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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#11

Post by gtirloni »

gampleman wrote: post #7

> If I went looking for another startup to join at some point in the future, I would specifically look for an exec team or founding team that could cite examples of building up high performers for internal promotions — and swiftly recognizing and rewarding those already having impact outside of their role-defined scope. Yeah in my experience this seems very rare. The default in most start ups I've seen is that when a…

Something I've seen countless times is the initial employees complaining that the company "is not what it used to be" when it grows to a certain level and, in my experience, they refuse to adapt and leave or are fired.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#12

Post by afro88 »

yawnxyz wrote: post #6

> While Charity has deep experience in the domains of infrastructure & operations, databases, and backend engineering, I come originally from design, frontend, and product engineering, and I take a particular joy in collaborating with product management and ux design. I had trouble figuring what they actually did, and what they currently do in their VP role. There's a lot of lip service, but it's not entirely clear w…

I had a similar impression. I also thought as you move into executive leadership things get much more strategic and you're rarely the one executing. But they list out lots of tactical experience and qualities that they say make them a good VP.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#15

Post by lapcat »

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position.

I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company, and this is true of anyone who started their own companies, including the ones that are now BigCos. Founders don't need any specific qualifications or characteristics to merit their positions. They choose themselves for leadership, and then they choose their friends as the first employees. Only much later does hiring become formalized. No matter how much you want to believe that hierarchy is a "meritocracy", the founding of the hierarchy was undoubtedly chaos. Chaos is a ladder. ;-)

I've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange, and I honestly never considered my former bosses to be "better" than me. As far as I've seen, corporate ladder climbing is essentially political. This post reminds me a lot of the endless series of essays about what makes a "senior engineer". These are all written by people whose minds have been thoroughly corporatized, true believers in the hierarchy with an inner need to justify it.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#17

Post by vrc »

gampleman wrote: post #7

> If I went looking for another startup to join at some point in the future, I would specifically look for an exec team or founding team that could cite examples of building up high performers for internal promotions — and swiftly recognizing and rewarding those already having impact outside of their role-defined scope. Yeah in my experience this seems very rare. The default in most start ups I've seen is that when a…

It’s usually not the founders strong suit to grow talent, so they farm that out to other companies and hire the growers. That’s been my experience. Where it misses is that most other companies or managers can’t actually nurture talent.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#18

Post by eru »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…

> I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company, and this is true of anyone who started their own companies, including the ones that are now BigCos. Founders don't need any specific qualifications or characteristics to merit their positions.

If you are involved in starting a company, you _get_ the position of CEO, CTO, etc essentially arbitrarily.

That's initially.

After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed.

Often, that's a much more honest and brutal way of measuring merit, than any evaluation.

Big companies need the evaluation, because eg Google is not going to go bankrupt, if they have one lazy and incompetent VP.

Compare https://gwern.net/backstop

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#20

Post by [deleted] »

lapcat wrote: post #15

I found this part amusing: "Charity [company founder] has a more intuitive, spontaneous style, often shines brightest in a crisis, is allergic to checklists". It looks like an almost inadvertent admission. In other words, the founder doesn't have the qualifications or characteristics that the underlings assume they need to be in a leadership position. I automatically become CEO, CTO, etc., by starting my own company,…

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