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Comment by poeticsilence | Hacker News Reader

Strongly agree here. It's hard to find a CTO if you don't have access to any engineering talent that you trust and have vetted. A small, focused project with a team of very senior freelancers both gives you a chance to dip your toes into the idea of running your own in-house software development, and an opportunity to vet individuals who can help you make good hiring decisions down the road.

If you're interested in following this strategy, don't hesitate to reach out to poetic.artifice@gmail.com -- I'd be happy to help on both fronts.

As for your concern about logistics being not sexy enough - I've found that the best programmers (and the ones you'd want) are more interested in the technical aspects of the problem and business and customer impact, rather than the sexiness of the business domain.

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> I've found that the best programmers (and the ones you'd want) are more interested in the technical aspects of the problem and business and customer impact, rather than the sexiness of the business domain.

Just want to heartily agree with this point here. Certainly many of us do get excited about particular business domains from time to time, but in my own experience, I get more excited about technical challenges, and -- critically -- solving real problems for real customers that I can see first- or nearly-first-hand. The customers for this "product" would be internal to OP's org, so the people who end up building this would have front-row seats to how it's being used, what's good, what's bad, etc.

For me red flag is that for OP as a developer I will end up being a cost.

Even with all the good words he wrote how company can improve by doing own dev - reality is that company makes money in logistics and as a software dev I would be second class citizen and cost center.

That is why I much rather work in company that makes money on software, because here I am money making.

It's possible to treat software close to a first-class citizen even technically as a cost center. Probably the key is to have a lean team that is effective and management trusts, in a business whose profit margin or stability can be greatly enhanced by good software. If you're relatively lean then nobody sane would be looking to cut fat in your team. On top of that, the attitude of management and the culture is really important, and this CEO's attitude is at least a good start.

I hear Meta Ads has one of the more toxic environments for SWEs, even though Ads make money.

> company makes money in logistics and as a software dev I would be second class citizen and cost center

If software can make the company provide better logistics more efficiently, it's not a cost center, it's an enabler. It pays for itself in reduced costs and increased revenue.

A cost centre is, by definition, somewhere that only produces costs and is never attributed with any revenue or profit.

A smart management team can figure out that investing in IT, Software, etc is going to have a positive ROI overall by increasing efficiency among other things.

Unfortunately my experience (and many others') is that only the balance sheet will be considered and the goal will always be to reduce the costs in cost centres as much as possible.

Even in a company that doesn't fall fully into that trap, often times a lot of effort needs to be expended to keep funding at current levels, never mind the rituals involved in getting increased funding for new projects, hardware, staff, etc.

Generally the more obvious the connection between your work and company revenue, the easier your life will be.

> A cost centre is, by definition, somewhere that only produces costs and is never attributed with any revenue or profit.

Which means that if investing in IT is an enabler for gaining revenue or profit, it's not a cost center by this definition--it's necessary to gain revenue or profit. As you note, many companies don't appear to be smart enough to see this, but that doesn't make it wrong.

What customer has paid the company for IT's services directly?

None?

It's a cost center in the same way the janitorial staff or legal are. The company won't be there without contracts or with overflowing trashcans, but it doesn't mean the company is making money off of janitorial services or drafting contracts.

> as a software dev I would be second class citizen and cost center

Everyone’s a cost. The myth of revenue centres was made up by sales & marketing.

>The myth of revenue centres was made up by sales & marketing.

Funny that sales and marketing sells and markets itself.

Well I do agree everyone is a cost.

But it still doesn’t make company dynamics not true. Logistics company will have bunch of logistics specialists as management and they will see it as revenue center and will see „their own kind of people” as more important.

The management sets the company dynamics to whatever they want.

That idea of costs and profit centers is bullshit that only bad manager believe in. It may or may not be the case with the one company of the OP, we don't nearly enough information to judge.

(But the fact that the OP is reaching into IT with the goal of improving their people's productivity is a very weak indication that they are better than that.)

Yes so I am indirectly replying to OP question if he will be able attract and retain tech talent and I cannot imply anything really about his specific company.

I am only pointing out my view on it based on my years of experience working in different companies. Looking by up votes it seems my experience to be applicable for other people as well, so I guess it might be useful for the OP.

I dont know if it always works this way. A software-first company has more experience at hiring/firing software devs and is better at "screwing you over", extracting maximum work for the least money. Its their bread and butter. Not all companies but some are like this.

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