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by julik
862 days ago
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> It's a nightmare to manage an IC who is friends with the CEO and doesn't think you're making the right choices Since I find this take harmful, let's rotate the scene: what if you have no business being in the manager's seat above that IC in the first place, and you are effectively being used as a tool by someone who is not the CEO, but, say, a newly-appointed CTO? What if you _are_ making the wrong choices? What if that IC is one of the few people in the org having the experience and the knowledge to tell you that you are? What if that IC is making the right calls and suggestions, but your implicit directive you got from the newly-appointed CTO is actually to manage that IC out "because they are such a pain for everyone"? I have been on both ends of this situation and I do believe most scale-ups are _not_ doing a good job retaining and nurturing their early-stage staff+ ICs into their larger era. This has multiple reasons, but it does often feel like there is a lot of value to be had if just those staff+ ICs weren't so horribly mismanagemed. A hire-above-from-the-outside is prime example. And if I sound bitter - let's just say I have experience being "that IC". It wasn't pretty, and no - I was not an asshole. |
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It's not really clear what you do with a staff+ long-term IC. A lot of them don't want to manage or be involved in leadership, but they want to pull down a huge salary and just do work that is frankly replaceable by a senior eng.
To be clear I do believe there are levels of IC experience above staff, but being 21 and joining a startup doesn't make you a Principal Engineer just because you hung around until you're 30. Especially if you've only worked at that one startup.