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What does a Director of Engineering do?

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Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#31

Post by bluGill »

Traster wrote: post #28
lliamander wrote: post #23

> I used to think hard work leads to promotion. This is because I didn't understand why different positions exist outside of a title change. Now I see things a bit differently. If an individual on my team is working hard, I'm going to keep them where they are because they're getting the job done. Rather, I'm looking to elevate my 10x engineer - not the one that's the doing their job well but the one thats mentoring t…

I'll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they'll actually be pretty similar across different organisations. You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they're broadly comparable, and the seniority crite…

What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can't get there tell them why.

I've wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn't matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It has been hard to let go and find a path with real influence. Where I was going is one of those areas that only seen if not done. Lesson learned though : the guy who created the bad design requiring them to come in right before release and work a weekend is rewarded above the guy who wrote good code that works...

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#32

Post by JanisL »

karatestomp wrote: post #26
bobbytherobot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

There's a whole tag to handle it in HTML. Don't have to reserve it for only the first instance.

Huh neat, I didn't realize there was a HTML tag () till just now, thanks!

EDIT: Just spent the last 45 minutes adding it in on my sites in various spots, hopefully this helps the readers.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#33

Post by chrisweekly »

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...

Haha, I had a consulting client where a VP exec kept referring to "L10 meetings" (which were for the leadership group only), and the devs thought it was an attempted abbrev like "i18n" for "internationalization", or "a11y" for "accessibility".

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#34

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

bluGill wrote: post #31
Traster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they'll actually be pretty similar across different organisations. You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they're broadly comparable, and the seniority crite…

What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can't get there tell them why. I've wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn't matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It ha…

> Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go

This sounds nice, and from the perspective of the direct report, sure, this is the mindset that you want your managers to have. That said, your manager isn't necessarily incentivized by the company to optimize for this. What's best for the employee isn't necessarily what's best for the company.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#35

Post by justicezyx »

lliamander wrote: post #23

> I used to think hard work leads to promotion. This is because I didn't understand why different positions exist outside of a title change. Now I see things a bit differently. If an individual on my team is working hard, I'm going to keep them where they are because they're getting the job done. Rather, I'm looking to elevate my 10x engineer - not the one that's the doing their job well but the one thats mentoring t…

Nah, the idea that "one that's mentoring those around them to do their job well" can lead to promotion is also just an example out of many.

My experience is that the biggest promotion driver is always the product success. And the product success also vary between organizations. I've seen a huge project promoted people in the process, but in the end was entirely canceled and delivered minimal value, while the promoted folks wisely left the team. While in other places, if the product ends not getting their customers happy, execution excellence is not rewarded much.

If product success is not easy to get, the team can be very excellent, but wont have much growth space in seniority. That has nothing to do with their personal skills etc.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#36

Post by alexandercrohde »

Traster wrote: post #28
lliamander wrote: post #23

> I used to think hard work leads to promotion. This is because I didn't understand why different positions exist outside of a title change. Now I see things a bit differently. If an individual on my team is working hard, I'm going to keep them where they are because they're getting the job done. Rather, I'm looking to elevate my 10x engineer - not the one that's the doing their job well but the one thats mentoring t…

I'll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they'll actually be pretty similar across different organisations. You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they're broadly comparable, and the seniority crite…

Meh, it's been my experience that those charts are borderline worthless. The truth is promotions are probably only fractionally about performance. A lot of it is budget, creating pr/"buzz" [even if it's proportional to impact], did you happen to be on a revenue-generating team, is there any political risk to promoting you (e.g. would you say the type of things I'm saying right now?).

Maybe google or something is different (and I doubt it), but that's less than 1% of engineers.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#37

Post by alexandercrohde »

mandelbrotwurst wrote: post #34
bluGill wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can't get there tell them why. I've wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn't matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It ha…

> Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go This sounds nice, and from the perspective of the direct report, sure, this is the mindset that you want your managers to have. That said, your manager isn't necessarily incentivized by the company to optimize for this. What's best for the employee isn't necessarily what's best for the company.

Which is why employees are disincentivized from trusting those managers.

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#38

Post by kbaker »

chrisweekly wrote: post #33
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...

Haha, I had a consulting client where a VP exec kept referring to "L10 meetings" (which were for the leadership group only), and the devs thought it was an attempted abbrev like "i18n" for "internationalization", or "a11y" for "accessibility".

Yeah, L10n actually does stand for localization.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_local...)

Re: What does a Director of Engineering do?

#40

Post by nogabebop23 »

bluGill wrote: post #31
Traster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they'll actually be pretty similar across different organisations. You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they're broadly comparable, and the seniority crite…

What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can't get there tell them why. I've wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn't matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It ha…

I tell my developers this repeatedly, in the form of "making yourself 10% better is not as good as making everyone you work with 1% better".

A few get it and shift towards a "rising tide floats all boats" mentality, the rest do nothing and are perfectly adequate, or agree with me then turn back to solely focusing on self-improvement.

The kicker? That 1% universal imporvement is soooo much easier than 10% or even 5% personal improvement. You can help your team become more effective just by (1) commiting to the act of (2) giving a sh!t.

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