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This flips your question on its head a bit, but are you going into this offer excited to try and get the teams to work better together, or because you want a ro
by sailfast 10y ago
This flips your question on its head a bit, but are you going into this offer excited to try and get the teams to work better together, or because you want a role leading teams that are already working really well?
If you expect to inherit fully functional teams I think you're probably not going to enjoy the gig. If, however, you're excited about the chance to get a group of developers firing on all cylinders again then perhaps this is the right job for you.
If you want to ask a question, I'd ask what challenge they have experienced to date linking these teams together to get them working well. What specific things do they expect you to try and fix and improve, etc. I'd also ask how, as leaders at the company, they stay aware of how things are going, touchpoints, etc.
Key symptom for a lot of issues at a company tends to be a lack of transparency (at least this has been my experience). Asking questions that get to employee engagement, involvement, and feedback processes can be good signals of transparency or potential issues.
- eric-hu 10y agoHonest question, do you know many people who enjoy jumping into dysfunction and making it better?
- sailfast 10y agoStraight-up enjoyment? Definitely harder to find, though I think it's an important quality in a turnaround manager. You have to at least be willing to do some of that if you're an outside hire. Mainly, the OPs job sounds like it will be a cleanup / turnaround role since the past person was dismissed for poor communication and has a globally distributed team (remote teams are hard enough to manage even with good communication). The question asked by the OP indicates that they would not necessarily enjoy some dysfunction among the development teams so... maybe not the best fit unless they're willing to do some repair work. I'd be more worried about detecting dysfunction from management than from the teams that I would be leading. I know I will have the option to re-shape the team, but I will be dependent on support from management without much leverage there. Sounded like the OP knew the managers already and trusted them so not as big an issue for the OP.
- napoleond 10y agoI'm not the parent, but yes those people definitely exist. They enjoy improving human systems the same way hackers enjoy building things. And they get paid well for it.
- eric-hu 10y agoTo me, it seems more analogous to coders who go into legacy spaghetti code repos to clean them up. I enjoyed establishing process with a team and iterating on it with a mostly functional team. I don't really care to get between drama and infighting, but I certainly see the value.
- ktRolster 10y agodo you know many people who enjoy jumping into dysfunction and making it better? It's as much fun as solving any problem. And even more fun if you get paid extra for it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 10y agoIf fixing that is your core skill, I expect you'd look for that kind of job.
- xhedley 10y agoI'm a product lead not a technical lead, but in that domain I prefer roles where the situation is dysfunctional. If everything is working well enough then management don't want a troubleshooter. If things are broken then there's a challenge in figuring out what's wrong, who needs to talk to who, who is making the situation worse ...
- mud_dauber 10y agoI'm also a product lead. Plus, I've seen enough problem organizations over the years to yearn for a fixer-upper opportunity. It's an art.
- mud_dauber 10y agoI really like this approach - because I am indeed viewing this as a turnaround opportunity.