Comment by gatsby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gatsby | Hacker News Reader

Are these really commonly held beliefs?

--You only take a job in business operations if you aren’t smart enough to be an engineer (or designer, or product manager, or…)

--If your role isn’t technical, you don’t actually understand the product.

I don't think many people actually say or believe this. Maybe these were common thoughts in 1999, but as an SF-based ops guy, I've never heard this.

In fact, I would argue that good business operators have it just as good, if not better, than most engineers right now. Startups like Uber, Postmates, Airbnb, Dropbox, etc. are killing it, and they all have really talented (and highly paid) people in sales, ops, marketing, support, etc.

I think most of us are aware that it takes more than engineers to build a company:

http://blog.42floors.com/year-operations-startups/

http://www.cdixon.org/2014/03/15/full-stack-startups/

http://justinkan.com/exec-errands-post-mortem

I don't think they're commonly stated beliefs. I think that people commonly behave as if they believe those things, though.

My first technical job was working for my university. I learned early on that the admin people were the backbone of the place. They were smart, competent, and hardworking, and a lot of people treated them like furniture. They were used to it, but I found it rage-inducing.

I've definitely seen a lot of stuff like that here. A number of times I've had words with fellow engineers who apparently thought they were too good to get their hands dirty. I've had engineering managers explicitly tell me that engineers were too expensive or important a resource to do anything but code. It doesn't take a lot of that for an implicit caste system to develop.

I've actually found that the "commonly held belief" is often the opposite:

- You're only (still) an engineer because you lack the ability to move into a product management role.

- If your role is technical, your job is to code up the vision of someone who understands the product.

This is changing, rapidly, in some segments of the tech world But keep in mind, the "developer-driven culture" may be far more prevalent among the kind of organizations represented on HN than the business world at large.

Does it have to be common or just regularly enough encountered for it to become seriously irritating.

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