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What does a Director of Engineering do?

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Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#11

Post by shalotelli »

bojo wrote: post #9
shalotelli wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EOS is the framework my company uses to keep every department rowing in the same direction. It's been an interesting experience, especially for me with a background in engineering in learning to put my business management hat on and having to focus a lot more on non technical initiatives. You can find out more about it here if you're interested https://www.eosworldwide.com/ One of my favorites quotes in the book "The…

Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I run a small 8 person software team in a software-is-secondary business, so articles like yours are helpful for me as I discover new terms and approaches to leadership.

Definitely check out the EOS framework and also OKRs. Those are the 2 that we've tried out so far - we found OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to be a bit too aspirational for us but EOS so far has given us a toolkit to lead and navigate going from a start up to a funded high growth company. They're applicable regardless of business model and industry.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#13

Post by ttymck »

sunnyP wrote: post #6
bojo wrote: post #2

Good insights. Small nitpick, I have no idea what the terms "EOS" and "L10 meetings" mean.

EOS = Entrepreneurial Operating System https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos L10 = Level 10 Meeting https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-a-level-1...

Unless I'm missing something, the "WHAT THE HECK IS A LEVEL 10 MEETING?" post doesn't actually answer "what the heck is a level 10 meeting?".

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#14

Post by barbecue_sauce »

ttymck wrote: post #13
sunnyP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EOS = Entrepreneurial Operating System https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos L10 = Level 10 Meeting https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-a-level-1...

Unless I'm missing something, the "WHAT THE HECK IS A LEVEL 10 MEETING?" post doesn't actually answer "what the heck is a level 10 meeting?".

It looks like managerial consulting claptrap. Don't trust a methodology with an ® next to its name and an accompanying book series.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#15

Post by shalotelli »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #14
ttymck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm missing something, the "WHAT THE HECK IS A LEVEL 10 MEETING?" post doesn't actually answer "what the heck is a level 10 meeting?".

It looks like managerial consulting claptrap. Don't trust a methodology with an ® next to its name and an accompanying book series.

haha! once you get through the nonsense the concepts are actually really useful

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#16

Post by shalotelli »

ttymck wrote: post #13
sunnyP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EOS = Entrepreneurial Operating System https://www.eosworldwide.com/what-is-eos L10 = Level 10 Meeting https://www.eosworldwide.com/blog/what-the-heck-is-a-level-1...

Unless I'm missing something, the "WHAT THE HECK IS A LEVEL 10 MEETING?" post doesn't actually answer "what the heck is a level 10 meeting?".

So for me to elevate myself into focusing on whats next I have to make sure whats going on now is being taken care of. I see absolutely no value in micro management and if I don't trust my team then I've set them up wrong. BUT I still want to have a pulse check on how they're doing and what I can be doing to help them because I'm still driven by my mission to create a great engineering culture. The L10 meeting is basically a weekly 90 minute session where we go over our metrics that matter (a scorecard that we use to track system health, successful outcomes etc), set and recap any todo's that we've set for the last 7 days (and I emphasize that these are the absolutely essential things we have to get done to keep things running, not extra things on top of existing work) and then time to remove any major blockers by discussing and solving them. Overall, we need to take ourselves out of working in the business (not talking about bugs etc - we have a separate session for that) and work ON the business (infrastructure, identifying current gaps and weaknesses on our team, resourcing etc). It really helps maintain transparency all the way down and also keeps my people empowered to do what they need to do. At the end of the day, I hire smart people to solve the hard problems, not to tell them what to do.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#17

Post by shalotelli »

stuff4ben wrote: post #12

I really enjoyed this post, thanks for the writeup! Wondering if I can shoehorn some of these concepts (EOS, L10) into my dev team which is a part of a large enterprise?

It fits really well into agile because they deal with different aspects. For me it's just a way to empower my team and keep them unblocked to do what they need to do. It starts with trust and goes from there. If you know your team, you trust them and they're the right people in the right seats you know you're heading in the right direction. We've created a culture where they manage me (meaning they tell me what they need from me not the other way around) and they're accountable to each other not to me (if the DBA needs time off, he makes sure his team mates have what they need - it doesn't effect me except for tracking outputs and if I'm setting them up with what they need then this is already handled anyway). If you use some of these concepts properly success will become a side effect of having an efficient and happy team.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#18

Post by bobbytherobot »

bojo wrote: post #2

Good insights. Small nitpick, I have no idea what the terms "EOS" and "L10 meetings" mean.

Jumping on here as this is a widespread issue in tech writing.

"The first time you use an initialism or acronym in your document, the words should be written out with the short form placed in parentheses immediately after."

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#20

Post by shalotelli »

bobbytherobot wrote: post #19

I don't see "retention" of talent in here but "recruiting" is. Is your team rapidly growing, or do you have high turnover? Recuriting is a costly activity compared to retention.

Really good observation. I think retention has become a side effect of happiness, culture and efficiency. We've had low turnover so it really didn't cross my mind because I'm not actively trying to convince people to stay. My takeaway here though is to not take people for granted. Although we have regular 1-1s, sometimes people don't talk about the little things that chip away at them and become big unless they're explicitly asked.
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