Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mathattack 4220 days ago
When I was at BigCo, they officially had 2 paths - one involved people leadership, the other technical leadership. The reality was technical leadership stopped a level below director, and only 2 or 3 even managed to make it that far. After 3.5 years there, it had a formative impact of pushing me away from both the company and technology. I recovered on both, but it's something one should take seriously on taking a job. I'm not sure that creating "Mega-consultants" works either, as it takes the emphasis away from delivery ownership.

That said, here are a few ideas in rank order from easy/feasible to crazy/radical:

1) Technical leaders of a certain level can not be overruled on technical decisions by non-technical leaders in the department.

2) Encourage the best to share their work outside the firm.

3) Smart people like to be with smart people. Pay up for a culture or cohort of superstars, not an individual superstar.

4) Provide time and monetary budget for architecture and technical debt that is owned and allocated by the best in the organization.

5) Allow technical stars to have the ability to change assignments at their will with a given notice period. (Yes it may cause problems, but the free market is always giving them offers)

6) Enable managers to raise technical pay without concern for bands. For example, the VP should be able to say, "I can hire 4 engineers for 100K each, or I can hire someone in the open market for 200K. Instead I will pay my internal superstar 220K since she will do it the best, even though it's way out of bands of someone with her seniority and level."
1 comments
thwarted 4219 days ago
One thing you definitely don't want to do is take a team away from people who consider themselves to be engineers who happen to be in a people manager role (and have been for a long time and are considered by their team and the wider engineering org to be successful at it). And if you want to do this, you have to make sure the person, and their team, is on board with making that change.

This can be especially problematic if you don't have a culture of the organization being driven by engineering; where becoming a "manager" affords more success (making decisions, getting things done) purely because you're a manager now (because of the political aspects). Removing the people management leadership position then can feel like a demotion.

link