Section 174 of the United States Internal Revenue Code plays a crucial role in shaping the strategies of software companies engaged in research and development, impacting their ability to innovate as well as their bottom line.  The passage of Section 174 in 1954 allowed for the immediate deduction of research and experimental expenditures. The policy, intended to encourage innovation, stood for more than sixty years before being sharply altered by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The amendment’s changes — requiring companies to amortize these expenses over five years for domestic and 15 ye ..read more

In today’s market, developer experience is critical to any company that builds software. In the midst of our new remote work reality, increasing economic pressures to “do more with less,” and the continuing rise of burnout, we all know that understanding developers’ lived experience is more important than ever, and yet, companies struggle to do so.  Today, most engineering teams try to tackle this themselves by asking their engineers for feedback in 1-1s, but it’s time-consuming and offers limited insight into what’s actually happening. And, when companies run employee surveys, many do so ..read more

The role of an engineering manager (EM) sometimes feels like a game of tug-of-war. Executives want to know if you can speed up delivery timelines while you need to make sure your engineers have enough support to produce high-quality work — and avoid burnout. If you’re working around the clock and stressing over deliverables, you’re not alone. Here are the three biggest challenges we see EMs face and how to combat them to fuel productive work.  1. Efficient Delivery Management  Efficient delivery management remains one of the biggest hurdles for engineering managers. As we’ve said bef ..read more

Any seasoned engineering manager (EM) knows the secret to producing high-quality products is rooted in a content and motivated team. However, figuring out which levers to pull to build team engagement and satisfaction can be tricky — especially since every person on your team likely has different motivators, likes, and dislikes. Leading your team to success requires more than technical know-how and hard skills. It requires a delicate dance that balances individual developer wants and business needs. The most successful and high-performing engineering teams are steered by EMs with a rock-solid ..read more

In January, the Jellyfish team held our Company Kickoff in Boston. These annual kick-off meetings often lead me to reflect on what I’ve learned about the Engineering persona over the past 18 months, whether from customers, partners, colleagues or fantastic industry resources. Before we get into it, here is some context on me and the company.  For the past nine years, I’ve worked with a range of buyers: Customer Service (Zendesk), Product (Productboard), and now Engineering (Jellyfish). Unintentionally, this has been a great way to progress into increasingly sophisticated and complex buyer ..read more

For the seventh consecutive quarter, the Jellyfish Engineering Management Platform has been recognized as a Leader within the Software Development Analytics Tools Grid by G2, the world’s largest and most trusted software marketplace. We earned the recognition by receiving positive reviews from verified users compared to similar products in the same category. For inclusion in the report a product must have received 10 or more reviews. Holding a Leader position for seven reports in a row is quite the accomplishment, as you must be receiving new positive reviews on a regular basis to stay ahead i ..read more

What initially attracted you to Jellyfish and motivated you to join the Product Team? Once I learned about the problems that Jellyfish is solving for software development teams, I became hooked on contributing to this mission. Jellyfish solves pain points that I’ve spent many cycles on throughout my product career: trying to understand and communicate how engineering effort is spent, aligning my teams’ efforts to what was most important to our business, and supporting delivery predictability so that we could do what we intended, to name a few. I remember thinking—if only I could have had this ..read more

What initially attracted you to Jellyfish, and what motivated you to join the Sales Team?  I first heard of Jellyfish in the fall of 2019, when a former colleague joined the company. Fast forward to 2021, Jellyfish received their Series B funding round in January, and after I read that Jellyfish wanted to be the ‘Salesforce for Engineering’ I had to learn more.   Throughout the interview process, I met with the Jellyfish co-founders, my current Director Mike Sansone, and our Head of Global Revenue Ben Solari, and it became very clear that Jellyfish not only had a great vision of ..read more

What initially attracted you to Jellyfish and motivated you to join the Finance Team?  What initially attracted me to Jellyfish was that it was a start-up company doing great in just a short period. With start-ups, I knew I’d be able to not only have my hands in a little bit of everything in the finance world but also that I could grow with the team. What motivated me to join the Finance team was the controllers’ pitch on why Jellyfish is so awesome! Jessica, the controller, spoke about how confident she was in Jellyfish’s growth and our building a team as the company grew. I also knew I ..read more

What initially attracted you to Jellyfish and motivated you to join the Data Science Team?  Back in Sep 2021, I had just recently left my position as an Assistant Professor of Physical Oceanography and I was nervous about the leap into working outside of academia. While finishing work with a Data Science Bootcamp, I was approached by a recruiter who introduced me to Jellyfish. I had no idea what this company did initially, but I was instantly drawn to the open-ended problems the Jellyfish Research Team was working on. One of the big motivations to join Jellyfish was that I met the entire ..read more