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by 0xbadcafebee 2439 days ago
A guess, from other companies: a manager is given some engineers, they ask themselves "What should we create?", they come up with an idea, make up a random business justification, POC it to upper management, get approval and headcount, and spend a year or two trying to prove it was worthwhile. Best case it works and gets used by other internal teams for 2-5 years, worst case the team gets broken apart and the project abandoned. (Mind you, nobody gets laid off, they just find other reasons to keep paying people who aren't making anything of value) If you have ever heard about it publicly, it was probably someone's pet project and they wanted their ego stroked, or to "get a win" and a promotion.

Many of the projects are just a response to some other internal problem, like "the teams aren't using a shared platform", so they build a platform for the platforms. Persistent problems get ignored because nobody wants to rock the boat. The joys of working in a large corporation...
2 comments
tootie 2439 days ago
I saw this at a decades-old retail company. New CTO brought a Silicon Valley perspectives to the company which involved hiring a load specialist engineers into newly created departments without any explicit business justification. Literally said that once they were hired they'd come up with useful projects. He also wanted to start exporting our in-house software as standalone products even when we were still running transactions through a mainframe. CEO bought it all hook, line and sinker.
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naravara 2439 days ago
> Literally said that once they were hired they'd come up with useful projects.

This is a great way to have engineers burn time on projects they think are interesting rather than projects that will actually have good ROI.

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iamasoftwaredev 2439 days ago
How do you balance avoiding this with wanting engineers who have ideas and agency?
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karthikb 2439 days ago
Bring engineers in to solve problems you know need to get solved. As they learn the system, its debt, the business, etc., listen to their ideas. For ones that sound good, give them the resources to develop a POC. For the POCs that work, give them the resources to take it all the way.

Larger companies with substantial profits can hire engineers explicitly to come up with POCs one after another.

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rockinghigh 2439 days ago
The idea and proof of concept often come before creating a new team.
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