Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The other kind of staff software engineer

earthly.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 201 posts

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#131

Post by belter »

chadash wrote: post #121
belter wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. I always made it very clear.

Example: Show me your current budget for your main data center. Let me show a proposal for a Cloud move that will keep equivalent or better quality of service, including training and while defining KPI's for success.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#132

Post by Brystephor »

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

You don't need to prove it. You just need to justify the number you show.

For example: you build a feature to notify customers via email that they have a balance due. The email includes a link with UTM tracking stuff. You also have metrics as to who pays and when. So now you can say "X number of people paid their balance within Y hours of an email being sent out, and within Z minutes of the email linked being clicked" and total up the amount of balances paid. Sure, your feature isn't 100% responsible for enabling that balance to be collected, but it deserves to say it contributed to a portion of the collected balance value.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#133

Post by Brystephor »

pgodzin wrote: post #122
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.

If you save $500k this year by optimizing some pattern or behavior (eg infrastructure) then why wouldn't that $500k also be saved the next year? You're right if it's a one-time cut (eg no free snacks this year) but most savings are going to be on things that happen more than once.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#134

Post by sdsaga12 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #82
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 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…

What type and size company do you work for? And how did you find it?

That sounds like a pretty ideal scenario to me, but I'm not sure how to go about finding similar positions.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#135

Post by krisrm »

belter wrote: post #131
chadash wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. I always made it very clear. Example: Show me your current budget for your main data center. Let me show a proposal for a Cloud move that will keep equivalent or better quality of service, including training and while defining KPI's for success.

Seems like that would quickly turn into a game of reverse engineering shitty KPIs, would it not?

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#136

Post by jimmaswell »

sdsaga12 wrote: post #134
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…

What type and size company do you work for? And how did you find it? That sounds like a pretty ideal scenario to me, but I'm not sure how to go about finding similar positions.

I don't want to make myself too identifiable, but it's a fairly big place and I lucked into it more than anything. Can't give any specific advice how to find a similar job besides looking for remote listings at non tech places.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#137

Post by belter »

krisrm wrote: post #135
belter wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I always made it very clear. Example: Show me your current budget for your main data center. Let me show a proposal for a Cloud move that will keep equivalent or better quality of service, including training and while defining KPI's for success.

Seems like that would quickly turn into a game of reverse engineering shitty KPIs, would it not?

I agree some play the game of working for the KPI's as defined.

The main point of the proposal was always clear up front. I was not the one deciding on KPI's it was a joint choice.

For the SAME business applications and SAME business processes:

- At the end of a quarter you either spend less OR more with your infra costs including required teams.

- At the end of a quarter you either have more uptime OR less uptime.

- At the end of a quarter you either spend more on licenses OR less.

Some KPI's are somewhat objective.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#138

Post by Goronmon »

rendall wrote: post #110
Goronmon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At one place I worked full-time, the time-tracking software explicitly had a checkbox, "billable", which meant this time can be directly billed to clients, and you were expected to be able to check that for some specific percentage of your working day. The percentage I'm expected to bill to clients is 100%, 8hrs a day. We are even expected to make up time spent on non-billable things like company or department meetin…

In that case, just don't sweat it. It's all billable. Lunch, too, apparently. That's just what the sales contract stipulates, so, it's not your problem. The stress comes from deciding which hour you bill and which you don't. Bill all the things!

In that case, just don't sweat it. It's all billable.

The budget for these projects won't support that. Billing an hour of lunch everyday just for myself would exceed the retainer allotted for some of these projects.

And it wouldn't work anyways. Hours are billed to specific tasks, individual to the person down to 15 minute increments.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#139

Post by dwohnitmok »

physicsgraph wrote: post #116

The claim that "You are line if your role makes up the largest fraction of the org chart" has a counter example: the number of pilots in the Air Force is relatively small compared to the number of non-pilot positions, yet the pilot is the only line role in the Air Force.

This is true also of other branches of military. Generally support staff outnumber actual fighters.

Re: The other kind of staff software engineer

#140

Post by geogra4 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #31
xarope wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Java vs just about anything else (!)

Plenty of front line software at big tech companies like Google is written in Java.

Yeah there's a lot of Java hate but faang companies definitely use it more than ocaml, lisp or what have you.
Post reply on HN