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The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

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Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#41

Post by stephbook »

loeg wrote: post #2

> Having half of the company’s engineers enmeshed in an endless loop of proposing changes and being told no was totally fine - they didn’t need to be productive anyway, and this way they weren’t impacting business-critical systems. Well, it's a take. This is pretty cynical.

As someone else said, much about the post is simply not testable.

Is someone at Facebook working on the Metaverse a crucial part of prototyping new business models, or are they doing busywork? It'll only be clear in hindsight.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#42

Post by am17an »

Who is their right minds would be wedded to an identity of saying "No"? Code quality puritans are annoying but if they do their job right they actually speed-up the development process because they don't let technical debt accumulate. Ultimately saying "No" is protecting your codebase. In the era of LLMs, saying "No" is much easier because you don't have to worry about the author feeling bad.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#44

Post by bluefirebrand »

BinRoo wrote: post #8

Beautiful write-up, thank you. One aspect that still bothers me is that you claim the just-say-no-engineer "was a critical role during ZIRP." I might be in the minority here, but I don't hold that same stance. I wonder if I am alone in that?

I think the "just say no" engineers were massively sidelined during ZIRP

Actually I suspect they are just massively sidelined in software in general because of how few regulations exist

The "just say no" engineer is someone who thrives in regulated environments, because (enforced) regulations are the only things that actually slow down the growth at all costs minded PMs in the world. And even then only sometimes

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#45

Post by returnInfinity »

layer8 wrote: post #23
praptak wrote: post #13

The problem with this kind of armchair economy is that you can argue both ways. "End of ZIRP and the raise of just-say-no engineers": with capital being more expensive companies need to invest it wisely, therefore the need the judgement of the just-say-no engineer to avoid blowing it on unnecessary stuff.

I would add: Either you are an engineer that management trusts and whose judgement they value, or you aren’t. If you aren’t, you’re in a bad position anyway.

This is the right answer. Double down or triple down on this comment.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#46

Post by eru »

The whole zero-interest rate narrative I see used in a variety of context is a bit silly. Real interest rates were seldom close to zero. During much of that time they were negative, for example. And during many other times, when we had rather high positive nominal rates, real rates were closer to zero (because of inflation), and the author doesn't say anything weird happened then.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#47

Post by laszlojamf »

lmm wrote: post #12

There's no reason for engineers to be under more pressure to accept technical debt (which is what we're really talking about with the yes-or-no framing) after the end of ZIRP. Quite the opposite: right now debt is expensive and programmers are cheap, it's a good time to have high quality standards and build robust infrastructure that will position you to catch the next growth wave. It really is AI (or rather AI hype)…

the difference IMO is that now businesses have to find a product-market-fit faster. you can't spend 5 years building the perfect system. you get to spend 1 year building a system somebody will pay to use.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#48

Post by bluefirebrand »

sublinear wrote: post #5

This is trivially incorrect outside of SV. There are plenty of slow moving projects that focus on the stability of the codebase if you work for a business that isn't a "tech company" and work on services instead of products.

I wish it was easier to find this sort of business and work my way into one

I'm so tired of startups.

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#49

Post by eru »

shermantanktop wrote: post #40
loeg wrote: post #2

> Having half of the company’s engineers enmeshed in an endless loop of proposing changes and being told no was totally fine - they didn’t need to be productive anyway, and this way they weren’t impacting business-critical systems. Well, it's a take. This is pretty cynical.

There are many stories of FAANG hiring during that era for the purpose of denying talent to competitors. But now that you hired them, what will they do? And how will you keep them from creating problems? It sounds cynical in retrospect; at the time the same set of facts were explained differently, in a way that didn’t hurt people feelings.

That's a bit silly. Presumably you wanted to deny competitors use of these engineers, because they would build something useful. Just have them build that stuff for you instead?

And if competitors were in the same boat, why bother hiring these people at all?

Re: The just-say-no engineer was a ZIRP phenomenon

#50

Post by SCdF »

This is perhaps a very American-centric article? I realise that ZIRP was near-global, but "When banks hiked interest rates, almost every tech company immediately laid off 5-20% of their engineers." does not track with my or my friends' experiences.

And, fundamentally, in countries with employee rights, as an employee I do not give two shits about interest rates the company I work at borrows on. My philosophy on software design does not change. You can argue that the company might pick and choose who it makes redundant, and they might value people who produce "more product", but companies have always valued that visibility. It's your responsibility, if you care, to sell your actions in a commercial context. I don't think ZIRP changes that, and I have not personally noticed a change there.

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