Getting things “done” in large tech companies

>The Chief of Product didn't like the optics of a non-PM being more successful than a PM in delivering work.

Its crabs all the way down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality

That is one big reason I want to remain an IC for my career. There's slightly less ego to deal with and usually more passion among people compared to management. That passion is pretty much the main thing keeping me in this career.

Trying to make it more like a checklist:

* Do the developers know what the customers want?

* Do the customers have realistic expectations?

If yes to both, then the PM in between is doing a good job. Bonus points if higher management is aware of that.

> This becomes quickly apparent in a smaller company or if you have a manager that knows what they are doing

Sounds like an unlikely problem and by then you can pull a reverse end run around your manager to their manager who doesn't know what they are doing and will believe anything the guy who worked at google says.

Most people here actually work for that guy.

> … it means delivering the kind of things that are legible to the decision-makers at the company: i.e. visible to your manager, plus 1-3 skip levels, depending on your title. The easiest way to do this is to deliver things that they already know about, such as projects that they’ve asked you to do, or incidents that are serious enough that they’re involved in them. It’s possible to make other work legible to them as well. If your work produces or saves money, that will make it immediately legible, for instance (or you could just be really convincing). By default, work you do isn’t legible: to the decision-makers, it’s generic technical nonsense. They don’t know whether it’s crucial high-impact work or pointless code reshuffling, and will tend to assume the latter.

This person understands the “business” side of the tech business. I couldn’t agree more. Where many struggle is that they can’t communicate legibly about the indirect benefits their work has for the business. The classic “refactoring” (which he mentions) is a great example.

Refactoring code has a context dependent benefit to a business. When you’re searching for product/market fit is has essentially no benefit, and then you’re Microsoft and the code is deep within Windows and affects the performance of every Win32 app it can have extreme benefits. In the end it’s all about how you relate your work to either making or saving the organization money, and doing so indirectly can be legible if you take the time to figure out how to best communicate it to the target audience (and how it can be conveyed to customers).

That’s all great but, how?

First, recognize that if you’re in the situation at the beginning of the article. A dev, banging out tasks that don’t quite move the needle or seem important towards actually achieving any milestones. It’s possible thats by design, your the random job site broom sweeper cleaning up at the end of the day (construction metaphor). It’s also likely your management/leadership is failing you. They’re failing by not prioritizing your work. You need to know what larger goals exist and are politically important to the organization and then what tasks you can do to accelerate that goal achievement. This is what your manager should be doing. If they’re not, and you just work on a random list or todos, start pushing them for prioritization in every 1 on 1 and every checkin or whatever touchpoint you have. Make sure you understand what other higher level goals the prioritized work supports so you know where to fill in gaps and can be proactive and mention when you think something is off track (eg “hey boss, I’m working on X but it seems somewhat redundant to Y, can we merge these as a cohesive solution?”)

Once you get this part down, you start learning the decision makers in the company (or the highest ones you have some access to) and you start getting their opinions on what projects are higher priority or more crucial to the business. If you can build rapport with a few of these people and make sure you’re contributions are known and appreciated towards things they find valuable and important, your career will start to progress fast(er) in almost every aspect.

When these people eventually leave for a new gig, you want to be the ones they try to poach. If they stay and get promoted, you want to be the ones they think of for their new initiatives.