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On Becoming a VP of Engineering

honeycomb.io

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Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#151

Post by jselysianeagle »

brewdad wrote: post #123
lapcat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And to get to VP, even in a small organisation, you certainly need competence. I don't know if I agree with that. Anyway, competence comes at various levels.

You can get to VP without competence. Staying there requires it. You don't necessarily have to be the most competent person possible but there is a floor.

So from what I've seen and learned, there's definitely a difference between being truly smart/visionary/creative etc vs just being "not dumb". And while I suppose the latter could also be deemed a kind of competence, I think what the others are driving at boils down to this - people with connections or just a knack for politics and schmoozing can get pretty far ahead and many underlings often mistake their rise for some sort of amazing technical or creative ability.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#152

Post by bamfly »

9659 wrote: post #95
Swizec wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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 sci…

US Military absolutely teaches "servant leadership". And "Do what I say leadership" at other times.

My outsider perspective is that the military trains its members in leadership skills[1] at practically every level, because modern great-power approaches to warfare rely on heavy devolution of decision-making and leadership such that leadership is a regular component of the job at all but (perhaps) the very lowest ranks, and because almost anyone might end up needing to act as a leader, situationally, even if they ordinarily don't do much of that.

(though, of course, an order's still an order—but, even there, their training in proper order-crafting focuses heavily on not making orders any more restrictive than necessary, so those receiving them have as much flexibility as possible to achieve the objective as they see fit—what you want, not how to do it, that kind of thing)

[1] Hey, look, training people, what a crazy idea, eh, corporate America? And not just with snake-oil bullshit seminars or online "courses" (videos with quizzes anyone with two functioning brain cells could have aced without watching the videos) or other box-checking crap that passes for training in the corporate world—actual training.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#153

Post by lapcat »

ddq wrote: post #146
lapcat wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Once attuned to unjust or involuntary hierarchies, one realizes their ubiquity in modern society. Hierarchy and bureaucracy are useful and efficient, but while the imagined ideal is a meritocratic Star Trek bridge crew, they are commonly economically coercive, Kafkaesque, nepotistic, oligarchic power structures that serve those at the top rather than serving the systems’ purported ends. At least that’s my worldview,…

> the imagined ideal is a meritocratic Star Trek bridge crew

Incidentally, this is why The Wrath of Khan was so great, because it showed that Kirk was fallible in a number of ways. He messed up by leaving Khan on Ceti Alpha V, he messed up by ignoring Saavik citing regulations to raise shields, he was embarrassed to appear fallible by putting on glasses to read, he admitted to cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test, and only Spock's sacrifice saved them all from destruction.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#154

Post by zer8k »

packetslave wrote: post #106
zer8k wrote: post #104

> Nonetheless, I think we were all glad we went through this process. Above a certain level, leadership promotions have to be about what the company needs, not the individual, and it was valuable to imagine together what a great VP of Engineering for Honeycomb might look like. Of course the author talks about it like he was plucked from the heavens to get the position. I would too. The reality is none of the "what I…

Interesting that you (and others in this thread) automatically assume the author is a "he"

Of course this is likely an oversight of fast typing that is getting me downvoted.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#155

Post by zer8k »

ska wrote: post #137
zer8k wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After a while you merit your position by not running the company into the ground, but instead making it succeed. Apparently whoever wrote this has not worked at a somewhat stable company. C-levels get a lot of undeserved respect when in fact usually they're protected by a very (understandably) conservative board. The board will choose inaction over action in almost every case unless the failure is so bad it's publi…

> The actual people who succeed by not running the company in the ground are the engineers This typically just isn't close to true. If you are in a tech based business, having competent engineering is table stakes, but that's not enough by itself.

If the CEO walks the company can very reasonably find another stiff in a suit that can run the show. Maybe at a slightly slower or more conservative pace but life moves on. If 80% of the engineering team walks your company catches fire and burns to the ground. The greatest case study we've seen is Twitter. Everything above contributor level is some varying degree of spreadsheet monkeying. Anyone with 20 years of running a business can be dropped into this post-MBA corporate world and do great.

I am an engineer. Some of what I say is hubris about it. But I think its neither controversial nor false that engineers hold all of the power in a tech company. The skill gap is not a bijection. You can teach most engineers to sell, lead, and plan. You cannot teach most executives to write even half competent software. Outside of the scrappiest start ups VPs of engineering I have reported to generally have been out of engineering for a long time. It's strange to ascribe such a title to someone so out of touch with their field.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#156

Post by ddq »

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…

> 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?

This is a venture capitalist-minded audience, so “when in Rome”. Text often lacks important tone so try reading the comment aloud and add an air of disgust when you encounter a word that you interpret as loaded with implication.

That critique doesn’t really hold up or add value to the discussion. Its thesis resembles “yet you participate in society, curious” and bad-faith tone policing, but that’s just my interpretation. Could just be miscommunication or a differing moral framework.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#157

Post by indymike »

marcinzm wrote: post #74
indymike wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Until recently the main thing you needed to be good at is getting more VC money It's always better to be getting money by selling to customers. It's amazing how well that works and how much less capital you need to grow.

If your goal is to make a lot of money (not just some money) then using VC money to get there is a very reasonable play. Just siphoning some money from later rounds could give you tens of millions. You don't even need to succeed after that as a business. The goal for many founders isn't to run a long term business but to make money.

> You don't even need to succeed after that as a business. The goal for many founders isn't to run a long term business but to make money.

Getting a big exit is my goal as a founder. Investor capital is spent to get to that exit. People who have the goal of making money off investors make self-enriching, bad for the company decisions.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#158

Post by morgante »

jt2190 wrote: post #144
morgante wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever started a company? > The company founders suddenly made it to the top at the very beginning without any of that, without "deserving" anything. When they started, they weren't at the "top" of anything . It's not like someone just handed them the CEO title of a successful firm. Building a company from scratch is way more work than climbing a corporate hierarchy.

I’m not sure what you’re taking issue with, as that’s his point: If the founder did not require someone else’s “approval” to take the position of CEO, why should, say, a developer believe that they need “approval” from their organization to think that they’re senior-level? It’s giving the hierarchy above way too much control of your career.

You don't need anyone's approval to decide to call yourself a "senior" developer (even if nobody else agrees).

Just like with founders: the market is the ultimate arbiter. If you call yourself a senior developer, but can't perform as one, the market will correct your misconception—just like it knocks down incorrect founders.

OP is the one obsesses with hierarchy.

The part that's ridiculous is to claim that the founders of successful companies haven't earned their position. Charity has absolutely demonstrated a lot of merit to get Honeycomb to where it is.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#159

Post by dasil003 »

bradlys wrote: post #134
dasil003 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In my experience, this "avoiding the Peter Principle" is rare for people who are founders/friends-of-founders. I think that's where the complaint comes from. It's mainly that a lot of competent people get skipped because founders and friends of the founders keep just hiring their external favorites rather than promoting and rewarding people who are getting the company to where it is.

What's your sample size? I mean sure, nepotism happens, this isn't a surprise. But for competent founders, the ability to successfully execute the role at hand is the primary consideration. To be coldly rational about it: whether someone was a high performer at the previous stage or if they were a close personal friend are both irrelevant data points. The only thing that matters is can they be effective in the next stage. Obviously this is a judgement call, and founders can get it wrong (they're only human after all), but the Peter Principle is a real thing and it can be deadly when someone is promoted beyond their capabilities during hypergrowth. This can be a very tough pill to swallow for someone who got the company where it is, but it doesn't make it less true.

Re: On Becoming a VP of Engineering

#160

Post by marcosdumay »

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,…

> As far as I've seen, corporate ladder climbing is essentially political.

At a minimum, it's a kind of specialization that measures a different kind of qualification then expected from ICs.

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