Ask HN: How do I get developers to be interested? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I get developers to be interested?

5 pointsfenier11 comments

Hi there,

I am a Developer focused in CRO tech (Analytics, AB testing, Tagging, etc). Something I find very interesting. However, historically I've had issues getting other developers to be interested in this field, and find that there is a very long training cycle if we wanted to get them up to speed and have them work independently.

Generally, a Developer would have to learn the development work, experiment design, analytics and tagging integration, basic statistics and basic analysis. It's hard to find that off the street, and training generally takes 12+ months to become independently capable.

I've generally heard feedback that this work isn't interesting, or is overly complex, and the developers will seek to avoid it or minimize their work with it.

Has anyone come across this before, and if so - how did you get a team of developers to be interested and motivated to learn this field?

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I have those skills, but let me play the skeptic here and amplify a few questions:

1. What is CRO? (I just looked it up -- conversion rate optimization). Is it spammy?

2. What is tagging? I assume it's instrumenting funnels etc. in apps. That has its own joys and sorrows, and can kind of jam up the critical path.

Some of it may be a breakdown in effort vs. reward. It's too easy to skip metrics when they're not a blocker for release, and the tentative benefits of running an experiment are less tangible than just releasing code (hence Windows 9).

Correct, Conversion Rate Optimization. Use of tech such as surveys, AB tests, MVT tests, analytics, and so on to increase conversion rates for a particular action(s). A solid mix of Programming, Math and Science.

Tagging - use of pre-built tags in a Tag Manager (Google Tag Manager, Tealium) which send pre-defined data via the Tag Manager to 3rd parties.

I've also found people want to skip metrics, and I feel not only is that a bad plan, but it makes it difficult to figure out what may be going wrong without any data to prove a particular theory.

Well, if you call it Data Science, people will come running to you with their Hadoop skills :).

I don't really know the answer, as I've worked with some teams that had strong analytics/CRO penetration, and some that didn't. Probably the main difference is exec-level support; making metrics part of OKR's or the design process pretty much guarantees interest.

Well, properly done analytics of this sort can be quite interesting from a data science perspective, especially if the products or conversion goals are themselves driven by data science and machine learning. So maybe you're on to something here.

Agreed, I am wondering if it could be something as simply as changing the titles people have.

Are you internal to a tech org, or is this a third-party service? How much bandwidth do you have with the CRO customer?

The reason I ask is that the role may be broader or narrower based on these factors; it may not be perceived as full-on data science.

Internal to a Retail org, and I suspect it's not being viewed internally as Data Science.

There are many ways, some more in your control than others.

Offer more compensation: cash is highly motivating.

Offer competitive work arrangements: remote work, highly flexible work hours, and highly flexible time off policies can inspire loyalty and longevity if not passion and excitement.

The work you're doing is done in the context of another industry: consider asking if that industry is interesting.

Thanks, and I know it's harder to come by, but ideally I'd like to encourage passion for that kind of work if possible. It doesn't seem like that's an interesting field for most, in my experience however.

Curious about the motivation?

Are you looking for people to work for you?

Selling a product?

I am the primary developer for what I listed, but I believe us to be fairly single threaded. While I am not looking for work - I do believe that given the range of skills required, it's not easy for someone to just jump in should something happen.

While it's not really my issue to correct - I am trying to be helpful, and attempting to figure out if a lot of people just dislike this work, or maybe it's how we're presenting it, or both.

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