17 ms·

You have to realise there is a almost full complete disconnect between engineering and business value

by hkleppe 10mo ago

pyrale 10mo ago
That is, until planes fall from the sky.
- tjr 10mo ago
  It's popular to mock aerospace engineering, but it's usually quite robust. Even if people still sometimes make bad decisions.
  - brazukadev 10mo ago
    And move slowly. So when things turn bad, they will be bad for a decade - or more. See Boeing.
    - awesome_dude 10mo ago
      Boeings (software) issues stem from a removal of their Engineering skillset and replacing it with an outsourcing model don't they?
  - pyrale 10mo ago
    The goal wasn't to mock Boeing, just to point out what happens when business overrides engineering. The context is the parent post making the point that there is little business value in good engineering.
    - tjr 10mo ago
      Ah, I see where you're coming from. I've been hearing a lot of people talk poorly of aerospace as a whole recently, due to some Boeing issues, and I misread your comment as such. Apologies and thanks.
DarkNova6 10mo ago
Only if there are is organizational disconnect… which is the norm.
alephnerd 10mo ago
Ime, a lot of the onus falls on Engineering and Product Management failing to make a case for why certain engineering decisions (eg. Investing in continual tech debt grooming) have business value. The point of a business is to generate revenue. The point of employees is to do work that helps generate revenue. As such, any decision needs to ensure it has a business case aligned with revenue generation. Good engineering hygine has significant business value such as in speeding up delivery of new features as well as keeping certain customers happy, but in a lot of cases there is an inability to communicate from either direction (eg. PMs not giving Eng full visibility into business decisions, and Eng not being able to explain why certain engineering choices have business value). If you cannot communicate why this matters, you aren't going to get it prioritized. Unsurprisingly, at big organizations, communication can take the backseat because communication is hard and at a large company, there is some amount of complacency because the product is good enough. Edit: Unsurprisingly got downvoted. The only reason you are employed is to make value (which generally is measured in revenue generated). You are not paid $200k-$400k TCs to write pretty or a e s t h e t i c code. You can make a case for why that matters, but if you choose to bury your head in the sand and not make that case, I have no sympathy for you.
- zwnow 10mo ago
  I work for some event ticketing business and I'd sign this. My bosses want features quickly. Does not matter to them if I need extra time to make stuff secure, doesn't matter to them if it wont scale. Its about short term revenue. Can always rebuild the software to fit the next short term goal...
  - alephnerd 10mo ago
    If you understand what are the metrics being tracked, and what are the primary goals that an initiative or product has, you can make a case. We are an engineering discipline and engineering decisions can have revenue making implications. But it is hubris to assume why you should care about the nitty gritties of a codebase. It's the same way no one in leadership cares about the nitty-gritties of HR policies or accounting practices - people are hired to deal with the intricacies. When I was a PM, I didn't have a difficult time making a business case for "keep the lights on" or tech debt work so long as I was able to attach tangible revenue implications (eg. X customer might churn because of subpar experience and we have both customer testimony and user stats showing that) or roadmap implications (eg. If we spend 6 months refactoring our monorepo, we can add new revenue generating modules every quarter instead of annually).
ihsw 10mo ago
* Product folks over-promise * Engineers are consulted for estimates to facilitate long-term planning * Middle management slashes those estimates in half due to pathological myopia * Executives enforce musical chairs to assert their authority * Consultants muck everything up while collecting enormous payouts And yet the business cycle keeps cycling.
wubrr 10mo ago
The disconnect is more between long term business value, and short term benefit for the most parasitic and manipulative actors within the business. Engineering and business value go hand-in-hand in a healthy tech/engineering business. A business that was built on great/innovative engineering, became successful, and then got taken over by various impostors and social manipulators, who's primary goal is gaming various internal metrics for their own gain, is not a healthy business.
Herring 10mo ago
I think that’s a bit unfair. I’d say shipping a product that solves a problem is the baseline entry fee into the market, just table stakes. Profitability is determined by the machine built around the product, like the efficiency of capital deployment, the speed of distribution, the defensibility of the business model against competition, etc. The product is just one variable in a much bigger equation.

You have to realise there is a almost full complete disconnect between engineering and business value

by hkleppe 10mo ago

You have to realise there is a almost full complete disconnect between engineering and business value

pyrale 10mo ago

That is, until planes fall from the sky.

tjr 10mo ago
It's popular to mock aerospace engineering, but it's usually quite robust. Even if people still sometimes make bad decisions.
- brazukadev 10mo ago
  And move slowly. So when things turn bad, they will be bad for a decade - or more. See Boeing.
  - awesome_dude 10mo ago
    Boeings (software) issues stem from a removal of their Engineering skillset and replacing it with an outsourcing model don't they?
- pyrale 10mo ago
  The goal wasn't to mock Boeing, just to point out what happens when business overrides engineering. The context is the parent post making the point that there is little business value in good engineering.
  - tjr 10mo ago
    Ah, I see where you're coming from. I've been hearing a lot of people talk poorly of aerospace as a whole recently, due to some Boeing issues, and I misread your comment as such. Apologies and thanks.

DarkNova6 10mo ago

Only if there are is organizational disconnect… which is the norm.

alephnerd 10mo ago

Ime, a lot of the onus falls on Engineering and Product Management failing to make a case for why certain engineering decisions (eg. Investing in continual tech debt grooming) have business value. The point of a business is to generate revenue. The point of employees is to do work that helps generate revenue. As such, any decision needs to ensure it has a business case aligned with revenue generation. Good engineering hygine has significant business value such as in speeding up delivery of new features as well as keeping certain customers happy, but in a lot of cases there is an inability to communicate from either direction (eg. PMs not giving Eng full visibility into business decisions, and Eng not being able to explain why certain engineering choices have business value). If you cannot communicate why this matters, you aren't going to get it prioritized. Unsurprisingly, at big organizations, communication can take the backseat because communication is hard and at a large company, there is some amount of complacency because the product is good enough. Edit: Unsurprisingly got downvoted. The only reason you are employed is to make value (which generally is measured in revenue generated). You are not paid $200k-$400k TCs to write pretty or a e s t h e t i c code. You can make a case for why that matters, but if you choose to bury your head in the sand and not make that case, I have no sympathy for you.

zwnow 10mo ago
I work for some event ticketing business and I'd sign this. My bosses want features quickly. Does not matter to them if I need extra time to make stuff secure, doesn't matter to them if it wont scale. Its about short term revenue. Can always rebuild the software to fit the next short term goal...
- alephnerd 10mo ago
  If you understand what are the metrics being tracked, and what are the primary goals that an initiative or product has, you can make a case. We are an engineering discipline and engineering decisions can have revenue making implications. But it is hubris to assume why you should care about the nitty gritties of a codebase. It's the same way no one in leadership cares about the nitty-gritties of HR policies or accounting practices - people are hired to deal with the intricacies. When I was a PM, I didn't have a difficult time making a business case for "keep the lights on" or tech debt work so long as I was able to attach tangible revenue implications (eg. X customer might churn because of subpar experience and we have both customer testimony and user stats showing that) or roadmap implications (eg. If we spend 6 months refactoring our monorepo, we can add new revenue generating modules every quarter instead of annually).

ihsw 10mo ago

* Product folks over-promise * Engineers are consulted for estimates to facilitate long-term planning * Middle management slashes those estimates in half due to pathological myopia * Executives enforce musical chairs to assert their authority * Consultants muck everything up while collecting enormous payouts And yet the business cycle keeps cycling.

wubrr 10mo ago

The disconnect is more between long term business value, and short term benefit for the most parasitic and manipulative actors within the business. Engineering and business value go hand-in-hand in a healthy tech/engineering business. A business that was built on great/innovative engineering, became successful, and then got taken over by various impostors and social manipulators, who's primary goal is gaming various internal metrics for their own gain, is not a healthy business.

Herring 10mo ago

I think that’s a bit unfair. I’d say shipping a product that solves a problem is the baseline entry fee into the market, just table stakes. Profitability is determined by the machine built around the product, like the efficiency of capital deployment, the speed of distribution, the defensibility of the business model against competition, etc. The product is just one variable in a much bigger equation.