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Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

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Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#291

Post by rightbyte »

0x445442 wrote: post #119
cool-RR wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand that we're mostly agreeing, and I think that we both have an intuition for what it means for something to be a profit center. Still, I'd like to show a gap in what you said: You talk about what kind of increase in revenue you'd have if such and such people did a better job, and what kind of ROI you'd get from each department. But the question is, an increase relative to what, or an ROI relative to what?…

I agree with you 100% and have attested to the same claims on other threads. With small exceptions, businesses exist to make profit. The whole discussion going all the way back to the original terms should be recast as "ROI positive centers" and "ROI negative centers". From that perspective I would agree, it's better to be working for an "ROI positive center" in the company. And even though it might seem the security…

The janitor unlocking the doors in the morning is a cost centre but nothing would get done without one. I agree with the coiner that there are only cost centres.

However, close to the top of the pyramid is where the money is at. I think that's more important than whether it's core business or whatever.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#292

Post by rightbyte »

bloomer wrote: post #223
cool-RR wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bullshit is hidden in the word "directly". You can define this word to mean whatever you'd like to mean. You can say a salesperson directly adds revenue to the company, but it's not really directly, the billing department is much closer to the actual money. You allow yourself to take the billing department for granted, but that's just because you don't work for the billing department. In the same way you could vi…

Profit center: spending more money on it can make you more money. Cost center: spending more money will not be able to increase your revenue, hence the only way to improve your bottom line is by reducing costs. A lot of the confusion on this thread was conflating necessary functions with profit centers. Billing and compliance are both necessary. Done poorly they can cost a lot of money. Done perfectly they can never…

If compliance are doing a good job they protecting engineering from late changes in projects which might give a better product and more revenue.

It's symbiotic.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#293

Post by virgilp »

scarface74 wrote: post #222
virgilp wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look, I don't even know what your point is. I thought you were claiming "you can't/shouldn't hire someone who doesn't know well the technologies that you currently use". If it's not that, then don't mind me, I was debating something else/ I misunderstood your point.

That’s exactly what I’m saying, in my example the old school netops guys who didn’t know anything about the “tech stack” in this case AWS, ended up designing horrible, inefficient solutions because they were learning on the job. They could have been “senior network engineers” because they spent years managing a colo. But, they definitely weren’t as efficient as someone who had built real world solutions on AWS.

The linked article actually mentions that ("there are people with title 'senior' that can't do fizzbuzz"). So the fact that some "senior network engineers" did something stupid doesn't prove your point or invalidate the article in any way.

There's a big difference between not having experience with the , and not knowing foundational technologies. E.g. there's a good chance Jeff Dean doesn't have much experience with most of AWS technologies, but there's no reason to believe it would take him more than a few weeks to get up-to-speed with them if he'd really need to. Not on the "expert" level, mind you - but enough to not make big mistakes.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#294

Post by llampx »

reggiew wrote: post #72

This advice is is all well and good but to me it seems to optimise for someone with an already successful career. Those of us with multiple long streaks if unemployment can't really pick and choose when it comes to the next contract. Nor can we really negotiate because we can't walk away from an offer.

1. You can always walk away from an offer.

2. Nobody wants to hire a loser, especially as a consultant.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#295

Post by llampx »

dejawu wrote: post #124

Sure, this post might objectively get you to a higher paying software job, but good God I hope I never start seeing the world like this guy or ever have to work with people who do. Am I really reading the same article as everyone else? The one I'm reading is filled with these sociopathic gems: > Add revenue. Reduce costs. Those are your only goals. > You’re in the business of unemploying people. If you think that is…

It sounds like he is trying to convince himself rather than anyone else.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#296

Post by AlchemistCamp »

pytester wrote: post #277
dcolkitt wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Individually yes, but all of these things would take more than a few weeks - possibly months. With onboarding on an average software project also taking months, So, let's say that is the case. The lesson is that hiring is expensive and risky, even if you find a candidate whose experience exactly matches your stack. Like you mention, just onboarding for the internal technology and project itself takes months. You're…

>And the reality is that dropping stack requirements drastically improves the candidate pool. For one you have way way more candidates to select from. There's definitely a sweet spot in terms of stack specificity. There's very little issue hiring a flask developer if you need somebody to work on django. However, if you're a ruby shop and you hire a java developer - even if they are great - you've potentially doubled…

> However, if you're a ruby shop and you hire a java developer - even if they are great - you've potentially doubled or tripled your onboarding time.

I don't think that's true at all. I've met tons of Java devs who moved to Ruby with minimal pain. It's still OO and many of the same patterns apply.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#297

Post by virgilp »

chasingthewind wrote: post #19

Re: Profit Centers vs Cost Centers I was once on a team that maintained a SaaS application that was in some sort of bizarre super-position of "cost center" and "profit center" a few years back. The company technically sold the app and made money from it, but they also tended to give it away almost for free as long as the buyer was going to be paying lots of money for the company's $FLAGSHIP_BUSINESS_SERVICE that inte…

The better way to think about it is that you want to be close to the money. If you can quantify your contribution easily (I was the lead on product X that was a huge success/ brought in $Y additional revenue) you have little trouble getting some share of that success. If you can't (I fixed the tests so that they're no longer flaky and improved the overall product quality), then generally it's a lot harder to get the deserved recognition, even if your impact was actually larger! The trick is to go back to money, when you can (be specific, "build machines are costing us $X/Mo, people used to rebuild three times on average to get a "green status" so just by that I saved 0.66*$X/Mo; add an estimated y% of developer time; add cost of extra incidents/ support tickets if you can quatify it; and all of the sudden you can reasonably claim a larget $ amound that much more will easily get the attention of a high-level manager).

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#298

Post by jghn »

scarface74 wrote: post #284
jghn wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The percentage of hires for companies in that situation is going to be extremely small, yet the "hire for tech stack" motif is cargo culted throughout the industry.

Why else would most companies have open reqs if they don’t see a need for man power soon unless you are one of the four or five big tech companies that are trying to accumulate smart people (tm)?

Because they project for incoming needs. Hiring for today’s needs is a fools errand, it can take a good amount of time to identify a quality candidate. If I need something filled right ie or the company goes under it is already too late.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#299

Post by llampx »

jpindar wrote: post #81
keiferski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that you should call yourself a consultant or businessperson, even if you want to be a programmer.

That depends on who you want to be hired by. Some companies already know exactly what they need - they need some specific software written so they are looking for a programmer.

Even those companies who know exactly what they need don't only need programmers. They also need architects and solution providers. Who are mostly better-paid than the programmers themselves.

Re: Don't Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice (2011)

#300

Post by llampx »

imhoguy wrote: post #115
mobjack wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is a huge profit center. Improving efficiency in marketing spend can bring in millions in new business value. If you can do that, it will definitely be noticed by the business.

Joga classes in the office can improve employees and management efficiency and their comfort of life so such spend can bring in millions in new business value by healthier and happier staff. Is joga trainer a profit center?

If engineers (the Product department) are a profit center then yoga trainers will be approved by Management.

Try hiring yoga trainers for the IT and Procurement departments and see how quickly the request is rejected.

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