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I'm actually one of those "elusive" people you seem to be searching for. My day job is as a tech lead for an ed tech company (we are in the same industry). I fi

I'm actually one of those "elusive" people you seem to be searching for. My day job is as a tech lead for an ed tech company (we are in the same industry). I fit all of your requirements and more. But to be honest, the blog post made my spidey sense tingle. I know hiring is hard (I'm in charge of hiring), and that you will get 99 "junior" programmers for every "senior" one. Its all part of the process. What has worked for me is to focus on creating an environment to attract other experienced people. Its not easy! But so worth it. This is a not a criticism. More of a call to read your blog post as an outsider. How would someone who doesn't know about 2U feel after reading it? Right now, it feels a bit off. Not sure why. I hope this only helps in your hiring process and not taken as an insult. It sure isn't. :) PS. I will be at ISTE 2016. Email me if you want to meet up there. It would be nice to learn more about what you do in 2U.

keyanp 10y ago
@asmiuvPR, thanks for putting into words just what I was feeling :)
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  Thank you. I was on the fence about commenting because I did not want to invite trolls to comment. What the poster above is going through is very normal when hiring (more so when hiring programmers). Lord knows I've often felt very frustrated with the process. Ultimately, it forces you to grow as a lead.
  - obiefernandez 10y ago
    Great feedback, everyone... thank you very much.
SmellTheGlove 10y ago
I agree with you. There wasn't anything in that blog post that I hadn't thought before - but a lot of those are thoughts I keep internal to my management peers here, and then work through the issues to identify just what might be holding us back from acquiring the talent we want. The other piece I see is very frequent among smaller companies, maybe less so in the very large orgs that I've spent my career in: The hands on Director role. I've been there, done that, and can tell you it's very far from optimal. I'll use myself as an example - I've managed anywhere from a single team of 5 in FinTech to my current 3 Scrums (8 people per) in Data Engineering. When I had the team of 5, the expectation was that I'd be very hands on in addition to managing and developing people. It was natural, I had leadership skills and I also happened to be the best programmer of the bunch. The problem was that there were not enough hours in the day to take on individual work and also do a respectable job of coaching/teaching/mentoring junior engineers. I sure could crush the hard problems, and depending on who you asked, that was often my #1 priority - but my real objective that I walked in with was to teach other people how to think about the hard problems so that they could crush them like I could. My management, however, wanted me to clear roadblocks as an engineer and not as a coach. And this, in a nutshell, happens more or less everywhere that I've seen the hands on Director role. My advice to any startup is to decide early - is your Director going to be a coach and manager, or is he (or she) going to be your Super Senior Engineer? You probably feel like you want both, but the budget says you can only hire one. Figure out which one you need more and fill that role. Fill the other one later when you have the money. It may seem like you're hiring someone who doesn't "do" anything if you go the coach and manager route, but I fully assure you that making other people better at what they do is a full time job and then some. To be clear, I'm not talking about a resource manager here, but someone who can actually make good people better at what they do. That is what a Director of Engineering should be doing, IMHO. I'll leave it to anyone else evaluating me as to whether I'm the elusive engineering director type or not, and don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be the highest paid engineer in the bunch if that's what the role really is. But you do reach a ceiling quickly on what one person can accomplish, and if you're going to throw out Director money to me (or someone else), your money is probably better spent letting me (or someone else) develop those junior engineers.
- asimuvPR 10y ago
  To bad this wonderful piece of wisdom is hidden I'm this thread. If you have a blog it might be a good idea to post it there. It's too good to let it go unnoticed. :)

keyanp 10y ago

@asmiuvPR, thanks for putting into words just what I was feeling :)

asimuvPR 10y ago
Thank you. I was on the fence about commenting because I did not want to invite trolls to comment. What the poster above is going through is very normal when hiring (more so when hiring programmers). Lord knows I've often felt very frustrated with the process. Ultimately, it forces you to grow as a lead.
- obiefernandez 10y ago
  Great feedback, everyone... thank you very much.

SmellTheGlove 10y ago

I agree with you. There wasn't anything in that blog post that I hadn't thought before - but a lot of those are thoughts I keep internal to my management peers here, and then work through the issues to identify just what might be holding us back from acquiring the talent we want. The other piece I see is very frequent among smaller companies, maybe less so in the very large orgs that I've spent my career in: The hands on Director role. I've been there, done that, and can tell you it's very far from optimal. I'll use myself as an example - I've managed anywhere from a single team of 5 in FinTech to my current 3 Scrums (8 people per) in Data Engineering. When I had the team of 5, the expectation was that I'd be very hands on in addition to managing and developing people. It was natural, I had leadership skills and I also happened to be the best programmer of the bunch. The problem was that there were not enough hours in the day to take on individual work and also do a respectable job of coaching/teaching/mentoring junior engineers. I sure could crush the hard problems, and depending on who you asked, that was often my #1 priority - but my real objective that I walked in with was to teach other people how to think about the hard problems so that they could crush them like I could. My management, however, wanted me to clear roadblocks as an engineer and not as a coach. And this, in a nutshell, happens more or less everywhere that I've seen the hands on Director role. My advice to any startup is to decide early - is your Director going to be a coach and manager, or is he (or she) going to be your Super Senior Engineer? You probably feel like you want both, but the budget says you can only hire one. Figure out which one you need more and fill that role. Fill the other one later when you have the money. It may seem like you're hiring someone who doesn't "do" anything if you go the coach and manager route, but I fully assure you that making other people better at what they do is a full time job and then some. To be clear, I'm not talking about a resource manager here, but someone who can actually make good people better at what they do. That is what a Director of Engineering should be doing, IMHO. I'll leave it to anyone else evaluating me as to whether I'm the elusive engineering director type or not, and don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be the highest paid engineer in the bunch if that's what the role really is. But you do reach a ceiling quickly on what one person can accomplish, and if you're going to throw out Director money to me (or someone else), your money is probably better spent letting me (or someone else) develop those junior engineers.

asimuvPR 10y ago
To bad this wonderful piece of wisdom is hidden I'm this thread. If you have a blog it might be a good idea to post it there. It's too good to let it go unnoticed. :)