Increasing Staff - Questions for Software People

[Dood]

Software people: They're talking about increasing my staff by 4 people and are asking for how I want that broken down - and I'm looking for opinions. Right now I have 2 Senior Developers and 6 Developer positions. Should I add 4 developers? 1 DBA and 3 developers? 1 DBA and 3 test engineers? 4 Test engineers? 1 bartender, 1 barback, and 2 cocktail servers?

I'm suffering from "I've worked here so long with a very flat organization and no real testing/testers/dbas" that I'm torn on the right direction. We're preparing for a massive and complete rewrite of a 30 year old COBOL application. DBA might not be necessary if we go the CODE-FIRST route and not worry about peak DB performance. On the other hand, this is a Records Management System for Police. Peak DB performance would be kinda nice to have.

I need to go back to just writing code. I miss that.

[Whiteness]

1 DBA - go for the peak DB performance
2 Test Engineers - testing sucks and is time consuming, better get two
1 developer - floater?


I'm not happy with the testing our developers do, I'd like to have a resource that was just handling testing. That may be why I suggested 2.

[Dood]

1 DBA - go for the peak DB performance
2 Test Engineers - testing sucks and is time consuming, better get two
1 developer - floater?


I'm not happy with the testing our developers do, I'd like to have a resource that was just handling testing. That may be why I suggested 2.

That's sort of what I've been leaning towards. A friend of mine that does software for Sony suggested just hiring four full-stack devs, but near as I can tell he's not managing a massive relational database system full of Department of Justice files. So the DBA sounds super helpful. I'm also just trying to deal with a culture where my predecessor's attitude toward software testing (I kid you not) was "Testing is for sissies."

The looks on everyone's faces when I took over and announced that no task is complete without automated happy and sad path unit tests was a mixture of ecstasy and horror.

[Bulwark]

1 DBA - go for the peak DB performance
2 Test Engineers - testing sucks and is time consuming, better get two
1 developer - floater?


I'm not happy with the testing our developers do, I'd like to have a resource that was just handling testing. That may be why I suggested 2.

+1, But make sure you get experienced Test Engineers. A lot of the people I see in that role are very passive and need a lot of guidance. It sounds like you'll need someone to hit the ground running and start the testing theory and process from the ground up.

Also, look at a Database Engineer instead of a DBA. There is a subtle difference, but one may meet your needs better than the other.

[Furiel]

Maybe I'm a bit jaded because I come from the support side and not the development but...

NEVER and the Furiel means NEVER, trust a dev to test his own application/code.

That being said I agree mostly with Whitey. Get your DBA while you can, everyone loves fast databases. 2 testers because as I said before, don't trust a developer to test his own code, he isn't objective.

Last position should be a bartender and you can cross-train the testers to be your barbacks and servers while their test scripts are running.

On a side note I want to punch your predecessor in the junk so hard so many times that his great great grandfathers testicles feel it. Production is NOT a test environment!!!

[Dood]

Thanks for the input guys.

Right now I'm probably going to go Database Engineer, and either hire 2 testing engineers and a floater software dev, or the DBE and 3 Software Developers with the job spec changed to focus on DevOps/Testing.

[Jimer Lins]

Testers, testers, testers.

If you have that many devs right now I'd get a senior tester, two test engineers and a DBA.

[Dood]

Had to share the recommendation from a friend of mine in the UK (another former SWG player)

you don't need a project manager. They only get in the way. You need a Project Office Manager. That's what my sister does. It's her job to keep going to meetings and tell outrageous lies to senior management while getting you funding, hardware, software and stationery.

You _do_ want a DBA. I don't know whether you need one but you want one. Once you've got one, send me a holler and I'll send you my extension methods for making ORMs get their data from stored procedures instead of shitty on-the-fly SQL. Implement it with help from your DBA and watch performance increase at least fivefold.

You also want a sysadmin, with emphasis on security. S/he will make certain your project doesn't miss anything retarded and also manage your ALM stack so you can avoid the department's monkeys.

Finally... yeah. It's horrible to admit but you need one obsessive compulsive fuckstick that nobody likes to do your interface testing. Software can do unit and integration but sadly, you need somebody who got thrown out of accountant school for being too much of a nobody to do interfaces.

Hope this helps.

[Jimer Lins]

You're not using Stored Procedures? If not, you want BOTH a DBA and a Database Dev (they're separate disciplines).

If I was still in the biz I'd throw my resume your way. You guys have any need for part-time/remote? Like a guy on call you can bring in to troubleshoot something? Because I'm your huckleberry if you need SQL work, although I can't commit to anything full-time. I'd be happy to be your remote pro from Dover, though.

[Dood]

You're not using Stored Procedures? If not, you want BOTH a DBA and a Database Dev (they're separate disciplines).

If I was still in the biz I'd throw my resume your way. You guys have any need for part-time/remote? Like a guy on call you can bring in to troubleshoot something? Because I'm your huckleberry if you need SQL work, although I can't commit to anything full-time. I'd be happy to be your remote pro from Dover, though.

Oh no, we DO have sp's, though they're all sporadic and written by some people with good SQL skills, some people with acceptable skills (like me), and some people who should be arrested if they're within 100 yards of a database.

I have no idea if I'll actually get all of these positions, and my report to the Chief actually called for part-time, remote workers. So shoot me your vastly overqualified resume and I'll keep it on file for whenever they tell me what my contractor budget is and I can figure out what people I need.

[Jimer Lins]

Will do!