Technical or functional: for me, it’s always functional

I built this lamp from a plant stand, LED puck lights and USB cables.

One of 30,000 laid off by email, I had a third interview for a position yesterday.

The pivotal moment in the job interview was when the interviewer asked me if I was more technical or functional and I answered functional. This is always the 'incorrect' answer in tech companies or to people with a heavy technical background, but I also doubled down on the functional side, which tells me where my interests and trajectory lie. I am interested in what tech can do for business, but I’m less interested in proving my technical chops. Technical problems are challenging and interesting to be sure, but the most demanding and valuable work is always with the soft skills.

‪Some background

After the company I worked for was acquired by a big tech company, the large team I was part of had a networking challenge. I met people at all levels and in very different jobs. One woman asked me this exact question: are you more technical or more functional? When I said functional, she told me that this might not be the best place for me since everybody on the team is really technical.

‪I ended up working for her for 3 years, implementing a new business intelligence platform which nobody had any experience with or training in. Much of of the work was very technical but mostly in the application interface. Full-stack developers tended to dismiss anything at the application level as 'clicky-clicky' but on occasion, I would help them navigate the complexities of administration or clean up after them.

Tech people tend to prioritize the code end of things because code acts like a cant, a specialized language for technical insiders. Pure tech folk tend to do what they are told, even if it doesn't make sense. They can train in multiple languages and systems, but don't often have the imagination to see commonalities between those systems or to evaluate benefits or drawbacks to one approach or another. They may not realize that they can pickup a similar system without taking a whole training class first. For example, I've known SQL experts who balked at creating a basic report in a business intelligence tool.

Impossible or just conditionally so?

If asked to do something they've never done before, technical experts may answer that it's not possible. It takes a certain imagination to solve new problems. It takes a certain empathy to understand what the business needs and why they need it. I've also seen this flat no from consultants. In many cases, it's the same lack of imagination, but there are times when this answer is used as a block to work they don't want to do for whatever reason: maybe it's a lot of work that that's outside the scope of their contract, maybe it's tedious, maybe they are paternalistically protecting the customer from what they see as a bad pattern.

When working with technical experts, the answer of 'not possible' is rarely an unconditional answer. Typically, there is a way to solve the problem, but it takes creativity and imagination to solve the problem. Often times, the correct answer is that yes, a solution can be delivered with existing tools, but here's the cost in terms of level of effort, long-term maintenance, and/or performance trade offs. In the end, the business may decide that it's not worth it, but that's a decision for the business, not the technical team. The difficult part of delivering technical solutions arises when what's needed is not easily delivered and being able to scope that out so that the business may evaluate if it's worth it or not.

Vendor bias

Sometimes limits are imposed by the vendor. As as the original database company, Oracle's tools focus on doing everything in the data load process, even if it stunts flexibility. Microsoft has always excelled in providing choices, even if that adds significantly to maintenance overhead and complexity. Oracle has always stayed close to SQL, while Microsoft invents a new language for every platform. These historical differences may become less important over time as they reinvent themselves as data landlords and sellers of AI compute power.

What about AI?

I have a lot of thoughts about AI, but there are many unknowns and companies need to make decisions based on what enables them to support their process and analysis. I am not entirely convinced that AI eliminates (or at some future state will eliminate) the need for technical skills. Since it is a rapidly changing situation, companies need to carefully consider what will be most useful to them and what is more in the interest of the vendors.