Really good presentation and article!
Being Glue (2019)
11–17 of 17 posts
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#12I haven't not seen someone be promoted because they are writing such good code despite being a poor communicator. Glue people get promoted
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#13Imagine, your company has hired you as an engineer to design software systems & write code. Your performance at the company is measured by your ability to design software systems & write code. You've decided to take on the job of a project manager instead and not write code. Your contributions might be valuable, but why would you get promoted as an engineer?
On the contrary, once upper management realise that your projects are succeeding because you’re doing all the mysterious ‘other stuff’ that nobody else on the team even knows needs doing, you can never be promoted. They want those projects to succeed, after all.
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say this, but the role of staff+ engineers often is being a project manager. Not all the time, but at least sometimes. The difference in responsibilities between levels is somewhat to blame for this. If you are at a particular level doing this kind of project management work is what looks good on a promo packet, because it's cross-functional and you're leading a bunch of people, etc. But if you're not at that lev…
Sure, some amount of project management type work is expected when you're an engineer at a higher level (senior, staff, principal, etc). However, that's not the entire role. Before you reach those levels you should have a deep technical knowledge of how to write code and design systems. If you don't have those fundamental skills, then you're not going to make a good engineer at higher levels. If you do have those fun…
> If you do have those fundamental skills, but have never demonstrated them because you're too busy doing project management work, then why would anyone believe that you have those skills? Demonstrate them somehow
This is the whole problem. You can have the technical chops to back up your project management work but if you have not "demonstrated" them then it's as though they don't exist.
It's relatively difficult to "demonstrate" your skills the way people want them to be demonstrated in a corporate environment unless you have a very supportive manager who helps you write your promo packet and goes in to bat for you.
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#15Some great points in the article. I think gaining recognition for acting in your team's best interests and long term efficiency is even harder in bigger companies (like Squarespace in this article). People won't understand why you're committing to such endeavours as an IC, even if you're past the senior level. There are now more and more cross functional roles that would better fit this sort of skillset, for example…
> Moving to a startup could also help as you'd be able to drive alignment quicker with these skills and still get to dive in more technical tasks.
Careful here. A lot of small startups have an element of "my company, my way" from the founders (for good reasons, at times) and thinking you will "drive alignment" maybe be a recipe for frustration and burnout.
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#16Some great points in the article. I think gaining recognition for acting in your team's best interests and long term efficiency is even harder in bigger companies (like Squarespace in this article). People won't understand why you're committing to such endeavours as an IC, even if you're past the senior level. There are now more and more cross functional roles that would better fit this sort of skillset, for example…
> Moving to a startup could also help as you'd be able to drive alignment quicker with these skills and still get to dive in more technical tasks. Careful here. A lot of small startups have an element of "my company, my way" from the founders (for good reasons, at times) and thinking you will "drive alignment" maybe be a recipe for frustration and burnout.
Very true
Re: Being Glue (2019)
#17I remember one client saying to me something like "So and so does a lot of X, and such and such is really churning out Y. What exactly would you say your focus is in this project?" At the time I gave a very unsatisfactory answer, but looking back, a lot of what I was doing was glue work and working across the stack. This looks like a great resource to help me next time I have trouble articulating such things.