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Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

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Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#131

Post by Fiahil »

Klinky wrote: post #102
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.

it’s _very_ easy to calculate your impact, or the one of your team, when you work on meaningful projects. if that’s not the case, you are probably working on non-essential things.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#132

Post by yongjik »

Swizec wrote: post #64
piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

Counterpoint: when every developer is urged to build something with "measurable impact", you end up like Google, where people launch something visible, get promoted, and move on, leaving the service to wither away.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#133

Post by balfirevic »

TOGoS wrote: post #117
sokoloff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you think that Patrick is mistaken about his claim that he is a capitalist?

Even if Patrick is or has been a CEO of some sort (I don't know anything about him past what I've read today, but another commenter mentioned that he's working at Stripe), the fact that most of the article talks about how to make yourself more marketable to employers (by building up a capital of sorts, as he calls it) indicates that he has spent a good portion of his life selling his labor for wages. Something that p…

Do you think his Marxist friend... owns Marxes?

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#134

Post by Swizec »

yongjik wrote: post #132
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

Counterpoint: when every developer is urged to build something with "measurable impact", you end up like Google, where people launch something visible, get promoted, and move on, leaving the service to wither away.

Arguably that means you have bad easy-to-game metrics. I wouldn't call what many (most?) Googlers do "impactful". More like "Let's keep a bunch of smart people busy so they don't get hired by our competition"

If the service you built withers away when you move to a different team, it was a pet project that The Business doesn't care about (because it has zero impact). Literally the definition of a bullshit busywork job :)

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#135

Post by peruvian »

Klinky wrote: post #102
Swizec wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand the thrust of that argument. It’s not the nameless company that’s the problem, it’s the business result of your work. What looks better on a resume? 1. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to improve admin interface load times by 20% 2. I optimized SQL queries for Nameless Corp to increase profits 20% If possible, always work on some version of option 2.

How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.

This should be part of the product spec or even tech spec. If you cannot measure the impact, why're you working on it?

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#136

Post by Klinky »

Swizec wrote: post #119
Klinky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.

The PM you worked with should be able to answer this question. If they can’t, your project is likely a waste of time. The signal from a hiring standpoint is that you asked and cared about this. Engineers who will just do whatever are less useful/impactful than engineers who push back and care about the value they’re delivering. Even if it’s sometimes fuzzy to estimate.

Your original example is very specific, but your follow up clarifies that the reality is that it is vague guesswork. I think you could claim contribution, but very hard to define that line x of code written last Friday resulted directly in y% of profits.

To me it signals you're probably exaggerating. You better be able to back up your reasoning behind your claim. Bold claims require bold explanations.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#137

Post by sjg007 »

endymi0n wrote: post #58
sjg007 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While a PhD can do the work, you really want the PhD to direct the work and explore new related things. A lot of this will depend on where you apply. That being said the market for data scientists has exploded in the past 2 years. 3-5 years ago things were different. Part of this is due to maturation of the tooling and the development of data platforms with organizations building out their data pipelines etc...

Thing is, while PhDs are usually by far the biggest domain experts you'll get, the absolute majority of them comes absolutely ill-equipped to lead anything, as university rarely teaches any skills in project, people or resource management skills, business sense, opportunity cost and presentation. I've had disastrous outcomes going by credentials for leadership positions and these days only hire for demonstrated resul…

Like I said depends on the company.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#138

Post by AlexC04 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #128
AlexC04 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you! This is exactly the type of recommendation that I was hoping for. I'd have been happy with the mention even if it was an ad.

If you give it a try for audio editing make sure you record different podcast guests on separate audio tracks, makes the whole thing significantly better. I wrote a few thoughts on my blog about how I went about starting with the podcast including tools used, might be useful? https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/starting-a-podcast

You don't even know how valuable this is to me at this exact moment in time.

My first interview is tomorrow night! Fortunately, it is with a friend and co-worker who has the hacker mindset and will be willing to work through hiccups in technology.

I'm trying to pick a video conference platform to try. Do I discord? Zoom? Try to find a way to set up audio line-in from my android phone.

I need a solution for tomorrow night so the blog post has found me at exactly the right time.

Thank you.

Edit: having read the blog, I thought that free zoom ended after 45 minutes! I didn't realize that one on one would allow longer sessions. Great!

The best part of zoom from my point of view is that people don't have to log in to anything to join me on a call.

If I wanted to use discord for example if have to make my guests install it or make an account there. I'm pretty sure that some of the big-time grizzled greybeards I know would probably sooner pull out of the interview than sign up for a new service.

And they're some of the ones that I'm most interested in hearing from.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#139

Post by Klinky »

Fiahil wrote: post #131
Klinky wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even know the actual impact you had on revenue/profits? Engineering is often many layers removed from customer interactions, sales and accounting. Some companies have complex and opaque revenue channels. Frankly I take any claims of direct revenue/profit growth/generation with a grain of salt. Typically at best, you're wildly guessing, at worst, you're outright lying.

it’s _very_ easy to calculate your impact, or the one of your team, when you work on meaningful projects. if that’s not the case, you are probably working on non-essential things.

Down to the lines of code written? Your product may get millions in revenue, but you wrote a single module out of hundreds, how much % do you take credit for?

Also it sounds like a toxic culture if you have to constantly try to tie your day-to-day work directly to how it impacts new revenue and profits or else your work is considered worthless.

Re: Don't End the Week with Nothing (2014)

#140

Post by tibiahurried »

piokoch wrote: post #60

"Don't try to make a career out of optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of business app at a company that no one has ever heard of. That is not the straightforward path to having other people learn you are capable of doing meaningful work." This is so sad. Optimizing that SQL might require being really clever and can bring enormous value for the company that maybe nobody heard about but m…

This is exactly what makes the difference between a seasoned and experienced engineer vs "follow the latest nodejs lib kind of guy" ...

I learned a lot exactly when doing non sexy stuff that nobody else wanted to do.

For instance, when it comes to optimizing an obscure query and make the whole system run twice as fast ... you will learn DB internals, and how the DB engine heuristic works when determining whether to use or not and index etc .. All things that are now part of my senior experience and knowledge and for which I am paid much more than a junior :)

My best advice would be : do the hard stuff, the stuff that people don't want to do. Make yourself valuable to the company. People will come and ask for you. That's the best way to learn and also have more leverage to ask for increase+stocks. Knowledge is power.

Everyone can pickup any new shiny framework in just a couple of days. That's not hard.

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