I want to talk about two specific terms — “the business people” and “resources” — and how they’re indicative of how engineers are viewed in companies.
Who sits on that floor? The business people
If you work at a technology company of any sort I can just about guarantee that at some point you’ve heard the company be divided into two sections, one of them being “the business people. The other section doesn’t really have a name. We can just say it’s the people who are not the business people.
If you’re an engineer I can predict with pretty good certainty what side of the division you end up on. Now that probably doesn’t bother most engineers. In fact I would wager most engineers do not want to be included in “the business people”. That’s where the suits lurk! It didn’t bother me for a long time. I wanted to be thought of as an engineer and to be left to solve my engineering problems in our engineering bubble. But I think you should reconsider.
I see the distinction between “the business people” and “the others” as a distinction between the people who make decisions and the people who receive the marching orders. This places engineers in the category of “not business people”. More accurately they are viewed in my opinion as interchangeable, albeit highly paid, laborers. Laborers employed to build the things that someone else has decided they will build. Just like a good old fashioned car factory.
How many resources does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
The concept of engineers being viewed as interchangeable labor is a good segue to the next term which is “resource. ”This is another one I am pretty certain we’ve all heard. For those who are not a programmer or do not work with or tangentially to programmers the term I’m referring to is used to describe engineers. “We need 3 resources for that project.” “We don’t have enough resources for that until next quarter.” “We will have to shift resources from X if we want to finish Y.” Those are all discussing living breathing people. Well that’s not entirely fair. Sometimes it refers to money as well. So money and people.
The intention here is not to say “don’t call engineers resources.” While I do not like the term personally and it’s certainly not much effort to call people “people”, the point I’m trying to make is the attitude the term conveys. That’s how engineers are seen by those not in engineering. While I’d certainly like to stop hearing “resource”, no matter what you manage to convince your PM to call you, until engineers create structural change in how companies operate that is how we will be viewed. As interchangeable cogs. As supporting “the business people”. As resources.
So what’s the point of all this?
It’s not to get people to stop saying these things. So what is it? I would argue that instead of falling onto the side of“not business people”, people who produce software can be the business people. If engineers can move past their aversion to reading a management textbook or get over their irrational fear of Jira they can redraw the lines of how people see businesses.
I don’t mean to blame “the business people” either. This situation is constructed by engineers for engineers. Someone has to come up with new ideas. Someone has to decide what to work on. Someone has to actually sell the product. Someone has to manage the process. If it’s not going to be us then someone will be hired to do so. If you’re okay with letting someone else control what you work on then more power to you.
But if you chafe when you hear someone call you a “resource”. If you think you’ve got some great ideas for how to improve the business. If you think that you could do the project management stuff if you just put the time. Prove it. Start learning about management. Learn how to sell. Read a book on agile. Or even better write the book. Take control of what you work on. Be the business.