HACKER Q&A
📣 prakhar897

What are the perks of being a technical person in a non technical team?


A few days ago, I saw an article here which touched on ways to move to a non technical team. So, why does someone want to do that? What are the responsiblities and perks of that role?


  👤 borplk Accepted Answer ✓
It can have some perks as other comments have mentioned.

One thing I want to mention is that there needs to be a high level of trust for it to work well.

If they don't trust you enough it will be hell. For example they will not understand why it took you so long to do X and Y. They may think you are being lazy, they may think you are exploiting their lack of technical knowledge.

Then they get uncomfortable and try to find out the "truth" for themselves with the help of their cousins and google. They will google "how long does it take to make a front-end?" and wonder why it's taking you so long when Random Jimmy on the internet says 5 days max to "make a front-end".

You'll be treated like a distrusted dodgy mechanic.

They may also annoy you with things to the effect of "My nephew said we must use MongoDB" and so on.

They need to trust you and get out of your way. Get out of your way means that they don't try to play some "I love Apps! I'm kinda technical" role with you. They also need to accept to live with your judgement calls and technical decisions while you work together.


👤 beforeolives
The obvious differences are

- more autonomy on how to solve problems

- less accountability

- no opportunities to work at large scale

- your work is treated like it's magic

- you'll sometimes need to communicate technical concepts in a simplified way to peers and management

- no opportunities to learn from peers and more senior engineers

- no way to get specific feedback for your technical work

It's basically for people who want to get into a technical role but can't land a very demanding position yet so they take the opportunity to practice and develop their skills in a very forgiving environment. Or it's for people who have skills but for whom technical/career development isn't a priority and they want to be left alone, have more control over their day-to-day activities and collect a regular paycheck.


👤 apohn
I used to have a job like this. I was a Data Scientist (who coded a lot) embedded in a team of Business Analysts.

That job did not work out at all. I was not perceived as a wizard and my work was not appreciated at all. Nobody understood why requirement X was sufficient for a business analyst but not sufficient for me. When I did something smart with technology, people only saw the front end (usually a dashboard) and had zero recognition of of the work required to display that "simple" thing. Calculating a moving average or doing some very advanced thing was seen as equivalent.

As far as everybody was concerned, a "technical person" was somebody who did Excel Macros and VBA. That was their perception of me and my value. More than anything, I think people perceived me as a "special snowflake" who needed so much more (e.g. time) than other people to get work done.


👤 cercatrova
You get the ability to automate work and allow other employees to work on other stuff (or sometimes, automate their job away; I've seen this happen myself).

👤 slipwalker
you can sound like a genius, yet over charge and under work... it's a great opportunity for tired ( burnedout ) engineers.