How Many People Work in Your Internet Department?

WorkinTooHard asks: "Two years ago, I took the job of Internet Marketing Manager for a international company, with a crazy idea that I could convince senior management that the internet wasn't a fad. The only problem was that I didn't expect a (respected) mid-level manager to be the road block. We are in the middle of a major website redesign (the current site has not been updated in over 8 years) and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower. Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22). How many people do you have working in/on your company's Internet/Intranet and Extranet sites and applications? How many full-time web-application developers, content providers, analytics people, UI designers, email marketing people, and so forth?" "Please note that this includes anyone who works directly in building and maintaining your companies current website, electronic marketing and Internet applications. If you can, include the size of your company, number of employess, the number of active products being sold/supported, and how much outsourcing you do? The company I am currently working for has over 13,000 active products and over 30,000 products which need to be supported. We do no outsourcing, have over 900 employess in North America (over 8000 worldwide) and a total of 2 full time web developers, 1 part time developer/SQL guru and 1 content/data person as well as two people in our MarCom office which periodically write copy."

Comments

Push Back

[RunFatBoy.net]

I'm not sure whether to answer the actual question asked, or the implicit call for help....

Anything that people don't understand, they tend to generalize and make higher level models of the underlying processes. I think it'd be beneficial for this manager to sit in on a couple design meetings and/or code reviews so that he can get a feel for all that is involved.

I think you're going to see wildly varying answers regarding sizes of teams, depending upon site complexity, etc. The real issue here is that it looks like you need to learn to push back.

Your posting sounds more like a distress message than an actual question. If you feel you're understaffed and you're feeling heat from the top, look these guys straight in the eye and say "If you refuse to offer more staff, we can only reasonably expect to complete around this date", and don't flinch. They'll respect you more in the long run and know you mean business.

Jim http://www.runfatboy.net/ -- Exercise, Web 2.0 style.

Re:Push Back

[AKAImBatman]

I think you're going to see wildly varying answers regarding sizes of teams, depending upon site complexity, etc. The real issue here is that it looks like you need to learn to push back.

That's a nice sentiment, except for one problem: He's a manager, not a coder. He doesn't need to push back, he needs to spend his time managing. Which means that instead of coding, he needs to spend his time doing other things like:

• Market the idea to the rest of company. Sending out mockups and ROI case studies of other companies can entice your manager and/or his manager, and do a lot to help sell why more resources are needed.
• Use your budget more effectively. Your company may not have given you leave to hire full-time employees, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't hire contractors to build tricky or time-consuming portions. Bonus points if you can get stuff auto-generated.
• Build trust. You need to gain a reputation as someone who gets things done, and can be trusted with a task. If you build that trust, you'll be trusted that you'll use extra resources wisely rather than empire-building. Yeah, it's difficult with limited resources. Figure it out. You're a manager now, so you'd better find a way.
• Don't make excuses. Learn to put a positive spin on timetables, instead. Using tools like Microsoft Project (blech) can allow you to chart out how many man-hours something will take. It can also help you show how it will get done faster if you have more resources.
• Don't commit to a project unless you and your superiors are agreed on the timetables. Eveyone expects some slippage on large projects, but too much will cost you dearly. If you already agreed to a messed up timetable (or didn't give one!), then you may need to eat some crow when you present a realistic projection. You should still give that projection, though! Without it, you'll just look incompetent. With it, you'll at least admit to a mistake and ask to correct it.

All in all, I don't hold very much hope for the story submitter. Being a manager is very different from being a programmer. If he's been in his position for two years and hasn't learned how to play the game yet, then he may not be cut out for it. Being a manager is a cut-throat business, and there are only two ways to survive: Either be really good, or be really good at brown nosing. The former is usually preferrable; especially if your bosses are no slouches.

Re:Push Back

[DaveJay]

Here are some handy things to phrase more politely than I'm phrasing them here:

"I can't tell you when it will be finished until we know exactly what we're building. Help us nail down the specifications, and I'll be able to give you a finish date with the current staff and workload."

"There is a finite amount of manpower available to do this work, and the schedule I gave you is firm, unless we either add people -- and that won't be a one-to-one improvement, it will depend on how much work can be run in parallel -- or reduce scope. Help us do that, and I'll be able to get you a new completion date."

"I know you want these changes in the initial launch, and I want to give you these changes in the initial launch. However, there will be some impact to how long it will take, because a lot of work we've already completed will need to be redone. Help us nail down the new specifications, and I'll be able to give you a finish date with the current staff and workload."

Repeat ad nauseum until the project is finished.

Re:Push Back

[pixel.jonah]

Because that's not how big corps work. They are much more likely to spend $x to hire an outside firm or consultants than the same $x to staff up.

Two cases in point:

1) My company (3 people) was hired to redesign the corporate website (twice) and build the entire employee intranet for a $300m/7,000 employee company. This client had a 60+ person web team in the corporate division alone, yet had to hire out to a tiny team of crack individuals to actually get anything done.

2) I'm working with another client now - smaller but much older - that would much rather have us (as the consulting firm) hire and manage the people we need for the project and pass the cost on to them (plus a markup) than hire internally.

I don't understand the accounting side enough to know what the benefits are there, but from a management perspective, it's very nice to be able to make a single "entity" responsible for the project (as kind of a black box) than to have to think about and deal with an internal "team".

Thank you for listening to .jonah's voice from the trenches for today.

Re:Push Back

[corbettw]

I don't understand the accounting side enough to know what the benefits are there

They're called "recurring costs", and hiring outside consultants don't generate them while hiring employees do. Let's say you have to accomplish some project, and it's going to require roughly 1600 man hours to complete (three programmers working for three months, eight hour days). You don't have three programmers with enough time to dedicate to this project. So, you have two choices:

a) hire three guys
b) hire an outside firm to do the work

Finding and hiring three qualified programmers is going to take longer than finding one qualified firm, but even if it wasn't it's still cheaper to go with route b in this instance. Three programmers are going to cost you about $250,000 a year, give or take $50,000 depending on your market. So even if you spend $100 per hour on the outside firm, you're coming out ahead at only $160,000. Not to mention, once this project is done, if you go with route a, you're now stuck with three more employees, for whom you have to find something to do or else they're just going to get disgruntled and spend all day posting on Slashdot.

Re:Push Back

[EnronHaliburton2004]

Contractors? You mean those guys who send out mock-ups 2 months into a project, but wait for 5 months into a 6 month project ask me what "Websphere" is (It's the platform for product that they are replacing), "Oh CVS, I wasn't able to access the account you gave me 4 months ago?" and my favorite "We tried to download the images via FTP, but couldn't connect. Eh? What's 'SFTP'? We thought that was atypo."

By that time, the business is totally committed, the boss failed to hold the contractors to the contract, and the boss' boss is waiting for a deliverable. You could certainly cancel the contract, but that pretty much means loosing your job. Maybe they deserve to get fired.

I've never been a decision maker in a project like this, but I would say this happens more then half the time with businesses that I work with. Past schedule and over budget.

WTF

[SQLz]

Is an "Internet" department?

Re:WTF

[Frostalicious]

He manages the whole internet with only two guys. And management still complains. What hardasses.

Use an iterative approach

[ddent]

Try and see how much the problem can be broken down. Chances are, it is possible for you to release more functionality over time, and get something out the door soon. There is probably something you could do that would get you ROI pretty much tomorrow.

Whats the business?

[nickgrieve]

If your site go 8 years without an update, your obviously not a tech company... it may seem like a shock to some, but not evey business has more need for a website than using it as a contact page or simple "who we are".

Who are your customers? are they interent users?

Re:Whats the business?

[Tony Hoyle]

Maybe they are.

True story: I worked for a tech company with a website created in notepad in 10 minutes because someone was bored one day. Most of the information on it was obsolete.

One day the CEO emailed excitedly to say he'd updated it... turns out he'd joined AOL and got some kind of web site design package - he'd produced a single text page with blue text on an orange background.

And spelled the name of the company wrong.

We left it a week before quietly correcting some of the more horrendous faults (it wasn't even standard HTML.. heck I'm not sure what it was to this day).

It took another 2 years before that company got somewhat of a clue... true, their new site is a Flash/ActiveX monster, but it's progress at least.

How about a Demo?

[saden1]

Maybe it is time to give them a demo. Not necessarily a functioning demo, mock-up screens will do. You'll give them an idea of what exactly you're trying to do and if they think you're on the right track you'll get more funding for new hires.

ROI? That's impossible...

[MudButt]

I'd be a little worried if I were asked to show the ROI of any web site that wasn't specifically for an on-line retailer. How did you show the ROI on a large, wooden, hand carved sign in the 1600's?

A web site (as simple or complex as it may be) is a marketing tool for a business. And anyone with an MBA or equivalent experience will tell you that developing an ROI on a marketing campaign is nearly impossible, at best.

As for "how many" developers it's going to take... Check out today's story, 60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten, which has some great advice about how to get 9 women pregnant and have a baby in 1 month. (Or was that "getting 5 Jazz players pregnant"? I don't remember...)

burn out.

[brevig907]

I work for a retail electronics company that has 32 stores accross muliple states in the US. I'm the only App and Web(intranet -php/mysql / internet -jsp/Oracle) developer, one of two DBA's, one of two business analysts for my department, only technical point on contact for department, and basic bitch.

currently I'm creating a custom ticketing system for our call center, I've been given 10 days, to design, develop and roll out the application. Needless to say some of what I have to do is hacked together.

and now all of my complaining leads on a question.

What do you do when you feel burnt out at work?

Personally, I've started drinking during lunch, not the best thing, but it seems to help.

Re:burn out.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

What do you do when you feel burnt out at work?

Personally, I've started drinking during lunch, not the best thing, but it seems to help.

Start hiring hookers during lunch with petty cash instead. Getting your pipes cleaned will make you a lot more productive that afternoon than getting drunk.

lone wolf at my state agency

[SethJohnson]

I'm the lone developer in my state agency's "website department". We have over 250 employees and huge information publishing needs. Like the submitter, we are in the midst of a website redesign using a commercial CMS. A county spent 6 months with a staff of four programmers to build their site with the newer version of this software. I was asked to do it in 3 months by myself. I'm spending entire weekends and nights in my cubicle coding this thing in JSP. No overtime pay. It's a month past deadline and if I don't finish it by the end of next week, I'm fired.

Morale to this story: working for the government sucks as much as people say it does.

Seth

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[Tim C]

I know it's easy to say when you have the luxury of not being in that position, but seriously, tell them to shove their job. They're asking for the impossible and not even paying you for attempting it.

Life's too short, and no job is worth that.

Re:lone wolf at my state agency

[corbettw]

A county spent 6 months with a staff of four programmers to build their site with the newer version of this software. I was asked to do it in 3 months by myself...It's a month past deadline and if I don't finish it by the end of next week, I'm fired.

I call bullshit. It's incredibly difficult to fire state employees, and given that there's documented evidence of a similar organization taking 8 times the resources to complete the same project, there's no way you can get fired for this from a large corporation, let alone the state.

If your manager has literally threatened you with termination over this, stop working on the project and go directly to your HR department, do not pass GO. Tell them about your stress (it helps if you have a doctor's note or, even better, a note from Epstein's muttah, stating that you're under immense stress and borderline to a breakdown) and make sure they know you've been threatened with termination for not doing what four people couldn't. You'll be surprised at how fast they move to make sure you're taken care of.

incremental change

[bfields]

We are in the middle of a major website redesign (the current site has not been updated in over 8 years) and everyone is asking why it takes so long to complete, and almost daily I have to explain that I do not have enough manpower. Of course, I can't prove ROI until the new site is launched (a great Catch22).

Sounds like reason #65536 to never launch a "major redesign" of anything....

Isn't there some way this could be broken down into steps that could show actual day-to-day improvements (even if only very minor ones?)?

I'm suspicious... (or, paranoid?)

[davidsyes]

"How many people do you have working in/on your company's Internet/Intranet and Extranet sites and applications? How many full-time web-application developers, content providers, analytics people, UI designers, email marketing people, and so forth?"

Every time I see something like the text quoted, (and this is the 3rd time in about as many weeks that I've seen such questions here -- not to attack the Slash Staff, btw...) I feel like it's a probe question. I wonder if it's well-crafted and paid for so that the readers get all riled up and reply. Like the people with nicknames, but personal web pages. You then go on to say how many MySQL devs, and so on you have, trying to help out this guy. For all you know, it could be post-worthy by Slashdot staff standards, but the poster or piece-writer could be looking for sales avenues leading to sales revenues.

Some of you guys out to be wary of being "taggable" while disclosing what products you use. You never know: that could be Oracle or ms digging for treasure. If your company is susceptible to discounts and promises of upgrades and marketing dollars, YOU could be out of a job if they replace YOUR tool of choice...

Just some thoughts...

Don't be a wuss

[AngryNick]

It sounds like you willingly took a job at a company with a non-technical business model, old-school managers, and a half-baked idea of how the web can help increase their revenues. It's now your job to make the best of the situation and knock out little chunks of reality in an organization whose current business model is fundamentally opposed to making money through the web.

I got into the same deal, but with a much larger monster of an organization, with lots of developers, thousands of servers, and endless financial resources. Here's what I learned: two passionate and committed coders with a clear understanding of their company's business and customers can produce more than an army of egos, project managers, analysts, disengaged sponsors.

I suggest you pick a target that the two of you can hit in 30 days, communicate that goal to your boss's boss, bust your asses to hit the target in 20 days, then spend the next 10 days figuring out your next 30 day trick. Rinse and repeat.

As you complete these little projects, you will A) gain the trust and confidence of the guys with the money, and B) increase your own confidence in your team's abilities. Yes, there will be bugs and system-wide FUps, but that's the price of playing the game with 2 guns in a 4x6 cube.

With time you will learn to identify the low-risk opportunities for investments, where the ROI is high and the time to execute is low. Some of these investments might be adding new features, others may be in hiring a new person. Management will come to respect your judgment.

The point is to run your shop like your own business and spend your time and money as if it were your own. If you're not making money for the company, and seeking ways to make even more, then they don't need you. Yes, having a few more people sounds appealing, but you need to have a direction to send them first.

Fry's?

[boristdog]

32 retail electronics stores? My guess is Fry's.

I always thought Fry's web site looked like their web staff was pretty much one guy.

With a drinking problem.