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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#31

Post by chadash »

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…

You say this is an American thing. Is there a country you are thinking of that has this less engrained? My experience working with foreign cultures is often that organizations are more hierarchical, not less.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#33

Post by harrygeez »

will_gottschalk wrote: post #4

A quote really jumped out at me: > VPs of Engineering from frontend backgrounds are relatively rare, and it’s partly because the most pressing technical challenges a startup faces are often around scaling, reliability, and backend architecture. If we had been dealing with nonstop incidents, constant struggles with scaling, and major architectural challenges with our query and storage engine, someone with deeper backe…

> What I’ve noticed is that the code quality from those backend devs is quite awful

Without knowing which metrics you use to measure the code quality, my hunch says you are focusing on the wrong thing. I am a frontend engineer turned tech lead. I think we developers choose our focuses based on our personal inclinations and what we value, and usually what I would notice is people who choose frontend work have different inclinations from backend developers.

What is awful code? Is it not formatted consistently or prettily? The variables are not named descriptively? The code is not split or structured nicely? I find that frontend developers tend to judge code on superficial values.

In an organization especially an engineering focused one, people get acknowledgements by solving problems. Very often, teams can function well enough without their main frontend guy but would struggle without one let alone a few strong infra or backend engineer. That's just the reality.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#34

Post by rgavuliak »

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…

I work for a larger start up (or a scale up) that is doing decently. Majority of the top leadership was promoted from within sometimes all the way from IC to VP and I think it shows. The org would definitely benefit from someone that would have seen that level across multiple orgs.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#35

Post by mrits »

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…

You could run your company into the ground but constantly getting bailed out by investors with sunken theory syndrome.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#36

Post by marcinzm »

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…

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

That's not merit for the position but not being a five alarm dumpster fire at the position. There is a difference. As long as the company is lucky or there's enough overall competence in leadership or they hired the right employees that incompetence may not be destroy the company. That doesn't mean they're competent.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#37

Post by k__ »

manfre wrote: post #21
darkwater wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't get a cookie banner, because my browser blocks all of them.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#38

Post by wiradikusuma »

I'm a CTO of a venture-backed startup. My observations:

- Most people in high positions are smart. I put cunning in the same category :) But there are many equally smart people who are not in high positions, because..

- They don't have the chance (either by design or by choice).

- You can have a better chance by starting your own business. Nobody starts a business with the intention of getting a VP job in another company, but it's a good fallback.

- Or know the right people (networking). But this usually go in hand with the previous point.

- Or work at some prestigious company (e.g. Google), and then move to a smaller pond to become a bigger fish.

- Or be known by your boss and their boss. So that when your direct boss resigns, they know who to appoint next :)

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#39

Post by marcinzm »

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…

In my experience promoting too much from within just means all the flaws the founders had will never get better since the people who put up with them (or don't see them) got promoted. And if you're one of the few external hires who has the experience to see them you're probably in for a bad time.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#40

Post by kasey_junk »

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,…

First, I didn’t read that at all as a remark about someone’s qualifications. It seems a straightforward and friendly admission of where 2 different styles exist. Acknowledging those style differences is a _good_ and healthy thing and not a tacit appeal to hierarchy.

Second, your whole comment is littered with implicit reinforcement of the hierarchy. You use terms like underling, bosses, and equate the founding of the company with founding of a hierarchy. If you, who claim to be skeptical of the hierarchy, can’t stop doing that how can you expect those around you who are trying to model their behavior off of you?

In knowledge industries managers aren’t leaders, they are support staff. The best software managers and executives know this and do everything in their power to make it easy for the actual leaders and experts, the IC doing the work (yes including that intern you just hired) to get on with it.

But one of the support functions of the executive team is to set that expectation by example.

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