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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#41

Post by yard2010 »

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,…

Yes. This hit right in them feels. Our world is a lie and it's full of people who believe the opposite and go out of their way to prove you wrong

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#42

Post by koheripbal »

marcinzm wrote: post #36
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…

>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'r…

Most startups fail.

You need to be good to succeed.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#43

Post by starcraft2wol »

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,…

Even though currently less popular, I think Zuckerberg is a great example of this. He went from a college kid to a top 20 CEO with no formal training, except running his company.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#44

Post by ysavir »

koheripbal wrote: post #42
marcinzm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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'r…

Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.

You need to be good enough to succeed. People needn't go beyond that to maintain a status quo.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#46

Post by switch007 »

kasey_junk wrote: post #40
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…

> 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

That’s just lip service.

Who goes to the annual offsite, the quarterly planning, manages or sets the budget, decides on initiatives. Not the ICs

Why in companies that espouse this servant leadership nonsense does it take 3 months to get approval for a new monitor?

This whole “servant leadership” crap is just PR. Every year there is a new orange coloured book about Leadership and some new cult-like idea filters down the layers.

But companies are the same hierarchy they have been for hundreds of years.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#47

Post by piva00 »

chadash wrote: post #31
halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Probably it's all very hierarchical but it definitely differs in level and degree between cultures.

Anecdotal examples:

- Brazil (~10 years experience): very, very hierarchical, your manager/boss is up on the totem pole, societal status, etc. In non-tech environments you can expect to be berated, chastised, and generally abused as an underling. There are good bosses, of course, but using a dumb generalisation the culture is "I'm better than you because I'm higher in the hierarchy". In the end underlings will be bad mouthing the boss at any opportunity behind the boss's back but will pay lip service in front of them, politically-heavy work environments.

- USA (limited experience ~1-2 years), very hierarchical, politically-heavy, bosses can demand stuff from you and it's expected to bow down to their whims.

- Sweden (~10 years experience): not so hierarchical, consensus-based approach for decisions, a manager is a different position (more laterally viewed than upwards), challenging bosses decisions/opinions in a respectful way is encouraged, someone higher in the hierarchy forcing underlings to their will is very badly viewed (and usually a "failure of leadership" because you couldn't convince people on your vision).

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#48

Post by smallerfish »

koheripbal wrote: post #42
marcinzm wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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'r…

Most startups fail. You need to be good to succeed.

> You need to be good to succeed.

You need to be good, somewhat lucky, and have product/market fit to succeed.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#49

Post by brandall10 »

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,…

This is all true until a board w/ a enough voting power to impact C level hiring/firing decisions is installed.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#50

Post by md_ »

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,…

Half agree.

Successful founders get to remain CEO (or CTO, or whatever). Unsuccessful ones don't: their investors push them out, or the company tanks.

Along the way to obtaining any position, there's a lot of partially correlated signals you have to send, and they're different between different paths. To become CEO at an established company, you might have to show prior experience, know how to wear a suit and tie, etc.

To become CEO of your own startup, you have to show investors or customers something else, but I'm not sure those signals are less bullshit: you might find that wearing shorts or playing League of Legends during investor calls somehow convinces people you're a super genius.

Basically, there's always an element of bullshit, because we're humans, and our judgment is tempered with all sorts of irrational biases.

I don't think that means that an essay on "what it takes to do $job" is inherently bad, though.

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