How to Work with Engineers

Some finance people hate working with engineers because the output is totally different what they originally envisioned. This was the case when I joined Deliverr. The company was trying to tag all variable charges related to each order to better understand unit economics by order, customer, etc. However, it never came into fruition because there were too many moving parts with millions of transactions each month and charges from different providers were not consistent, how UPS provided data was different from FedEx, etc.). This was one of the reasons why I was asked to join the company by founder of Deliverr.

Steps I took to complete this project:

• I first built good relationship with engineers. There were friction when I joined because finance and engineers were pointing fingers to each other. Sometimes, we let emotions get best of us, but no one wants to sabotage each other intentionally, friction stems of miscommunication or wrong expectations.

• Did not give general guideline to engineers. This was the problem as to why the project kept getting stuck, finance wanted one way whereas engineers gave something else. To eliminate miscommunication I used the following methods:

  • Explained at a high-level what the company was trying to achieve and why

  • Worked with engineers as to what data was available, what data was questionable, and what data was missing

  • Combed through all the data with engineers to better understand what materials were available. It's like building a house, you must understand what materials you currently have and what additional materials need to purchased

  • Met weekly in the beginning and documented key points and ended each meetings with action items. Next meeting, went over the action items from previous meeting.

  • If something couldn't be done, tried to understand why and what could company do to fix it. Sometimes, engineers do not like to solve an issues because they're already overwhelmed with existing tasks, but this leads to more technical debt, so it's in best interest for the company to tackle and overcome the issue right way.

Outcome

I would be lying if I said this particular project was grand success. While we made huge progress, further than anything before, the company decided to sell the company at a huge discount and lay-off signification portion of employees.

Morale of the Story

Even if you do everything right, the life has other plans. Joking aside, the steps I took helped me complete big projects with engineers in previous companies I worked for.