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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#81

Post by lapcat »

lordofmoria wrote: post #72
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,…

You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top. I’m an execution through and through guy, but I learned early on that my co-founder’s ideal traits are the opposite of mine, and that’s what you’re seeing here. What’s being described is a classic Visionary - spontaneous, jumps around and can be distracting, yes - but crucially, is also an amazing innovator and motivat…

> You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top.

I'm not forgetting. And I'm not claiming that this promotion was a mistake. I am raising questions about the narrative that the author is telling/selling. Consider how you'll likely not see such a long-winded post from company founders explaining in detail why they chose themselves for their own jobs. They founded a company because they wanted to, and they didn't care whether they had exactly the right experience and qualifications.

The narrative is about slowly making your way up the corporate ranks, gaining experience, working hard, achieving qualifications, and deserving your promotion. The author feels that this kind of story is encouraging, uplifting, that is shows you too can make it to the top, but I actually think it's kind of a disservice, an attitude that can hold people back. The company founders suddenly made it to the top at the very beginning without any of that, without "deserving" anything. If you think you have to "earn" your position, you've already bought into the myth of the hierarchy. The best reason to be ambitious is the realization that the people above you are just as flawed as you are.

If anything, competence is often overlooked in promotions. For example, from the article: "I didn’t get promoted right then (it wasn’t the right time) but we also stopped looking for an external hire." Why wasn't it the right time?

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#83

Post by nickdothutton »

lordofmoria wrote: post #72
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,…

You’re forgetting that companies need both Visionary AND Execution focused leaders at the very top. I’m an execution through and through guy, but I learned early on that my co-founder’s ideal traits are the opposite of mine, and that’s what you’re seeing here. What’s being described is a classic Visionary - spontaneous, jumps around and can be distracting, yes - but crucially, is also an amazing innovator and motivat…

I'd second this, if it helps... think of the visionary as the "spiritual leader". This framing echoes many political and civic movements. The execution specialist is often necessarily a very different person to the spiritual/visionary leader. In the company I got my start in many years ago, it quickly became essential that the founding CEO move to spiritual leader, while we found an execution guy from outside to make the machine run smoothly. Couldn't have done it without both of them.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#84

Post by Swizec »

piva00 wrote: post #47
chadash wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cul…

> - USA /../ > - Sweden /../

In my observation, USA is a lot more like your description of Sweden. I think this came with the popularity of servant leadership[1]. Even the military (in some branches?) is aiming for sharing goals instead of orders and promoting self-organizing teams because hierarchies don’t scale. At least according to books like It’s Your Ship and Extreme Ownership.

The realization in management science of the past ~20 years has been that people only do things when they understand the goal and agree with the plan. They also need leeway to change the plan if it isn’t working.

This future is of course not equally distributed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_leadership

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#85

Post by gtirloni »

OJFord wrote: post #76
gtirloni wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why you ask? I'm not saying the employees were wrong to think/do whatever they thought/did.

I thought you were implying it's a failing of grouchy employees ('refuse to adapt') - I just think that might be sometimes hypocritical as companies love to talk about their culture etc., if you change what that is (and previously talked about it) then you should expect some negative reaction to it, and if you don't (or talk about how you're keeping it the same) then it seems unfair to criticise someone saying it's c…

Sorry, I should have been clearer.

I was replying to the point where OP says companies end up hiring externally when they grow and need new layers/functions.

Most of the time (in my experience), it's not that employees want to take those new jobs but upper management fails to promote them and more that the company is becoming something they don't like (which makes sense, otherwise they wouldn't have joined a startup if they prefer big corps)... and they don't want to adapt.

It's all perfectly fine, IMHO. People move on. Companies move on. Some people will adapt (because they like the new reality, or they need to like it, or..) and others won't. And by adapting I'm not saying become "better" but different only.

I think the worst case is when both parties don't realize it and don't take action. Then you get upper management hiring externally, saying the employees that helped the company grow are bad employees, etc. And the initial employees saying upper management is clueless, sold out, lost their way, betrayed the culture, etc.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#86

Post by dasil003 »

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…

Startups scale faster than management skill sets. Being able to manage a team of 10 doesn’t translate to managing an of org of 100, let alone 1000. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on in your case, but it’s a legit reason in some cases: avoiding the Peter Principle.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#87

Post by no_wizard »

starcraft2wol wrote: post #43
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.

Perhaps, but never discount someones background. His parents were successful executives and there were plenty of opportunities for him to be exposed to executive leadership (via Harvard, familial connections etc)

Not like he went from nobody to somebody here, his background certainly allowed exposure to things many others would not have.

I honestly would put Steve Jobs as the best example you can find of someone who went from "nobody" to CEO

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#89

Post by throwawaythekey »

gtirloni wrote: post #11
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.

I've become that person. In small teams a lot of magic happens and the feeling is somewhat addictive. I don't think it's wrong to long for times when the company had more output, at a higher quality, while using fewer resources. The past will never repeat itself but it seems meek to not attempt to preserve the good parts.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#90

Post by [deleted] »

simonswords82 wrote: post #69
smallerfish wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Being good creates the luck. I'm not saying it does not happen the other way around but it's fantastically rare to just "luck out" your way in to success. Product/market fit doesn't fall out of the sky either. It's created by being good.

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