Comments on: Non tech staff in a web company are useless dead weight

By: J

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:12:45 +0000

Right, you can’t have a bust up without me and I can’t do Friday… Let’s take this offline & reschedule. Being a Liverpudlian myself I think this is excellent progress.

By: Primordial

Primordial — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:30:20 +0000

Enough of this handbags at dawn stuff, we’re going to settle this in a mature civilised and totally northern way.

Friday 13th, 6pm in the HaHa bar. Last man standing!

*PLZ NOTE: This approach has been fully endorsed by senior management.

By: J

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:36:41 +0000

… And in answer to Who should control the direction of the business, tech or editorial? - neither. The direction should come from the leadership - either the founders, or the management. And there should be absolutely no rule on where ideas come from. ‘Advertising should stick to selling advertising, project management should stick to managing projects, and editorial should be primarily writing content to put on the site.’ doesn’t sound like a dynamic business to me. It’s healthy when ideas are coming from all areas and people are thinking beyond their daily tasks - that means they are motivated, creative, innovative and commited to the future of the business. Good leadership is about facilitating communication and creativity across all areas of the business, and then managing the process of what gets done and what doesn’t get done well. Again, I think tech have traditionally been sidelined here, which is another loadarubbish.

By: J

Thu, 05 Apr 2007 13:31:41 +0000

No time to write articles, too busy writing for the website, and I don’t think you’d be interested in my blog (it’s about cake and periods and stuff) but I will try and put a few points across in a slightly less whaddaloadarubbish! way. (In the immortal words of Nan). I do think your sensationalist approach - and that ridiculous subject line - was a cheeky way of launching what could be a pretty worthwhile discussion though.

I actually had a good conversation about some of these issues last night, touching on Martin Fowler’s theories - interesting. From my perspective, the degree to which a tech & ‘editorial’ / content management team works well together is crucial to a web company’s progress, and hard to get right. Paul’s right on two counts I think (if I read things right) - splitting those two teams is not ideal, and a lot of startups will start out well, but will hit the kinds of issues you see time and time again in bigger, more established companies before long. That’s where it comes down to effective leadership, from the top, and good project management. If you’ve got the perfect amount of technical resource to do everything the different areas of the business want (and are targeted) to do, plus perfect project management, and consistent, perfect leadership, all should be well. But ha! When are things perfect, ever, anywhere? Whaddaloadarubbish!

What worries me about your post, and what for me could be at the heart of this matter, is that it betrays a lack of understanding from your perspective as tech, about what those other areas of the business do and why. Probably a hangover from tech being isolated - an insular function set apart from the rest of ‘the business’ (I hate that term - why on earth would tech not be a part of ‘the business’?). We’re trying as an industry to correct that I think, but lopping off all the other functions is not the answer (and this is coming from a developer groupie, you know that). Any web company, as it grows, will be looking at its revenue streams, considering marketing options, improving its product, managing customers, analysing data, conducting research etc. None of those functions are useless dead weight - ever evolving, yes, especially in the context of the web, but as important as they ever were.

Finally, the tech headcount for the team of 14 you describe is actually 7. I got it to 9/10, but - as in any business - issues like resource levels take time to resolve and have lots of dependencies. And as someone said I think, you guys don’t come cheap, whereas us dead weighters don’t get paid all that much to sit around being useless, having whims, and creating work (as you describe).

By: matt

matt — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:46:40 +0000

J, please remember that I am only arguing one side of the argument, and playing devils advocate. The main purpose of this article was to generate controversy, which I am pleased to say it is doing. However, I would like to keep the discussion focused on web companies in general please. If you would like to present the issue from a different stance please write an article on the topic and I will publish it here alongside mine, or if you have a blog, write one there and I will link to it.

p.s. I did forget about the email marketing, valid point.

By: J

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:25:57 +0000

ps. email marketing is ‘publicity’ my love. and so is PR, which I am working hard on but we get naturally anyway, because we have great CONTENT. goodnight.

By: J

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 23:22:34 +0000

ha ha, I don’t have time to read this because I’m top busy checking that the curry in my oven is ready to fill my late, pissed, belly, but you - Paul, Matt, you especially - are full of shit.

Love, the Editor.

By: Wes

Wes — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:28:23 +0000

Well said - as a developer in a web design firm with more managers than production staff I understand where you are coming from.

We are also in the “too much work” boat as well so something is working for us. Sometimes too many cooks in the kitchen spoils the soup however. :)

By: Gareth S

Gareth S — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:51:41 +0000

Thanks for your stats. This is of course a resourcing issue. Sounds to me the non-developers are doing sterling job and probably calls for more developers. Nonetheless, developers are usually more expensive than non-technical so it could be a financial reason behind this. Afterall, too much work is better than too little. Praise to your non technicals!!! Keep up the good work!!!

By: matt

matt — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:06:25 +0000

I understand the point you are making Gareth, but do you not think that in a web company of 14 people, having only 4 developers, one of whom is a manager, is a little over the top. I’m sure there would be so much work to be done that nothing gets completed. If there are 4 advertising staff, but the rest of the team seem to spend most of their time creating new work, this just compounds the problem.

Also, none of the staff are involved in publicity. All of that is done through SEO, for which there is 1 person.