Forward Deployed Engineering...

There was a minor freak out at work a few weeks ago as our CEO started dropping the phrase “Forward Deployed Engineers” on an all hands. People started reading up on what the concept was and immediately started worrying that the expectation was that they would need to fit into this “new mold”.

As a primer, I’m stealing this definition from Gergley Orosz because he’s awesome and smarter than me lol:

What’s a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE)? A software engineer who alternates between being embedded with customer teams and core product engineering teams.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and argue that the definition is wrong. Or even that the role shouldn’t exist. Because that’s not what I do here, I’m not here to JUST shit on things and say they’re dumb (don’t get me wrong, I’m going to do that but I’m not going to ONLY do that lol).

The argument that I want to make is, that this very reasonable definition of an expectation of certain high level engineer is a trojan horse that will screw people over. And that’s because this is a means to get more work out of our engineers, while not paying them for all they’re doing.

I don’t think that MOST people are out there ACTIVELY trying to screw people over. I don’t think my CEO was dropping FDE as a means to screw over his workforce. I think he genuinely would tell you that this is a better alignment toward the value prop that we claim we have in the market and that this is really just a better term to describe our expectations.

Just to reiterate — I’m not placing malevolent motives on the people pushing the idea of an FDE. I’m just going to talk about how it’ll play in an enterprise and what the end results would be. Because even though MOST people aren’t actively trying to screw people over… we’ve seen the rise of CEO’s being more and more open and brazen about their distaste for their employees and the fact that our social contract at work has evolved to no longer benefit the worker.

Since this all relates back to being empathetic in the engineering world, I want to think a little about how the corporate world has treated/seen engineers in the recent past. We’ve seen three consistent trends:

“Offshoring” - I fucking hate this term, because WHOSE SHORE ARE WE TALKING ABOUT. It’s racist and dumb (oh, don’t worry we’ll talk about this one another time lol). And that’s why it’s in quotes. What it really is is “finding people we can pay less to do the job”
Mass Layoffs - this all started with Musk at Twitter, but then gave all sorts of other CEO’s the bright idea. We’ll dive in more in a minute.
Ridiculously high priced AI engineers - engineers making a million a year? Not the norm, and not sustainable.

I think it’s important to dive into each of these for a moment, then we’ll pull back and look at how that all influences my thoughts on FDE’s. So let’s start with…

Finding people we can pay less to do the job

This needs a snappier title. No one is gonna pay attention to that one. How about this.

Engineers as Numbers not People

Maybe that’s better?

I don’t know how this one started, and honestly I don’t care that much. I care where we are right now. Which is that in engineering organizations that are larger than a handful of people, engineers become numbers instead of humans.

They become lines on a spreadsheet, with Engineering team A costing us $X per month, where Engineering team B costs us $Y per month, and our budget supports $(X+Y)/1.75. And all of a sudden, instead of being cognizant of the impact of individuals, ensuring that they’re put in the right places to be successful and provide value, they’re another number in a spreadsheet that needs to be normalized.

The problem that you encounter here, is that engineers aren’t cogs in a machine that are interchangeable. They have different strengths, weaknesses, ways of learning, ways of operating within a team, etc. And the role of a leader is supposed to be to put those people in the places where they will succeed and provide the most value to your business. But if you abdicate that responsibility in favor of a spreadsheet, you’re not just screwing over the people you’re screwing over yourself. Because in the end the spreadsheet always tells you to offload your expensive folks and add cheaper ones.

And, on the spreadsheet, the US folks always look “too expensive”.

Mass Layoffs

There was a confluence of events that lead to this including tax law changes, the fed increasing the interest rates, and overall economic downturn… but don’t discount Elon Musk being a terrible business man and an asshole as one of those events! Mark Zuckerberg even said that Twitter layoffs led to the mass Silicon Valley layoffs that inspired almost every tech company to follow suit.

I’m just going to say it outright that I think anyone who says that the layoffs were financially based, is full of shit. Musk laid off Twitter workers to show “he was the boss” and to try and justify the fact that they needed him more than he needed them. Kara Swisher has talked about the fact that when Musk did his mass firings, it literally inspired other CEO’s to realize that they didn’t need to provide all the perks in the world to their employees, and that actually the employees had it too good! They needed to feel some pain! And realize that they aren’t in charge! I mean how DARE they want to work for a place they like working for! ONLY CEO’S SHOULD HAVE THAT RIGHT! amirite.

I get it, you’re going to say “Scott you’re being reductive” or “Scott you’re being harsh” or “Scott… what if a CEO reads this”. Well, if a CEO reads this and says “fuck you Scott I’m never hiring you because of this statement”, I guess that sucks but also, phew thank you for helping me dodge a bullet? I’d think that any CEO who WASN’T thinking that this was a prime opportunity to flex their muscles and show their employees who is boss is probably thinking “these assholes made all of us look bad”. And if you’re thinking that, you’re right!

Ridiculously High Priced AI Engineers

This one feels out of place with the other two line items, but I think it belongs for this one reason… It represents the fact that not all engineers are created equally and they shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable numbers on a page.

That one was short dude; weird move, but it feels right.

So what, who cares?

Why spend all this time talking about how people see engineers, I thought we were talking about FDE’s.

Go review the description of an FDE again. Internalize it for a second. What’s it REALLY asking for. It’s asking for an engineer, who also can communicate with clients, and be on site to ensure that we’re providing the value we intend to provide.

Now compare that to how we’ve been treating engineers! We’re treating them more and more like interchangeable cogs, and acting like they truly don’t matter to our success, and so who cares what they need, we just need them to be robots who do the thing we tell the robot to do!

They’re not people, they’re numbers. Whether they work here or not is irrelevant I just need them to provide me value.

Except for those pesky AI engineers.

Because the people calling the shots have started to realize that they DO need people who are thinking critically not just about writing the best code, but about what the code is doing, and why we’re spending our capital on a specific work effort. And the FDE is a recognition that we need more engineers to be more invested in business outcomes.

But instead of coming outright and saying “We went too far in the wrong direction and we need to pivot back and ask more of people”, they go with these fancy terms to define the new “way of working”. But notice, the new way of working… it’s asking more than we’re asking of engineers today. It’s asking them to essentially do 3-4 jobs instead of their 1 job.

The kicker? It’s not going to pay more than the 1 job. Because what about that spreadsheet! What about those numbers! We still have a limited budget team! We have to make do with what we have and deliver more with less!

ANNNNNND this is where the empathy comes in.

Chasing these unicorns who can do 3-4 jobs in the time given to do 1 is all well and good. Everyone is always looking for the unicorns. And you know what they do when they find them? Try and keep them to themselves and not pay them enough while gaslighting them that they’re critical to the success of the company.

Shit. Maybe I DO think that there’s some malevolence here. I mean, in the end, we’re treating resourcing like a zero sum game where SOMEONE is going to lose, and people just don’t want to be the loser.

But someone is always the loser. And finding a unicorn won’t change that. And the problems we’re to solve by finding these unicorn FDE’s… have already been solved. The business folks and bean counters just don’t like the solution!

I know how pejorative I’m being, and trust me, I work with business folks and money folks all the time, and know that the majority of them are lovely people whom I adore, but their role is to satisfy people who are not always as lovely and it creates real tension — so know that if you’re one of the good eggs, I see you, this isn’t about you — this is about the person in your reporting line who you cringe when you see them join a call, or get added to an email, or see their little three dots start jumping when you’re IM’ing with them.

What is the solution you are probably asking yourself.

Why… it’s a long lived team full of individuals with differentiated skill sets that can provide all the things you need to be successful as a team! WHO KNEW. Why do I need an engineer who is an expert at communication? Isn’t that a Scrum Master’s job? Why do I need an engineer who is constantly coming up with product ideas? Don’t I have a product owner? Why do I need an engineer to spend 25% of their time onsite with a client? Don’t I have account managers and client executives?

I’m not saying that these types of unicorns don’t exist or that they don’t provide exponential value… but they’re also called unicorns because they’re magical. They’re make believe. Even if they CAN do everything an FDE is expected to do, it’s likely not a great use of their considerable skill!

And if it IS a great use of their considerable skill… they should be properly compensated. And that compensation is a huge number if you’re finding someone that can actually do all this work, because that work… shouldn’t be done by one person.

Think of it, the whole point of building agile teams, or teams in general, is the recognition that no one person has all the answers. No one person can solve all the problems you’re facing. It’s not about finding a person to put your faith in. It’s about finding a team. Because a team can provide so many more perspectives! And they can solve problems in novel ways you probably didn’t think of because they’re not just the sum of their parts! They’re made BETTER by being a part of a team! Who is doing code reviews if one person is doing everything? Who is setting up pipelines? Who is writing user stories? Who is doing user research? I get it, a single person may have all those skill sets… but why would you want them to do all things? Why is that BETTER than a team where people have depth of skill and we utilize it to create value for our consumers and our company?

And because of things like FDE’s, AI, and egomaniacs running technology companies, the focus becomes a white knight coming to save us with all their considerable skill and possibility, instead of relying on the knights of the round table who all have different strengths and weaknesses that compliment one another to work together to save us.

And that’s a huge mistake.