OpenDrapery's comments

Interesting that you think SF is special because Google is there. What made it special before Google existed? What made it special before computers existed?

It's geography, climate, and culture make it special. Tech companies don't get to show up and stake an ownership claim on this stuff. If the hippies told the hipsters "we were here first!", they wouldn't be entirely wrong.

If you profit off sick people, are you motivated to move toward a world with no sick people? If you profit from prisons, then you need to fill you prisons. Problem is, that as a society, we should aim toward not needing prisons at all. Therein lies the rub.

If I profit off of you being sick, then I need to keep you sick.

I've been around long enough to see software development methodologies come and go. I worked for GE for a decade, and they tried to force Six Sigma on everyone. Devs put through training. Lean. KanBan. Single piece flow.

The thing that businesses don't want to hear is that software development is a skill game. You win by having better players. You cannot put blind process around every facet of it. I know you'd like to, so that you can then pay very little for unskilled labor. But the fact remains that you cannot, even today.

Wysiwig html editors and drag and drop UI builders for rapid application development were trending for a while in the 90's. Then everyone realized that giving these tools to monkeys resulted in a big pile of poo. So the trend reversed back to hand coding UI layouts using markup, separating business logic from display concerns, etc

I guess what I am trying to say is that if there is any hope in putting a lot of process rigor around software development, it will be enabled by tooling. Until then, skill and experience matter. And they aren't cheap.

Put another way, if the Cleveland Browns stole the New England Patriots playbook, they would still suck.

I really want [thing] but cannot afford [thing] at the current price point. Rage! Kick! Scream!

Doesn't this sentiment have to be nearly as old as markets themselves? What makes you more angry, the fact that you cannot get the thing you want? Or the harsh realization that there is a class of people who can afford it, and you are not in that class?

Pricing is science, with a little art thrown in. EA is a publicly traded company whose stock has climbed from $12 to $120 in the last five years. Their imperative is to maximize shareholder value, not appease gamers.

The grown up thing to do is to focus on the things that you enjoy + can afford.

I'd be interested to know where you've seen this. The consulting agencies I've seen will typically bill $90 - $100 an hour, and then give you $50 an hour. This comes with 2 weeks PTO and 5 holidays. The rest of the time you better be billable. Sick days are not factored in.

Also, the health insurance is bundled in to the compensation package, and if you don't need it, they're not going to increase your salary.

When you say "charge less than 10%", do you mean to say that if they bill the client $100/hr, that you will get $90/hr ?

Columbus desperately needs some tech employers that are not in the healthcare, banking, or insurance sectors.

As a software developer, it would be nice to be able to get a job in the engineering group, rather than in a standard IT shop.

Another theory is that middle management's only purpose is to act as a buffer between the workers and the owners. The middle manager is just a useful idiot to the owners.

Right out of the manager's playbook: "Well, you see, I'd love to give you more than a 3% raise, but, you know, budget is tight. No one is getting more than that. Most people are getting less, you should feel lucky to be getting 3%." You know he's reading from a script that he was coached to read from.

Same strategy as calling into the support line at Time Warner cable or United Airlines with a real beef. You are immediately worn down and dejected because you realize you're talking to someone with zero authority to do anything. So what do you do? Suck it up and keep working, or quit.

I agree that FTE's tend to get exploited more. Being hourly means that they usually don't want you to work more than 40 hours/week, and if they do, then you're getting paid for it.

Also, it's much easier to shirk the "ownership" aspect of the products. FTE's typically handle the maintenance window in the middle of the night, the deployments, the firefighting. And they don't get paid for it. As a contractor, it's typically accepted when you say "I'm just a contractor, it's really not my product".

Yes, it's much more of a mercenary type arrangement. FTE's will oftentimes treat you as a second class citizen. But, you go home at 5pm.

But, what about job stability you say? Nobody has that. Working somewhere for 10 years and then suddenly getting put on the street is the worst case. You're hobbled. Finding a new gig every 1-3 years keeps you sharp.

That's the path of least resistance. Just passively accept calls and interviews via recruiters, and next thing you know you're in the enterprise. It's what happens when you don't have a plan.

Drive it until the wheels come off can be a valid decision. Just be aware that when the wheels come off, you will be without a car for some period of time.

Kudos to the company for taking onboarding seriously. Most places are abysmal at it. But then again, I've recently been working at places that leverage a lot of contractors/consultants to get work done. The attitude seems to be, "why bother giving them context? They are just here to labor and then be gone."

I was thinking along the same lines. Hiring units of people sounds like a slippery slope to collective bargaining and unions, which have turned into bad words in the US in the last 30 years.

I guess there is a fine line between collective bargaining and holding a company hostage.

Remember when the cast of Friends all negotiated for $1M/episode, and they pitched it as "you pay us all, or you don't have a product"? I don't recall any public outcry that they were holding NBC hostage.

As we move toward a completely digital society, it only makes sense that the digital gatekeepers will have more leverage. Employers hate that.

If you are not asking questions like this, you may just be one of the willfully oblivious ditch diggers who is just there to work. And that's fine.

Even in the days of galley slaves, there was probably only a small percentage of rowers who actually wondered where they were going. Most people just shut up and row.

Is buying a guitar in hopes of learning how to play it an investment? What exactly are the fundamentals? Do I need to understand vibration and frequency? Or just basic music theory?

I agree with your sentiment. But there is a difference between experimentation and investment.

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder how much of it is due to the way we make devs work and the hours we make them keep.

For example, I'd be more than happy to use the same old, tried and true, boring tools to just get the job done, if it meant that I could then go play golf or otherwise not be in the office.

But if you insist that I be in my seat 8 hours a day regardless of workload, then goddamn let's take this shiny new tool for a spin!

Do I want my resume to show that I used the same tool for every job for the last ten years? Or do I want it show some new hotness?

The industry and employers are as much to blame for this as the engineers, if not more. When you use middleman firms to find your employees, and all they understand is buzzwords, well then guess what game the devs are gonna play?

It feels like QA is an antiquated notion these days. Why is a prod-like test environment too much to ask for? As a developer, if you call me in the middle of the night and tell me we are in crisis mode, my first thought might be "Did anyone test this thing with any kind of rigor at all?"

Sad truth is that coding and problem solving and getting your hands dirty is low status work. I've had managers that new the application they were responsible for, and could speak coherently about technical things.

I've had managers who couldn't demo the apps that their team worked on.

Which one is better to work for as an engineer? The technically savvy one. Which one has higher stature and seems to be more highly regarded by his superiors? The non technical one.

In other words, that "lazy shitty manager" is probably playing the game better.

I really like that you use the term "engineers". Columbus has way too many employers that use the term "IT".

I think the Yankees model is a (possibly reaching) metaphor for capitalism. All the capital concentrates in a few hands. But where are all the "best" people supposed to prove themselves?

That's why you see so many posts in this thread like "I worked on the perfect team for a short period, but alas, it was short lived." Building the gestalt is always going to flame out. Right at the moment when you realize you've assembled something special is when your team members start getting traded to the Yankees.

That's why the only sustainable model is culture, culture, culture. Always be striving for the perfect combination of team members. Keep the talent pipeline active, and if you have someone who doesn't fit, get them out of there.