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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#21

Post by manfre »

darkwater wrote: post #16
snowstormsun wrote: post #9

The cookie banner on this website is not gdpr conform.

I'm in the UE and I get an extra cookie banner (with a design not matching the website's) on top of the "standard" one. This extra banner has a "Reject all cookie" clearly visible and clickable.

It showed me the reject all on top of the accept all. Clicking reject all left me looking at the accept all banner. Only options were "accept all" or bounce.

This doesn't speak highly of their frontend team with the "I am very smart" undertone other comments mentioned.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#22

Post by a_imho »

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 is not just startups, no wonder the age old wisdom is always-be-leaving if you want to get a raise/promotion.

I think the rational is more like paying as little as possible for keeping smart people around who could outperform their title. Switching jobs has a very real cost for employees, especially in harder economic times. Some will leave nonetheless, some will quite quit but some will stick around just fine.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#23

Post by mejutoco »

eru wrote: post #18
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 pos…

I like this take. I would only change "by making it succeed" with "by not running out of money", which in my mind have slightly different connotations.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#24

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

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,…

Yep, I completely agree. A huge amount of people have been brainwashed into the American corporate chain of command and there is so much assumption that because people have X title, they're actually qualified for that title. Title inflation is everywhere and anecdotally, titles are just used as vehicles for pay increases and tenure recognition, not meritorious.

edit: didn't mean to say this is an American-specific thing :)

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#25

Post by oblio »

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've always felt that hierarchical, subservient thinking is strange

I'll tell why several reasons this happens:

1. In many cultures this beaten into kids from an early age. There is no wide range of free will, just the family/tribe/clan/group hierarchy.

2. Hierarchies are... safe. You're part of a group, you roughly know where you stand.

3. Humans are social and inherently hierarchical :-) We've been like this for possibly millions of year, you're working against lots of brain machinery trying to fight this. It's probably doable but far from easy.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#26

Post by oblio »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #24
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,…

Yep, I completely agree. A huge amount of people have been brainwashed into the American corporate chain of command and there is so much assumption that because people have X title, they're actually qualified for that title. Title inflation is everywhere and anecdotally, titles are just used as vehicles for pay increases and tenure recognition, not meritorious. edit: didn't mean to say this is an American-specific th…

> A huge amount of people have been brainwashed into the American corporate chain of command

LOL. This is not American specific in any way, lest you think the US invented the military, too :-p

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#27

Post by itsagavin »

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…

Its just HR PR forced on the poor dude. I'm a tech adjacent poor but I've seen many been forced to write something and it's always kind of like this. A bunch of people in the company will write a piece or two like this so something recent comes up in searches during campus recruiting. It serves two purposes, just the right amount of ass kissing and gassing up potential recruits.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#28

Post by joriskok1 »

mejutoco wrote: post #23
eru wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pos…

I like this take. I would only change "by making it succeed" with "by not running out of money", which in my mind have slightly different connotations.

If you look at "by making it succeed" and then you want to define what success is, then you could end up with "by not running out of money" again.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#29

Post by sublimefire »

This post is basically an example of a survivorship bias and the rationalization of it. What is missing is the statistical insight into internal moves to the VP positions vs the external ones.

I would say it is extremely hard to get an internal move to a VP position, either it is a startup or a big corp. Startups need to succeed and big corps require you to put in years and develop good political relationships.

The easiest way is to start hitting the top roles early in life and do it constantly instead of thinking to start at the bottom. If you cannot make it into the top in the existing company then build your own. If you start at the bottom then you remain there because your skills are not valuable in the top leadership roles.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#30

Post by intelVISA »

sublimefire wrote: post #29

This post is basically an example of a survivorship bias and the rationalization of it. What is missing is the statistical insight into internal moves to the VP positions vs the external ones. I would say it is extremely hard to get an internal move to a VP position, either it is a startup or a big corp. Startups need to succeed and big corps require you to put in years and develop good political relationships. The e…

Unfortunately true, one should apply this mindset everywhere.

e.g. don't settle for Js roles if you want to excel you have to push yourself into competitive spaces and write cursed code in OCaml to truly be a Good Programmer

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