Good engineers are attracted to places with a strong engineering culture. But how can you see what the culture is really like from the outside? Here are my two quick-and-dirty indicators.
First a word about what I mean by an engineering culture. It means engineers are valued and important. Some implications:
- How are decisions made? In an engineering culture, technical people have input into what gets built, when, and by whom. Not signoff, but a real say.
- Is there respect for the craft of making software? Coding is still creative work that requires the right time and space. Some projets are tough to predict how long they will take, and that’s needs to be OK.
- Infrastructure. How hard is it for the people who know (engineers, managers) to justify to their bosses when work is needed on non-feature driven stuff? This could be in the runtime system (like scaling work on the message queue) or back office (like build systems or version control).
Unfortunately, teasing this out in an interview can be tricky unless you have someone you really know and trust on the inside.
How big are the monitors?
A story from a prior company. I was an engineering manager that had a retention problem. One of the engineers on my team quit to go to a smaller, hipper company. This was from my exit interview:
Me: why are you leaving?
Him: because they have bigger monitors.
Me: (incredulous) are you kidding? we can get you a bigger monitor.
Him: it’s not just me — everyone has big monitors.
Me: why is that so important?
Him: because it shows how much they value my time. The extra money to cram that many more pixels into my retina must be worth it to them.
And now I understand that this is totally true. Places that value their people consider equipment expenses small compared to the productivity (and happiness) of their people. The best engineers are given the best tools to do their jobs. Big monitors are a very visible sign of this.
Can people choose their own email addresses?
Non-engineers sometimes don’t appreciate how important an email address is. It’s your identity on line. A strict naming convention (first name last initial, or worse, last name first initial) indicates place that values conformity over engineer happiness. Worse, its a great way to make their people feel like cogs or “human resources,” not the cool individuals that they are.
(Aside: let’s do away with the term Human Resources. It’s horrible.)
This one is important for me personally since I have a weird first name. If you don’t let me be [email protected] then you get major demerits in my book. And no, clunky alias tricks, like a mailing list with one member in it, doesn’t count. It’s what you see on your shell prompt that matters; it’s what whoami returns that matters.
One final word: this isn’t a slam on you hardworking IT guys and gals who keep important things running and have to enforce the rules you’re given. Instead, I’m speaking to the bad policies (usually stemming from bad cultures) that can put you into bad positions. If you are at such a place, hunker down and pray for daylight.
What up Sef – I dig your post and agree you guys should be comfortable and well taken care of. I have one bone to pick with you though dude – trashing HR like that is not cool. I run recruiting and pinch hit on HR stuff for a start up, sit with the tech team and do everything possible to make my homeboys + girls happy. I understand HR has a stigma attached with it as paper pushing, process creating punks – but I hate process & especially email naming conventions and obnoxiously long domains. I love my engineers and want to see them build cool shit that helps drive a successful business and make everyone proud to be at a web business. And I like beer (Gasp!). It’s F’n awesome.
…So hopefully next time – before you put something sketch about HR people in parens() – be mindful of how it would feel if someone did the same thing to you in stereotyping engineers. For example: (let’s do away with Engineers. They eat all of our food, always have those big fugly headphones on, demand a bigger monitor than the rest of us and won’t shut up about the stupid Zombie Apocalypse).
We cool?
I’m sorry you read it that way, Drew. Not my intention at all. I’ve gotten to work with great HR people in my career and value them greatly.
My point was just the term Human Resources. I’d prefer People or Staff or something that was less like something to be moved around, used, consumed. A langage thing, that’s all.
Huge reading comprehension fail. Thanks for letting us know what you really think about your “homeboys + girls”, Drew.
may it be
Not cool dude really not cool would have expect better from you
Thanks for clarifying Sef! Big miss on my part, working late (I’m East Coast) + commenting = FAIL (@Anon – you win). I will be the first to admit I couldn’t write an algorithm to save my life. But I do have a 30″ Mac Monitor (I look at A LOT of acronyms in all of your resumes)!
I would just say that the culture of treating Engineers appropriately comes from the top, not from HR. A founder or CEO who really appreciates and values engineers will take good care of them regardless of HR. Like most culture stuff, the tone is set at the top.
My wife is in HR. Her title: Employee Quality of Life Manager.
I’m sure you’re a cool HR person. But I dare say you’re the exception rather than the rule.
Like recruiters, the vast majority of HR people suck.
I agree Dave, thanks. I wish I could code dude.
Seriously? Why don’t you worry about things that really matter?
I don’t think he’s worried about things that don’t matter (monitor size, username, etc). I think he’s worried because the COMPANY seems to care about things that don’t matter (monitor size, username, etc) to the extent that they won’t be flexible on them if asked to by an employee. Either the company cares about the wrong things, or they’re so inflexible that they can’t listen to an employee.
Because they’re indicative that management (or “the business”) doesn’t understand (let alone appreciate) their most valuable asset.
Who cares if your arm is tingly and you smell toast? Those don’t even sound remotely like serious problems. Why not worry about things that really matter?
And this is exactly why every single person at my company has either dual 30″ monitors or triple 27″ monitors (dual 30″s for mac guys and triple 27″s for the PC guys). Fantastic post
Ever heard the phrase, “too much of a good thing is a bad thing”?
I don’t think it would be possible for me to code on 2×30″ monitors. 24″ is even a tad too large. I think the sweet spot for coding is dual 22″ IPS.
Oh yeah? Ever have your IDE open on one monitor, application working on another monitor and a Virtual machine minimized on your task bar?
Yeah… no.
3 monitors is the sweet spot.
Agreed. I have two 2 monitors (size don’t matter
and a third would be the sweet spot. I always have to go looking for the VM.
Not possible to code on 2×30″? I code on 3×30″ in vertical orientations, its amazing and it really does increase my productivity (2 Xcode windows maximized, 2 windows split). Honestly I’d probably put a 4th monitor horizontally on top of the other 3 if I could…
That’s true. I worked in several companies, and I noticed that company that had office in “factory” style were poorly managed. So in my last job search (2005), I always asked to visit the work place (which was not always possible), check companies with decent working environment (carpeted floor was definitely a plus).
I literally just quit a job at a very large company and took one at a startup for EXACTLY this reason. There were other problems at the old company too, but the one that really made me leave was their unwillingness to spend $1,000 on a computer.
The irony is that they would often drag me away from work to sit through presentations about quarterly earnings in excess of $100mm.
I used to work for a soulless, inertial corporation that said they had to cut costs because of the bad financial environment. Then made us sit through more than hour’s presentation on how profits have increased by millions of pounds. Awesome.
I knew an organization that referred to their HR department as their “Employee Advocacy” department and thought it was really the only way to think about that role in an organization. I realize it’s an aside to the piece overall, just thought I’d share.
My university-assigned email address is “benzer2″ and it makes me cringe every time I look at it.
Wow, if this is the current standard of the programmers of today I’ll have a job for years!
Maybe should focus more on learning and honing your skill as a programmer and less on fancy monitors and customizable e-mail addresses.
For all of you who go to start-ups. Wait until the money dries up and then the only companies that are around are the ones with the small monitors and the corporate e-mail addresses.
But hey, I’m getting to be one of those older guys that is set in his ways. Maybe this crowd is part of the “bro-grammer” movement. I just think back to the days when people didn’t have fancy UI’s or 30 inch monitors… Somehow they survived…
Are you Danny Glover in disguise? You just left out the ‘I am too old for this sh1t’ line, that was your best work, Danny
Bitter…
You come through as a total idiot and have no real points. But still I can only imagine how being that passive aggressive must do wonders with your code ‘skills’. I am guessing php skills.
I totally agree with this sentiment: “Maybe should focus more on learning and honing your skill as a programmer and less on fancy monitors and customizable e-mail addresses.”
At one company I worked for, I brought my own 24″-inch monitor at a time when less was the standard. It wasn’t for any of the reasons you mentioned but simply a matter of practicality that I spent all that money and it was sitting at home collecting dust for 8.5hrs+ day.
The quality and value of a programmer should not be contingent on the size of the monitors or the possession of the best tools . The person in the exit interview probably left for reasons more terrible then he was willing to disclose. Maybe he is reading this post and laughing. Although in all honesty, I’m not that guy.
Why are you guys so damn stupid that you dont even see the point of this post?
You may be OK with going on with your life being treated as a machine. But some of us are not. We recognize that software development is an art and requires decent working conditions. This sweatshop mentality has GOT TO STOP!
Jeff,
First of all, I think it’s important to point out that a 27″ monitor only costs a few hundred dollars. To someone who spends all their time staring at screens, that is a SMALL price to pay. When working for a company that literally bleeds money on other things (meetings, travel, etc) the unwillingness to spend this money is telling. That’s the point of the post.
http://www.geek.com/articles/games/john-carmack-coded-quake-on-a-28-inch-169-1080p-monitor-in-1995-20110920/
I bet I’m at least 20 years older than you. It’s got zero to do with survival and everything to do with not having trivial crap eating your productivity.
I started using the original VI writing C on Unix System V systems on small monitors (24*80), and anyone who remembers the original VGA will remember how ridiculously cramped it would seem now. It’s perfectly doable, but if you can get a significant boost in productivity from a larger monitor (or two monitors) it’s a trivial investment, less than 200 of the currency of your choice. There is plenty of research backing this up.
The fact that the MBA’s squeezing every frozen farty farthing out of every single penny can’t see the benefit of this is a damn good reason not to work for them. “Change the organisation, or change the organisation”. I work for myself now and yes, I have 2 monitors.
Jeff: This might interest you
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/technology/hewlett-packard-plans-job-cutbacks.html?_r=1
(I wonder if HP blew their budget on jumbo-sized monitors?)
Working on a desktop replacement project right now for alot of people that use CAD software. They are all receiving brand new dual 22 inch widescreen monitors along with 64 bit version of Windows 7 with 8 GB of RAM. They are all in heaven.
Wonderful post!
It’s a given that I would never (again) work at an organization that wouldn’t fully support me as a Mac-only user, but I extend that to monitors and software, too. If you need a subscription to a $20/month service that helps you provide beautiful or data-driven reports to your boss or department or company that justifies the path you’re all on, you should be strongly encouraged to spend. But, in some work cultures I’ve been in, I’ve seen people make do with outdated or inefficient tools without having the cojones to even ask. I think they feel they’re not entitled because their boss never explicitly told them it was an option. The type of value-driven approach you’re talking about never trickled down because it probably never really existed.
Next time you’re looking for a job, ask about that in the final interview. I started doing this at one point, and it’s made a huge difference. Took me too long to realize this was important.
While big hardware and is great and all, I think the idea of the engineering group being part of the business driving group is more important. In my experience a lot of PMs don’t really have any more domain knowledge than anyone else, just at title that says they choose direction. So everyone else’s input should be considered too, including engineers.
Also, working from home. That is a true test of a great environment.
@jeff – I think you’re missing the point. It’s not about the brogrammer or startups, it’s about feeling valued and having the tools and an environment to work as efficiently as possible.
More screen real estate directly translates into more productivity. Do a search for “dual monitors productivity”, and you’ll find study upon study that shows that more pixels = more productive. Not giving me enough pixels is a bad business decision on their part.
The email/username thing is less directly harmful (I personally don’t mind that much) but it’s usually indicative of how the business will treat you in other ways, which is part of what Sef was getting at.
I’d rather work for a place that takes extra care to ensure that I’m as productive as I can be. You should value yourself more highly. Or, you know, hone your skill as a programmer until you feel you’re worth it.
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Damn! You nailed it.
I felt the pain of [email protected] for 3 months and now my present company simply copied my Gmai ID like [email protected]
And yes, I requested for bigger monitors last month. They said they will send them soon.
Jeff, I must take issue with your comment.
First of all, to equate a respect for engineering culture with a sexist work environment (‘brogrammers’) indicates that you may not understand either, and is disrespectful.
But aside from that, and to the point of this article, a large monitor, while not in and of itself a reason to switch jobs is a good leading indicator of a good engineering culture. Nickel and diming on monitors means they probably won’t pay for books and conferences either, so you’re on your own to ‘hone your skills.’
A company like that has several problems:
1) They can’t do math – Numerous studies have proven that larger/multiple monitors increase productivity, so a 5% productivity boost on a 100k salary is worth more than a few hundred dollars
2) They don’t understand what motivates engineers, or they don’t understand that a motivated engineer will produce an order of magnitude more working code than an apathetic one.
Sure, in ‘the old days’ we all worked on a 13″ green screens (I’m not young), but to insist that we shouldn’t progress beyond that ’cause that’s how *we* did it is mean-spirited and curmudgeonly. Just because you can get by using EDLIN for text editing doesn’t mean you should.
I’d also like to point out if you think your BigCo job is any more secure than a startup is you’re not paying attention. IBM will lay off 78% of it’s people over the next 2 years.
Awesome post! I met with a family friend today, a recent college grad who was looking for career advice. He asked me the biggest difference between working in my first job (city government) and my second job (Ning). I told him — Ning actually gave us the equipment we wanted. In city government, we were using Gateway machines from 2001 and Windows 2000. It was absurd. They must have spent an average of $75k/year per employee — why not spend $1,500 on a modern machine? When I walked into the Ning office and saw the 30″ monitors, it was a signal that they really valued their people and their work.
YES! Exactly this! Great post, Sef! This is why I love VMware so much–they/we get a lot of this stuff way better than anyone I’ve ever worked for before now. There’s always room for improvement, of course. But you hit the nail on the head here about how important this stuff is to us engineers. =:) Oh, and I completely agree with Steve above about the importance of having the flexibility of working from home!
Coïncidence? I’m quitting today for others reasons. But I’ve long given up on convincing powers that be that even dual 19″ monitors is no longer enough. So I took the shortcut way out and bought mine, and the supercharged laptop that goes with it, and a few licenses too. But I do take an issue on being told what I should be working with. It’ll be perfectly fine if my future employer lets me use what I’m productive with like the one before did. From then on I can only be pleasantly surprised
Great post! Totally agree with you!
I can’t complain much right now because I am only an Intern at this company in Italy now. Everyone works on a notebook, 13-15inches.
I work on my own 13inch macbook… which is good for using around, but kinda small for using during 8h/day while coding, making presentations, or UML schemes.
Probably when I graduate and have to find a real job, I will take this in consideration.
I get the monitors bit. We *should* have the right tools for the job.
You are a douche if you actually complain about your email address though. It is like, just because you walked through the door, you are a co-founder of the business and should have equal rights. It’s pretty lame and more egotistical than anything else.
And if you don’t know how to change your name on the terminal – you need to start reading up a bit more.
Minor typo:
Some projets are tough to predict how long they will take, and that’s needs to be OK.
Should read:
Some projects are tough to predict how long they will take, and that’s needs to be OK.
Great article though!
See also: any place that restricts your ability to set your own desktop background and/or screensaver settings.
I’d never worked at a place that did that until recently… and when I found that out, I was like “Really? REALLY?!!”
The argument I’ve heard in response was “Yah, but you might go out to a client site, and if you have a presentation, it needs to look professional.” a) In that role, I was never going to go out to a client site, and b) that’s a reasonable concern. But how about treating us like adults, and making that a policy, with appropriate consequences. I think I’m old/mature enough to remember to switch those settings back if the need ever arose… but apparently management did not.
The Human Resources thing is completely right. Why are they unable to call it the “Department of the people”, or “Department of workers”, “Department of employees”, “Department of PERSONS”?
“Human Resources”, “Monetary Resources”, “Inhuman Resources”, and “Expendables”… That is what they (bosses) think. Not people.
I think Google calls it People Operations.
I agree with the sentiments expressed in the post. Having lots of monitor pixels allows the user to keep lots of information visible at the same time. This helps to reduce the inefficiencies associated with hiding and showing windows, etc.
Other tests, for me, include offices with closable doors, book and conference budgets, comfortable chairs, etc. Basically, give your development staff the support they need to do their best work.
More generally, this test reminds me of a contract rider used by the band Van Halen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Halen#Contract_riders). It specified that there should be a bowl of M&Ms in the dressing room, but that all of the brown M&Ms must be removed. Far from being whimsical, this was a quick way to test whether the local organizers had really read and followed the contract rider.
Yes! I love the contract rider story, I’m glad you brought it up.
I just started a summer design-internship this past week in NYC at a startup. First day they gave me a 15″ MBP, Adobe CS6 Web Premium, MS Office, and a 27 inch Thunderbolt Display. I’m an intern….hourly wages, man….
It shows that these people realize investing a few $k now will payoff in the long run.
Great article Sef.
What’s the commercial is it… happy cows produce happy cheese or something like that, it’s either an ad for California or a Cheese company…
Anyway the point is… make the engineers happy, and they will make your pockets happy.
I so heartily agree – faceless companies suck when you are in IT. I have to type in first name, last name, company name to log into my email and thats how I’m found in the address book – it’s shitty and soul-less i tell you
Great post, Sef
I like big monitors and I cannot lie.
People (and not just engineers) are the most productive when they feel that they’re valued, and that their contributions are appreciated. To put it another way, people tend to invest in their employers as much as their employers invest in them. Typically, when this equilibrium is disrupted or otherwise not present, things go terribly wrong in one way or another.
I appreciate your raising of this point in such a concise and universally understandable way
Kudos.
I’ve always considered changing my name to Carl Arp at places where the e-mail convention is F.I. Last name.
Kind of hit a nerve here Sef.
Disk space too.
Bill
You mean Carl Rap, right?
When I started work at my new IT job they let me custom build my new work system. They recently let a coworker get a sitting/standing ergotronic (I think that’s the companies name) monitor mount that slides up and down so you can sit and stand, cost upwards of 600 dollars. He is the database admin and medical template guy. Needless to say It’s vastly preferable to being uncomfortable or on a slow system all the time. It makes a huge difference.
Large US tech companies will spend whatever you want on ergo stuff, because they’re afraid of lawsuits. There was a huge number of RSI suits in the 90s that got companies on the ball on ergo. It’s not all about taking good care of you…
I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents for those who believe Sef is putting too much importance on small issues.
I would say that judging a company by simple small notions like monitor size is equivalent to companies judging applicants by the grammar and format of their resume. Neither of these points are crucial on their own, but they are indicative of some extremely crucial traits.
Early 2006, I interview for a software dev job in the advanced research group of a radio communications company. I like my interviewer. I like his co-workers when they interview me.
I take a brief tour around the work area and know I don’t want to work there. Huge, clunking 19 inch CRTs on desks that are way too small with equipment piled high on each desk. Hardly any space to move stuff about and the desk themselves were tiny, horrible right-angled things. I can’t remember what the chairs looked like. Top that off with a ceiling-less building, it was factory style look, and I knew that no matter how much they offered me I would not work in that environment.
Come on man, name your computer.
Great point — I’ll do that. For years I went with Scooby Doo characters, I’ll get back to that.
There’s a large search company in SIlicon Valley which I’m currently planning to sell a decent number of shares in because someone I know has been unable to get her four-year-old Macbook Pro upgraded to something more modern.
When companies cheap out on the important stuff, it’s time to start looking elsewhere.
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I so agree about the email address. I particularly hate companies with a First Initial Last Name email policy. I cringe every time I have to give out my email address.
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I quit my last job, because it took me 6 months to convince them to spend 200 bucks for a SSD last year. I quit because they were providing 32 bit XP with 3.5GB RAM while I was using 3GB of SWAP.
Now pick my own machine.
I should have quit earlier.
hehe
good, tight post. I agree with all the points except the email addresses….my company is 40k people globally, and I need to quickly connect with new people every week. if we didn’t have first.last@ email addresses, that would make all that networking much more difficult.
I’ve worked in more engineering-led companies before where we chose our own, and yes, a lot of engineers were referred to irl as their aliases. it wasn’t helpful though, there were a lot of developers who I knew in real life by their real name and online by their alias, and didn’t realize they were the same person until months later. That’s not helpful.
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Could not agree more on the big monitors thing. Good equipment for the staff means the company is serious about getting stuff done and making sure the workforce has the necessary tools. Now, a good workstation is a cheap investment for any company now, as are big monitors but they have a great ROI. However, a decent desk and a good chair with plenty personal space is something many people, engineers included, just ignore. This is exactly why I said no to an opportunity back in 2006 even though they matched my salary. I knew that working in that physical environment was going to depress the hell out of me.
Just because a company is engineering led it doesn’t mean it is doing a great job. If you ask 10 engineers how to do something you tend to get at least 10 answers. Many of these answers are great but you need feedback from your customer to be sure what really matters.
Answers that emphasize high levels of tweakability in the product are a nightmare for customers. Asking people to make decisions all the time, asking them to configure first before using, are a nightmare. Yet, all too often that is what engineering companies tend to give us. When you get multiple engineers pushing their own answers they all get into the product unless you have a design authority keeping the cruft at bay.
I believe one of your current ads caused my internet browser to resize, you may well want to set that on your blacklist.
I appreciate you letting me know. But I don’t run ads on my site! So this must have come from someone else’s site…
If you would ever want to work for a Romanian company then there is no way to get the sef email address
have a look at the translation:
http://hallo.ro/search.do?d=en&l=ro&type=both&query=sef
“Chief” — I like it! Thanks for the comment.
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WOW just what I was looking for. Came here by searching for cooking on a griddle
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I haven’t found anything at least remotely resembling engineers. In this post, it must have been some cowboy coders. But yea, managers in software companies are often incredibly stupid. Actually, I have enough experience to do their jobs better than they are doing them. For some reason, I believe it is harder to find a manager for a software company these days. That’s why it is what it is. None of them studied it. I can be the good manager, except I like engineering better. You see? Who is good at something, doesn’t leave it. Shame on all software managers. I have yet to meet one who knows his stuff or listens to his staff.