get treated like shit a…
> Companies should be constantly worried about retention across all their positions and have to treat their employees well because of it.
Some large ones went the other way with collusion and undocumented "blacklists".
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#15The further I go into my career, the more see the it the opposite way. I think business people are overvalued compared with most software engineers. If software engineers take the time to learn the "business", they can build their own companies that eclipse those started by the typical MBAs who view engineers as "pampered and coddled" cost centers. I think after the bubble pops, we'll see new companies that led by engineers and creatives conducting orchestras of AI that will allow them end the need for the typical corporate business people.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#16This is one of the main reasons why incidents, outages, dev environment breakages need to be surfaces up to the C-Suite. Put a $ sign on all of them. Show that these are increasing over time - which it is always.
The CEO then asks, how can we make this better? The savvy CTO and VP says, we need more engineers and more headcount and retention to merely flatline the increase. Get the headcount and raises.
Do this every year because the nature of software is that it is not a spend == returns. It is a spend to even keep the lights on - it is a bespoke utility that builds your business and gets customers to pay you - thus requiring constant maintenance.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#17This article sort of gets it, but misses it in the end. Engineering essentially "works for" product management because the product is the value they provide, and the product people ultimately are the ones who defend the resources required to realize their plans. If you are an engineer, the person who goes to leadership with plans that require you to work is your number one internal advocate.
...and for what it's worth, presenting refactoring as a part of delivering on new development goals is the absolute truth.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#18Software ate the world. Meditate on this and the points this article is making becomes clear. Big tech no longer needs to hoard talent.
Well that remains to be seen. Companies did not get in the position they are in today because of the leadership principles of today - it was past workers and leadership.
This trend of spitting on the legacy of those who built it up will quickly reverse the second they get disrupted themselves due to their complacency.
I've seen this at my last company. They treated workers well and built a great product. Soon the employees were hampering "profits" and only got contempt. After everybody quit the situation is perfect from a business POV - zero expenses and a selling product with happy customers. Except there is total stagnation and customers are excitedly waiting for the next "big update". The company does their best to keep the facade up but how sustainable is it really? You can only milk so much until your core product is outdated or no longer fits the market.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#19It is crazy the genuine anger that some senior leadership has over the tiniest most inconsequential perks like beer, ping pong tables, work flexibility, and not getting micromanaged to death. They worked their ass off getting up at 4am something something grind corporate ladder to get to play golf and go to sports games as work expenses and these entitled 20-somethings show up expecting to not get treated like shit a…
It’s pretty twisted. I went to open an office in a different country and help the engineers there. The country had an exchange rate favorable to the usd and a much lower cost of living on the low end, but if you wanted to live like I did back in California the cost was almost comparable. Maybe I was saving like $1k a month.
But the ceo and management threw a fit that I was “living like a king” because I wasn’t living in squalor.
I just was renting a decent apartment in a decent neighborhood. My apartment was still not as nice as my place back in the bay if I count all the furniture, amenities, etc
Meanwhile the ceo back in San Francisco was the one living like a king with multiple assistants, private chefs, and chauffeurs.
They were enraged that my life was too good for their standards while paying me the exact same as they had been.
Re: Dear CTO: it's not 2015 anymore
#20Software engineering (and many other parts of IT) is at its core a creative process, and the “coddling” is what creates an environment where creativity becomes possible. You can’t get into the zone/flow if you’re constantly worried about who’s trying to screw you over, or when you feel you have a gun to your head about some metric you need to hit.
Of course those things are going to happen, this is work after all, but the idea is to try to reduce those things as much as possible. Many of those benefits are made with that goal in mind, and employee retention just follows from having a good environment. IT people are happiest when they can get into flow and work on something really cool, and will move to other companies who provide that environment.