Companies That Don't Understand Engineers Don't Respect Engineers 371
An anonymous reader writes Following up on a recent experiment into the status of software engineers versus managers, Jon Evans writes that the easiest way to find out which companies don't respect their engineers is to learn which companies simply don't understand them. "Engineers are treated as less-than-equal because we are often viewed as idiot savants. We may speak the magic language of machines, the thinking goes, but we aren't business people, so we aren't qualified to make the most important decisions. ... Whereas in fact any engineer worth her salt will tell you that she makes business decisions daily–albeit on the micro not macro level–because she has to in order to get the job done. Exactly how long should this database field be? And of what datatype? How and where should it be validated? How do we handle all of the edge cases? These are in fact business decisions, and we make them, because we're at the proverbial coal face, and it would take forever to run every single one of them by the product people and sometimes they wouldn't even understand the technical factors involved. ... It might have made some sense to treat them as separate-but-slightly-inferior when technology was not at the heart of almost every business, but not any more."
Database? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Database? (Score:5, Funny)
Real engineers don't size databases.
Real engineers do everything.
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If they can, yes. The most efficient project team is one really good engineer and one business person keeping all administrative stuff (except budget things) away so that they does not distract the engineer. So, yes, really good engineers do everything that is engineering.
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Which is pretty much a meaningless number for software. No, the engineer should have an idea of the overall business plan and may have input for it.
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Most, but not all, actual engineers were trained in general engineering, and in a specialty that was not software or computer science.
Most specialists tend to have a blind spot to the complexities, subtleties, lay of the landscape in other areas than their specialty (thinking that the problems over there are trivial and not worth much effort or expertise.) Come to think about it, this is very similar to bad managers' perceptions of software people or engineers and their work.
I recently worked on a multi-dis
Re: Database? (Score:5, Funny)
Complex engineers do everything real and imaginary engineers do.
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Yeah, like calculate the square root of -1!
seriously though, the summery is tagged as IT, but this is true of all engineering branches.
it's what happens when you hire engineers to get things done, but bean counters to manage them.
Re:Database? (Score:4, Funny)
Imaginary stuff is done by imaginary engineers, also known as "signal processing experts" ;-)
Re:Database? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who thinks that Engineers don't have a major impact on the entire business model have never worked in the real world, or have no idea the impact we have. "Why do we do thing X even though it no longer makes sense?
Re:Database? (Score:5, Funny)
That is not a business decision. (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly how long should this database field be? And of what datatype? How and where should it be validated? How do we handle all of the edge cases?
That is not a business decision, that is a technical decision where you try to come up with the most universal and correct to spec answer you can. You are not shaping the business with this decision, you are trying to shape your solution to the business.
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My bank uses a 2-digit extension to the account number to determine which bucket to put the money into. Money going to savings is in 1234567-01, checking is 1234567-02, a Certificate of Deposit is 1234567-34, etc. When a CD matures and is rolled into a new CD, it gets a new 2-digit number. With multiple CDs and standard accounts, I have run out of 2-digit numbers. I will either have to open a new account at this bank or move my money to a new bank with a better numbering system. The length of a database fie
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I'm sorry sir. I'd love to do that for you, but the computer won't let me.
IOW: Your belief that software design doesn't shape and make business decisions stems from a lack of forward-sightedness.
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Actually, even janitors and low level administration staff make a difference.
The new Employee who asks for something simple and reasonable to be done can get the response "sorry, you can not order me to do that" or he can just do it. In the latter case the new employee may get another picture of your company.
The team assistant with not even a bachelor degree can significantly influence the output of the specialist.
If i see that a demotivated mode of work is bussiness as usual in a company, then i run.
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(Make_a_Difference != Make_a_Business_Decision)
That being said, I already acknowledged that secretaries make business decisions. Janitors, however, while making a difference, do not make business decisions.
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The real business decision would be how many people you put into development and how many requirements engineers and SW quality people you put into the project to validate is the software (including hte database) conforms to the different customers needs.
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Re:That is not a business decision. (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you shine the brass and keep the wastebasket empty.
But what sort of perturbs me is that 'Engineers' aren't just IT types. Where I work, engineers work on and design product. Except for companies that produce IT Products, the IT staff aren't engineers, except in the 'sanitation engineer' sense. So why does the article immediately and only segue into: " Exactly how long should this database field be? " Engineers concern themselves with what type of plastic to produce which components of the product out of, tooling tolerances, production costs, etc. The guy that maintains the CAD files database is a glorified file clerk.
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The problem with equating "engineer" with "software engineer" is that there's more to computing than being a code monkey. A lot of companies won't even have any code monkeys but will still have computing professionals to manage their computing infastructure.
By making the false equivalency you are making the entire thesis less clear.
Machismo... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this has a lot more to do with the machismo of business people than anything else. The suits don't have a lick of understanding of what the engineers actually do--sure, they understand the iPhone once it rolls off the lines, but up to that point, what engineers do is basically a bunch of technovoodoo magic to them. Since lots of businessmen are macho, domineering types (especially in large, competitive companies), the concept of having subordinates who are doing things far beyond their understanding is not one they like. In turn, the business people feel the need to assert how hard whatever it is they do--"oh, you wouldn't understand because business is sooo much more complicated than rocket science"--and elevate the complexity and importance of their own job beyond that of the lowly engineers.
I don't think it's lack of "understanding the engineers." I think it's lack of understanding the engineering and feeling uncomfortable about it.
Re:Machismo... (Score:4, Interesting)
The suits
Used-car-salesmen wear similar suits.
We should treat "business" people with suspicion, not the other way around.
Re:Machismo... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since lots of businessmen are macho, domineering types
Who usually make decisions based on "gut feelings" and aren't used to people calling them on it because they're making such decisions on things that can't be weighed and measured very well. They don't know what to make of people who make decisions on things that have some absolutism involved, and frequently will not make "gut decisions" when the data is missing and they are asked to.
Re:Machismo... (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't know what to make of people who make decisions on things that have some absolutism involved, and frequently will not make "gut decisions" when the data is missing and they are asked to.
That's incredibly insightful. I never saw it that way before. Nonetheless, as an engineer, I've had to prove beyond any doubt that a certain problem existed to get business people to move on it. So I think there's another layer there: If the evidence goes against the businessperson's gut, it needs to be 100% iron-clad.
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Who usually make decisions based on "gut feelings" and aren't used to people calling them on it because they're making such decisions on things that can't be weighed and measured very well.
This is absolutely true, and conventional business wisdom says that we often need such people to "lead" and to make the "big decisions" so a company can grow quickly and avoid getting mired in minutiae.
The problem is that there's relatively little evidence that having such a person around is a net positive. For every company that succeeds by taking big risks on "gut feelings," there are probably quite a few others that fail miserably.
One of the most insightful books I read on the subject a few years ag
us other engineers matter, too (Score:5, Insightful)
/. may be a software-centric site, but those of us in mechanical, electrical, optical, materials, and other branches of engineering are in the same basic position. But sadly, even in businesses which promote engineers into senior roles end up respecting people primarily on the basis of how many direct reports (that's the term for peons whose salaries they determine) they control. Until you're able to rate people by the quality/quantity of output regardless of altitude in the org chart, this problem will continue.
Re:us other engineers matter, too (Score:5, Insightful)
/. may be a software-centric site, but those of us in mechanical, electrical, optical, materials, and other branches of engineering are in the same basic position. But sadly, even in businesses which promote engineers into senior roles end up respecting people primarily on the basis of how many direct reports (that's the term for peons whose salaries they determine) they control. Until you're able to rate people by the quality/quantity of output regardless of altitude in the org chart, this problem will continue.
Indeed; the underlying basis of the article could really match almost any profession. Accountants, HR personnel, programmers, even admin assistants. Not understanding the role of a job invariably means not understanding its challenges or the value it brings. So what? This is not news. Hell, I've seen companies where they didn't understand the value of managers...and thus, promoted/hired people into such roles who had no skill at doing their jobs.
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Re:us other engineers matter, too (Score:5, Insightful)
Valuing people by their number of direct or indirect reports makes a lot of sense. If I am one of a group of ten people and I'm 20% more productive than the others, my extra contribution only adds about 2% to the total. If I am a good manager my staff might be 5% more productive than an average manager's.
If you're good you should be in charge of more people, but being in charge of more people doesn't make you good.
Or to put it another way, just because a position is important doesn't mean the person in the position is.
It's simple (Score:2)
If your company promotes engineers from within into engineering management positions, then you work for a company that respects engineers.
If your company promotes administrators from within (you know, MBAs, project managers, etc) then there's a chance it might respect engineers.
If your company hires management from outside for the bottom rung of management (usually who most engineers report to), then your company probably dislikes engineers very much.
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A related point: In my experience, managers who hung on to their engineering responsibilities as well as took on a management role were crappy managers. Those engineers who took on management full time were much, much better at it.
Real people just don't like dealing with Hipsters. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been in the computing industry for many, many, many years. I've worked on the hardware side, on the software side, and everywhere in between.
Businesspeople will treat software developers and electrical engineers just fine, but these software developers and electrical engineers need to be adults and need to act like adults. They need to dress professionally, they need to act professionally, and they need to get valuable work done.
Such things conflict with the Hipster lifestyle, however. The influx of Hi
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No, businesspeople will not take a Hipster seriously when this Hipster insists on using provenly bad technologies like Ruby on Rails, JavaScript and NoSQL absolutely everywhere, especially when the Hipster was told that C++ is being used because the other 10 million lines of code in the system are written in C++. Businesspeople need software that works, not software that's built upon technologies solely chosen because of how much hype they've gotten, or how much they tickle the fancy of some Hipster.
They'll also not take seriously self-righteous morons who use the word "proven" as a justification for their technical prejudices, instead of to denote some objective reality. Or actually, they might, but the rest of us won't.
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You wouldn't ever catch me in a fedora (it seems little more than a uniform for them much like a suit is to your so called "businesspeople") but people who judge someone's professional competency based on that attire and equate professionalism with collars and suits are being as stupid and bigoted as the hipsters that you are describing.
Professionalism shouldn't be about clothing choices or buzz words or even
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The primary reason business attire is much more casual today is that other people began pushing against the same very envelope years ago.
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Re:Real people just don't like dealing with Hipste (Score:5, Informative)
Its not about preconceptions based on attire. Its about perceptions based on the wisdom of choosing ones attire that puts the business environment ahead of one's personal need to express himself through dress. That is a statement in itself. Some get it, others don't. The accepted dress in most companies today is much more casual and varied than it was even 10 years ago. It will continue to evolve. Having the capacity to know where the standards of the day are, and what may be pushing the limits, is one that you can demonstrate through your choice of dress. Trying to prove something is fine, just don't blame others for the result it brings. Business leaders don't like complainers.
The point I was trying to make was that the conventions that make up accepted dress in the business environment (to use your words) are arbitrary and based only on social conditioning. I accept that almost everyone has been subjected to that conditioning - not just the managers but also the customers. TFA is about engineers not being respected. The AC points out their clothing can cause them not to be respected.
For respect to be regained someone must make changes. That could be the engineers capitulating and dressing according to the social norms of the traditionalists. The respect could also be regained by the traditionalists waking up and realising that all of these cultural rituals are a waste of time that complicate the process of buying and selling high quality products and services.
Sure, if someone turns up to a series of job interviews today in a t shirt and flip flops they shouldn't be shocked if no-one calls them back and they need to seriously rethink their strategy. The same could be true when trying to clinch that sale - but then how many engineers are sales people?
The AC was attacking the stereotypical "hipster", calling them childish and speaking with much disdain about them. My point was that you can just as justifiably pour disdain on the traditionalist business folk. They are also the ones who are trying to impose their standards on other people. Standards that really should not be relevant, in an ideal world, to doing good business. I accept we do not live in an ideal world, and the hipsters of the AC's comment should know better. It's just that they're not the only ones that would benefit from an improved attitude.
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Preconceptions about business attire are based on social conventions that are utterly arbitrary!
You wouldn't ever catch me in a fedora (it seems little more than a uniform for them much like a suit is to your so called "businesspeople") but people who judge someone's professional competency based on that attire and equate professionalism with collars and suits are being as stupid and bigoted as the hipsters that you are describing.
True, but they control the purse strings. You can either bang your head against the wall while complaining about the unfairness of it all or adapt, get inside, and begin the make changes. Generational shifts occur, after all hats used to be the norm for men at work, as were suits and ties. However, the reality is those making decisions at the top have a set of norms and you need to adjust to those norms if ou want to be taken seriously. Sure, there is the occasional genius who can do whatever they want bec
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Yes I know that in trying to win customers a business needs to consider the fact that more often than not a lot of these potential customers will have many of these arbitrary, illogical preconceptions, so I do understand that making compromises to please their sensibilities is important for the success of a business. It doesn't change the fact that these preconceptions are arbitrary and could make life simpler if over time they were phased out. I actually think in some places that's already begun to happen.
Arbitrary and prejudicial yes, but still rational. Think about the bowl of M&Ms (with all brown M&Ms removed) that Van Halen required to be backstage for each of their shows. It didn't even rise to the level of indulging a prejudice: it was a completely arbitrary requirement. But if the bowl wasn't there or had the wrong stuff in it the band knew the venue wasn't taking the specs of the contract seriously and so they would be on guard for further deviations. If you, as an engineer, present yoursel
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Think about the bowl of M&Ms (with all brown M&Ms removed) that Van Halen required to be backstage for each of their shows. It didn't even rise to the level of indulging a prejudice: it was a completely arbitrary requirement. But if the bowl wasn't there or had the wrong stuff in it the band knew the venue wasn't taking the specs of the contract seriously and so they would be on guard for further deviations.
The bowl of M&Ms was arguably a part of the customer requirements for the service they were buying from the venue. That's exactly what I was saying professionalism should be about - getting the job done - providing the product or service to a high standard. That's what makes the business money. It shouldn't matter what the person who ordered the M&Ms, or even who placed them backstage the night before, was wearing - unless the customer paid for that to be part of the act.
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Attire is a choice, and like *every other choice* it can demonstrate good or poor judgment.
Disrespecting your co-workers (or, if applicable, customers) demonstrates poor judgment. Not anticipating or understanding the consequences is immaturity.
Re:Real people just don't like dealing with Hipste (Score:4, Insightful)
Minority Report (Score:2)
Unlike you I have seen hipsterism, but it's a minority. You can go to downtown Mountain View any day and see people that look like they are homeless talking business on a smart phone or banging away on a MacBook Pro. I assume that whoever employs them lets them work from home (or downtown Mountain View), and probably prefers it that way.
Outside of the "hipster" appearances, and much more common, I have seen people enter shops and try to change the company to use what ever trend they like. It generally en
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Right -- before the hipsters, software types came to work in suits and ties. I distinctly remember that from the 70's. Oh wait, that was a hallucination. I remember them mostly wearing Birkenstocks, cutoff jeans and Peace symbol tees. I'm in my 60's but I don't have the selective amnesia of the above AC. In fact, I think the software types are mostly young marrieds and pretty serious about their work [anyway, more serious than I was]. When they propose new technology it is backed up with the advantage
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Business decisions (Score:5, Informative)
Should I halt work on the next version for a month to do custom work for this important customer?
Should I save time by making the system very inflexible in this regard to get it out the door for a narrow market at the expense of a wider market later?
Should I follow the spec that management and business analysts wrote even though it seems wrong, or go up the chain or to the customer and likely fix or rewrite the spec?
These are the kind of business decisions I used to find myself making. In most cases it turned out that I made the correct decision in hindsight, but I got a lot of fighting from management in the process about that not being my job, even though there was nobody else competent to do it.
The biggest problem I run into is that the management assumes that the engineers are completely unable to talk to customers and look at outside non-technical specifications. I have found that engineers tend to be better at it than managers and all but the best business analysts.
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The biggest problem I run into is that the management assumes that the engineers are completely unable to talk to customers and look at outside non-technical specifications. I have found that engineers tend to be better at it than managers and all but the best business analysts.
I think that the generalization has gone too far both ways. There are certainly engineers that are very good at talking to customers. There are some that absolutely should not be talking to customers... Example, we have engineers that panic at the slightest bump in the road and will tell everyone who will listen how screwed up things are. If you press them on it, most of the time they haven't done their homework and when they do, it isn't such a big deal after all. A lot of the time it is a couple of ho
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The biggest problem I run into is that the management assumes that the engineers are completely unable to talk to customers and look at outside non-technical specifications. I have found that engineers tend to be better at it than managers and all but the best business analysts.
I think that the generalization has gone too far both ways. There are certainly engineers that are very good at talking to customers. There are some that absolutely should not be talking to customers...
I've been on both sides of that equation and the biggest issue I've seen with engineers is they often cannot communicate effectively. They may be great engineers and able to fix a problem but they have trouble explaining why the problem matters in a way to get decision makers to act. They can tell you it's a problem, what the technical details are and what needs to be done to fix it but fail open on why it is a problem and its implications. Those that can do that tend to be the ones listened to and moved in
Re: Business decisions (Score:2)
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This happens just as often from the other side. Decision makers like to make decisions and they will do so regardless of how well they understand the problem. Instead they bring vague contradictory language to the engineers and expect them to sort out what the business ACTUALLY needs to make the decision maker look good. Managers are good at communicating their successes and often little else.
Which is why good two way communications is essential to success. the engineers need to clearly understand what is needed and the managers what it will take to deliver that. All too often both groups make decisions in a vacuum which leads to problems.
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Should I halt work on the next version for a month to do custom work for this important customer?
How is there no one more qualified to make this decision. This is more of a personal preference on how the business is run than a true decision. Sure someone with a deep background in business might be able to guess at the more profitable course, but 99% of this decision is just personal preference on what sort of business you want. And the biggest variable in this decision is definitely what the business has planned for the future.
How could your bosses not be more qualified to make that decision than yo
That seems fair (Score:5, Insightful)
We do, however, have both a power and a knowledge imbalance in the situation. We have a power imbalance in that those business weenies can fire me, but I can't fire them; and we have a knowledge imbalance in that many engineers do know the business side of things. I can work up a set of financial statements as well as the weenies; I can perform a ratio analysis better than the weenies, because unlike them, I "know" what the numbers mean beyond a cut-and-paste job in Excel; I can analyze the company's capitalization structure and consider the impact on near-term cash flows right up there with the best of the weenies.
Now, you might fairly point out that I've mostly describe accountancy, not "business"... But the knowledge imbalance gets worse when we get into actual strategic planning, market analysis, and consideration of macroeconomic factors - At least many of the weenies have significant exposure to accounting, sometimes even a related undergrad degree. For the harder material, they just can't grasp even the basics of supply/demand curves without a solid math background (in taking my MBA, I found one particular economics class hilarious; we spent more than half of the semester learning a set of related equations for (for example) forecasting optimal production levels, that all just took the derivative of the same damn underlying equation from different perspectives. And that counted as one of the "killer" classes in a goddamned graduate-level degree?
Sadly, though, business weenies do have exactly one trait that engineers lack - Smarm. And in this sick sad world, that will get you further than any level of mastery of any legitimate domain of knowledge.
Re:That seems fair (Score:5, Interesting)
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Most engineers are risk-averse. You said as much in your post. But many businesses succeed by risk. Getting something unfinished out there before the competitor often wins the day, and 99% of engineers wouldn't do it.
Sure, but remember that you can only find the "succeed by risk" examples. Those who took the risk and won.
The companies that took the risk and failed tanked and you never heard of them.
I know of at least two companies that were led by business people where they would take risks anytime someone did the math and showed them that there was a 90% chance of success. That is fine one or two times when you are a self employed start-up.
Well, lets just say that they both kept taking risks and as any engineer can de
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If you are a good engineer, you have something that no business person will ever have (except at the very top maybe): You are really hard to replace. Use that!
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Nope, not that one... I don't remember the actual title, but it had the word "management" in it, which I eventually came to learn meant "watered down so you'll know the buzzwords but have almost no understanding of the underlying material". And sadly, I don't mean that as a slam, I mean it quite literally - I had taken micro as an undergrad and we covered more in the first month than this "
Possibly the best post I've read in here for years (Score:5, Insightful)
How many times haven't you been seen as the "useful idiot" every time someone need something technical fixed? This is something I've lived with and experienced since I was a kid (we're talking 30+ years here), and I wasn't even the geeky one. But it seems like every manager, every company executive and even just everyday people think they're somewhat "superior" because they make money on your kindness and professionalism.
I even had friends like that for years, sure...when something breaks, they'll come to me to get it fixed, and expect not to pay for it. But when I needed something, then they where nowhere to be seen. I made millions for one of my bosses back in the Commodore heydays when I literally was the "driving" motor of his entire store chain, I got people together, computer-clubs, repaired the computers etc. One could always argue that I was the IDIOT for not being business savvy enough to charge more, but they are just better at business than fixing things. When I left, his business went to ruins within 2 years, he thought he did it all by himself because he was such a smart businessman. That's the worst part...these company directors wouldn't know good people, and they always get high on "their" own success. And eventually fail.
How many times haven't you seen bosses walk away with HUGE fat bonuses, and all they basically do is talk. You do all the work anyway. Small minds think small, and only see the carrot dangling in front of their face. Intelligent bosses actually think ahead and invest in great minds. The companies that have the biggest successes - are those who appreciate their workers and the incredible minds behind it all. The best company executive in the world, praises his coworkers where credit is due.
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See, if you were smarter you would talk more and work less and get paid more (I've been telling myself this for years. I think my line of bullshit is finally getting to corporate grade).
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Mmmm hmmm...don't bitch when the suits take advantage of you then.
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I try to help them make business decisions (Score:3)
Hey, I could bring up how they had the great idea to release software during a literal blizzard.(Yes, that really happened and yes it really was a blizzard. This did not go well.)
I hate to inform you (Score:5, Informative)
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Too true. And it's not just in IT and/or engineering. The idea of management not knowing much about what the company or department that they're in charge of actually does and what purpose it serves has becoming all too common in "business circles." Most senior managers come from sales jobs/backgrounds.
What is happening now is the influx of MBA's. These are the new superior beings, and in their mind, they constitute an evolution from mere humanity. They shall take the corporation to new heights as soon as they get those fools with their silly experience out of the way.
WIth an MBA, a kid who has never worked a day in their life, can be installed in a position overlording work they know nothing about, and they immediately know everything about everything. That was once reserved for PhD's, but the MBA now
Re:I hate to inform you (Score:4, Informative)
Because business management is all about maintaining command and control of an enterprise. Everything else is a commodity; engineering, construction, human resources. It can be replaced. But just try suggesting that the large compensation increases handed top management might not be producing a decent ROI and there will be screams of discontent.
One principle taught in management classes is to make sure that no one employee becomes such a key to the success of a business that they can hold it hostage. If that means dumbing down the product, so be it. And yet, management works themselves into exactly this position. We've got to hand that CEO the big wage package or he/she will leave. Fine. Let them go. There are case histories of executives hopping back and forth between different industries that a good argument can be made for management as a commodity.
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I've done a lot of different jobs over 3 decades (engineering,
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It's reciprocal (Score:4, Interesting)
Coincidentally everyone but the managers of a company think that management is overrated, overpaid and in general the reason that things go south when (not if) they do. A bunch of dorks with zero clue what the company is actually doing making decisions about it and the products they have never even seen. Hell, the idiots even claim that it doesn't matter just what kind of product we're producing 'cause they're equally qualified to run a potato chip company as they are running a computer chip company. Actually I'd agree, they're usually qualified for neither.
So you see, the feeling is definitely mutual. The only thing that saves them is that they make the HR decisions, too. Else they'd have been outsourced to the local zoo.
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Yes, the business guys are often fond of telling everybody just what geniuses they are. I like to point out that when we were in college, we never talked about how smart the business majors were.
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Other responsibilities (Score:3, Interesting)
Those aren't business decisions (Score:3)
I'm an engineer who runs a business. I know the tradeoff between technology and costs. And figuring out how and where something should be validated is not a "business decision". It might be a business process decision, but unless it affect the bottom line (for example, the validation costs $50 so we only do it when a customer is just about to purchase) it's not a business decision.
There's a real problem with engineers not understanding business just as much as there's a problem with business types not understanding engineering. I had one of my engineers say to me once "I don't understand why we have sales people" (hint for those of you nodding along with him - it's so we get income so the engineers and everyone else can get paid). I've seen companies where engineering gold-plated the systems architecture to the point where the company couldn't make money with the deployed hardware.
Business isn't all that complicated and anyone competent as an engineer should be able to understand it (you may not like it but that's another issue entirely). Figuring out how the costs of a system affect the business, how the features in a product affect its salability, these are things that a good engineer will understand, and will probably wind up explaining to the business people.
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I completely agree. When I moved from academics to industry some time ago, it did not take that long to understand the business side of things. Most of it is just numbers, albeit a lot more fuzzy than is common in engineering. All it takes is an interest to learn. Sure, sales requires a lot of psychology, but a bright engineer can pick most of that up as well, just takes time and careful observation. And these skills even help you to present a project outcome in a positive light or defuse tense situations.
O
income (Score:2)
average business manager is 48k.
We might not get the respect we think we deserve, but the stats don't lie about our income.
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Nice numbers! Have a reference? (I believe them, but I may want to reference them myself...)
Engineers don't understand business (Score:2)
As evidently demonstrated by this summary.
(it has also been my experience, as an engineer turned entrepreneur and now CEO)
And these companies do not have good ones... (Score:2)
Or at least they do not have them long, as the good engineers will move on pretty soon. Some of them may even successfully found their own company!
I have seen this process several times now (fortunately always from the outside): Engineers start to get disrespected, and the most agile ones leave and find better jobs elsewhere. Then the good remaining ones raise more and more issues as there are not enough good engineers anymore and issues start to accumulate. Then these people get sacked or get strong sugges
Who signs the checks (Score:5, Interesting)
It wasn't two weeks after their first client wrote them a big check that the salesman leased himself a "company" car. My friend said, nope that comes out of your profits. The salesman went to a lawyer and then managed to return the car.
The other clause that totally screwed the salesman was what is called a "shotgun clause" basically what that states is that one partner can make an offer to buy out the other's share and that offer can not be refused; but it can be matched in which case the first party must sell for the amount they offered.
So the company was taking off and my friend just made an offer on a house. So the salesman made a lowball offer for my friend's half of the company thinking that all his money was tied up. My friend actually had quite a bit of money saved and combined with credit cards and family raised the matching money in about a day. This one ended up in court but didn't go anywhere as my friend was 100% in the right. What came out during the initial discovery was that now that they had hired a handful of engineers was that the salesman was ticked that he was paying 50% of the profits to my friend who he thought could be replaced with interns and local tech school graduates. But as my friend gleefully was able to do was replace the salesman with someone who was much cheaper than the 50% profits going to the salesman.
Needless to say, both of them were fairly replaceable but I would say that my friend had at least as good business skills as the salesman, while also possessing masterful engineering skills. The salesman only had moderate business skills and zero engineering skills.
The reality of the story was that while my friend was willing to let things continue as normal and let the salesman enjoy the fruits of his initial investment, the salesman was pretty much trying to screw my friend once a month. He just could not believe that some techy was his equal. Every new employee that was hired was told by the salesman that the salesman was in charge and that the engineer was basically a hanger on. So my engineering friend would often have to point out to people such as the accountant how things worked(as opposed how the salesman dreamed they worked) and that either one of them could fire anyone so if they tried picking a side they would be gone the next day.
Yet my friend fully agreed that when he turfed the salesman that either one of them were by that point replaceable. As he had brought engineering skills that at first the salesman could not get cheap enough, and that the salesman had brought a rolodex that got the company started before it was exhausted.
This is part of a larger cultural problem (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Real problem is not understanding customers (Score:4, Insightful)
In the end it is always the customer that pays the bills. If you are selling things to technical people then the engineers may have a better grasp on what the customer wants. I've been in customer meetings where we were selling a machine to the customer and both management didn't really understand the requirements. When I talked with the manufacturing engineer we both understood each other and were able to agree upon some real requirements that could be verified. In this cage management wasn't helping. Luckily they understood this and allowed the technical people to work together.
In other cases when I worked for a company that sold services to the government I had to learn to relize the business wasn't about doing a great job. They have the contract so the business goal was to milk the government as much as possible. This means doing exactly what you were contracted to do even if it wasn't technically correct.
Find a Startup (Score:2)
With the caveat that not all startups are created equal, if you want to be treated like family then you need to find a startup to work for.
Once a group of humans gets above about 150 people, it starts to fracture. The whole point of the modern corporation is to keep warring factions together and get something done despite the constant efforts of its participants to tear itself apart. It's not surprising that the group will tend to fracture along lines of similar people - engineers perhaps being the beta c
It works the other way around, too (Score:2, Insightful)
Many engineers don't understand that business people are engineers of a sort, too.
What we all should do is realize that we're all part of a team that can't work without the participation of everyone. Mutual respect is key.
Many skills are needed if a firm is to survive.
The real problem (Score:3)
The real problem is that the goal of most IT companies is to maximize profit in the short term. As such, engineers, like most employees are just a resource to be consumed. This isn't unique to IT companies, but it is most obvious there because many are started by venture capitalists who want to make their money and run. While engineers focus on quality solutions, the typical VC wants quick results at a low cost. The old adage of fast, quality, and cheap are at play in the IT world and you can't have all three.
Re:Engineers that Don't Understand Companies? (Score:4, Funny)
I think you're getting engineer confused with self-opinionated hipster who wants to pretend they are businessmen and engineer without having the skill or talent to be either.
See "Startup" for more details.
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Perhaps they are also confusing engineers, a type of highly-trained professional with excellent problem-solving skills, with people who incorrectly call themselves engineers.
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And that is the issue: Managers do not "supervise" engineers, at least not the good ones. Good managers "serve" their engineers, and make sure they have everything to be productive. They coordinate, interface with other groups and try to solve all issues that prevents the people they work for (the engineers) from doing their jobs. As soon as managers think they are making the decisions, all is lost.
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They coordinate, interface with other groups and try to solve all issues that prevents the people they work for (the engineers) from doing their jobs
That's probably what the company owner wanted GP to be doing. It would be more valuable to the company than him working as an individual contributor.
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Quite possible, I agree. Unfortunately, once you take the engineering out of the engineer, his quality of life is dramatically reduced. There are hybrid solutions though and a project head that is not afraid to get his hands dirty and does it well can command a lot of respect.
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Well, there are Software "Engineers" and Software Engineers. The second species is far rarer, but very much connected to reality. The first one is often not an engineer at all, for example look at the atrocious stuff routinely generated by the typical "web developer".
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Actually, no. Business and tech alternate. The original driver may be tech (something becomes possible) or business (somebody hopes that something will become possible, like Edison that lied about the lightening bulb properties in his patent application), but afterwards it is usually both driving things. Or in some rare cases it is only tech, like for example, in some FOSS projects. It never is only business that drives things.
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