12 ms·

In my experience, many companies legitimately don't really know what to do with very senior engineering staff. And how many distinguished engineers or principal

by nilkn 7y ago

In my experience, many companies legitimately don't really know what to do with very senior engineering staff. And how many distinguished engineers or principal engineers or technical fellows do you really need for your relatively straightforward technical challenges anyway? The IC track often fails to work in practice for the simple reason that technical work at an extremely high level is just not needed at many companies as much as engineers want to believe. Very senior ICs are also difficult to manage in the sense that the more you pin them down to specific work or projects the less you benefit from their skills. But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
It would probably work if the people managers stayed out of the technical side but in reality most managers like to make technical decisions so there is not much space for senior engineers.
- nilkn 7y ago
  It's questionable to me whether an engineering manager can stay out of the technical side completely and actually be competent at their job. I think many non-managers underestimate how technical engineering management actually is. You often have to have a solid understanding of a very wide swathe of the organization's technology, including services whose code you haven't even had a chance to work on. In some ways it's not all that different from some of the expectations for very senior IC roles.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    Managers don't need to do that however someone needs to attend organizational meetings and deal will all the inter-team semi-technical stuff that keeps a company running. That person will tend to be involved in technical decisions to the extent that they have organizational knowledge and influence. You can have ICs do that however most would prefer a root canal and many lack of the soft skills for it.
  - sunaurus 7y ago
    I always take it as a red flag when a manager wants to be responsible for technical decisions. The best managers I've worked with have always made it their mission to serve technical teams by removing obstacles and making sure that the specialists have everything they need in order to create a high quality product. Managers who try to babysit developers and tell them how to do their jobs tend to just slow things down and lead to lower quality results.
    - nilkn 7y ago
      I think that being involved in the technical side and "babysitting developers" are two very different ideas that have little to nothing to do with each other. > The best managers I've worked with have always made it their mission to serve technical teams by removing obstacles and making sure that the specialists have everything they need in order to create a high quality product. I think you're underestimating the degree to which doing this requires a solid technical understanding when there are dozens of teams involved and interacting with each other. In order for an engineering manager to bring their team(s) a clear plan of what needs to be done with few blockers or obstacles in the way, often a lot of technical planning with other groups has to precede that. As always, management done right is the sort of management you don't notice -- but that doesn't mean a ton of work isn't happening behind the scenes to make things very organized and clear for individual developers. You could have ICs do that, but they wouldn't be writing much if any code, and they probably wouldn't want to anyway.
      - tannerc 7y ago
        Isn't what you're describing precisely what senior ICs should be doing more of? I agree with OP, the purpose of a manager isn't to manage the technical side of things but rather the people side. It's why they have direct rapports: to manage the people. A better use of the IC's time is to unblock them so they can meet with stakeholders and develop a rich understanding of the work in order to do it most effectively. In trying to "shield" the IC from developing an understanding of the landscape they'll be working on, the manager may accidentally be preventing the IC from getting the information they actually need to do their job well.
baron_harkonnen 7y ago
My experience has been that the value of very senior technical staff is not that they solve "extremely high level" technical problems but they are very easily able to see how what appears to be a complex problem is isomorphic to a much simpler, easy to solve problem. The difference between expert and advanced/intermediate technical staff is that the advanced engineer has an understanding of complex solution and mistakenly tries to apply them everywhere, so the net effect is to increase complexity. The expert typically sees simple solutions and method of resolving complexity and has a net effect of reducing overall system complexity. Believing that the value add of experienced technical staff is to only solve really hard problem is likely caused by having too many advanced/intermediate people playing the role of experienced technical leads. All of the great technical team member I worked with always make call solutions simpler and easier to implement by knowing exactly what doesn't need to be done and what is essential.
- nilkn 7y ago
  The fact that folks can't even agree on what constitutes a very senior IC is definitely part of the problem. I would consider what you describe here -- reducing complexity as opposed to increasing it -- a requirement of any senior engineer. I don't see this as the hallmark of a principal or distinguished engineer but rather one of the basic differences between a developer and a senior developer.
  - cpitman 7y ago
    As my employer has tried to define the principal IC roles, I've actually seen the perceived qualifications of the original roles go down. IE, what would have been consider senior qualities are now principal qualities, and seniors need supervision. I believe it extends from the same root cause: not knowing how to get value out of a more senior role.
    - Normal_gaussian 7y ago
      I had senior in my title at my previous organisation. Something I found hilarious given my years. The reasoning seemed to be autonomy. Until they hired people who were senior by age but not autonomous. Engineering titles are a mess and it causes real problems when moving to another organisation.
Spooky23 7y ago
I'd say that 80% of the time, the IC track is bad for the ambitious, non-consulting engineer ultimately, unless your plan is to move around alot, which is a strategy that gets riskier as you get older and better compensated. Even for the consultant, the path to growth is... hiring people and leveraging their labors! End of the day, the size of your tribe or budget is a physical manifestation of your power in an organization. Power is how you get stuff done -- all of the right answers don't matter if you cannot realize the outcome. IMO, it's critical to grow as an engineer to be able to get others aligned to whatever task is at hand. My career is very much in the applied space -- my perspective is someone delivering solutions, not inventing tech. It may be different for different disciplines/scopes.
- pm90 7y ago
  This is an excellent point. About 80% of the time, this is how it plays out in most larger orgs. The interesting thing is what happens in mid size to smaller companies, where organization structures are not as well defined. You still need people here, however, if you know the stack very well or are a proficient IC, you can make contributions that can have a significant impact on the org, and gain the trust and allegiance of many engineers, albeit informally. I've seen this happen a lot. A senior engineer will either create or integrate a new tool or process which makes life easier for other teams. They are grateful to the person and are much more willing to hear the engineer out for future designs and projects. All that to say... just having a title doesn't get you anywhere. You have to build trust by delivering value, however incrementally. Maybe this is really trivial stuff, IDK.
  - vkou 7y ago
    You're not making a great case for senior ICs being impactful. I mean, what you described is one way to deliver senior-level impact for a team. However, this has a very important problem. Every time you join a team, you have to build up this rapport from scratch. If you switch jobs every few years, you'll find half your professional time consisting of busting your ass to build up rapport, only to have to start from zero at the next job. When you're hired as a manager, you don't need to do (this kind of) rapport building. You just tell people what to do, and they will build it.
inerte 7y ago
When I was an IC wanting to be promoted ASAP I kept hearing from management "We need to see if the org needs this [particular high level] role" Took me a while to understand this is true. You can't have an org with the wrong ratio of "architects/leads" and coders. Or tech leads and engineers, whatever terms you prefer. An org with 2 teams doesn't need 5 people coordinating cross-team work. An org with 40 teams needs more than 40 engineers, and so on.
LordHumungous 7y ago
> But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time There's a lot of business value in certainty. The value of the senior IC is the certainty that your business critical project will get completed correctly and on time. Sort of like how you want a good electrician to work on your house even if the job isn't technically that "hard".
- nilkn 7y ago
  That's just a solid senior engineer, though. You don't need a Senior Distinguished Technical Fellow to come to your house for some electrical work. That's the person you have designing the electrical grid for a city of 5 million people. I guess if you have a lot of title inflation things might be different. I've definitely seen places where a senior developer is pretty much anyone 2-3 years out of school who does a decent job but still requires supervision and oversight.
  - LordHumungous 7y ago
    That depends. For example my company we are trying to move all of our infrastructure to kubernetes, and we are trying to hire a very senior IC who can lead it.
nine_k 7y ago
There is little point to be a senior engineer in a company which us not growing, or at least seriously changing their technology. Once the technology works well enough, and the ongoing changes can be supported by mid-level engineers, and there is no big challenges ahead, it's time to move on. No, this is not how you grow in power and importance for 15 years within the same company. If you want that, management is your path.
shrimpx 7y ago
I think the important point that's being missed is that super senior ICs are usually promoted for specific reasons. You're making it sound like they are a disposable commodity. But in my experience someone is super senior IC because they have proven to add key value when it was really needed and nobody else was up to the task.

by nilkn 7y ago

Ididntdothis 7y ago

It would probably work if the people managers stayed out of the technical side but in reality most managers like to make technical decisions so there is not much space for senior engineers.

nilkn 7y ago
It's questionable to me whether an engineering manager can stay out of the technical side completely and actually be competent at their job. I think many non-managers underestimate how technical engineering management actually is. You often have to have a solid understanding of a very wide swathe of the organization's technology, including services whose code you haven't even had a chance to work on. In some ways it's not all that different from some of the expectations for very senior IC roles.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  Managers don't need to do that however someone needs to attend organizational meetings and deal will all the inter-team semi-technical stuff that keeps a company running. That person will tend to be involved in technical decisions to the extent that they have organizational knowledge and influence. You can have ICs do that however most would prefer a root canal and many lack of the soft skills for it.
- sunaurus 7y ago
  I always take it as a red flag when a manager wants to be responsible for technical decisions. The best managers I've worked with have always made it their mission to serve technical teams by removing obstacles and making sure that the specialists have everything they need in order to create a high quality product. Managers who try to babysit developers and tell them how to do their jobs tend to just slow things down and lead to lower quality results.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    I think that being involved in the technical side and "babysitting developers" are two very different ideas that have little to nothing to do with each other. > The best managers I've worked with have always made it their mission to serve technical teams by removing obstacles and making sure that the specialists have everything they need in order to create a high quality product. I think you're underestimating the degree to which doing this requires a solid technical understanding when there are dozens of teams involved and interacting with each other. In order for an engineering manager to bring their team(s) a clear plan of what needs to be done with few blockers or obstacles in the way, often a lot of technical planning with other groups has to precede that. As always, management done right is the sort of management you don't notice -- but that doesn't mean a ton of work isn't happening behind the scenes to make things very organized and clear for individual developers. You could have ICs do that, but they wouldn't be writing much if any code, and they probably wouldn't want to anyway.
    - tannerc 7y ago
      Isn't what you're describing precisely what senior ICs should be doing more of? I agree with OP, the purpose of a manager isn't to manage the technical side of things but rather the people side. It's why they have direct rapports: to manage the people. A better use of the IC's time is to unblock them so they can meet with stakeholders and develop a rich understanding of the work in order to do it most effectively. In trying to "shield" the IC from developing an understanding of the landscape they'll be working on, the manager may accidentally be preventing the IC from getting the information they actually need to do their job well.

baron_harkonnen 7y ago

My experience has been that the value of very senior technical staff is not that they solve "extremely high level" technical problems but they are very easily able to see how what appears to be a complex problem is isomorphic to a much simpler, easy to solve problem. The difference between expert and advanced/intermediate technical staff is that the advanced engineer has an understanding of complex solution and mistakenly tries to apply them everywhere, so the net effect is to increase complexity. The expert typically sees simple solutions and method of resolving complexity and has a net effect of reducing overall system complexity. Believing that the value add of experienced technical staff is to only solve really hard problem is likely caused by having too many advanced/intermediate people playing the role of experienced technical leads. All of the great technical team member I worked with always make call solutions simpler and easier to implement by knowing exactly what doesn't need to be done and what is essential.

nilkn 7y ago
The fact that folks can't even agree on what constitutes a very senior IC is definitely part of the problem. I would consider what you describe here -- reducing complexity as opposed to increasing it -- a requirement of any senior engineer. I don't see this as the hallmark of a principal or distinguished engineer but rather one of the basic differences between a developer and a senior developer.
- cpitman 7y ago
  As my employer has tried to define the principal IC roles, I've actually seen the perceived qualifications of the original roles go down. IE, what would have been consider senior qualities are now principal qualities, and seniors need supervision. I believe it extends from the same root cause: not knowing how to get value out of a more senior role.
  - Normal_gaussian 7y ago
    I had senior in my title at my previous organisation. Something I found hilarious given my years. The reasoning seemed to be autonomy. Until they hired people who were senior by age but not autonomous. Engineering titles are a mess and it causes real problems when moving to another organisation.

Spooky23 7y ago

I'd say that 80% of the time, the IC track is bad for the ambitious, non-consulting engineer ultimately, unless your plan is to move around alot, which is a strategy that gets riskier as you get older and better compensated. Even for the consultant, the path to growth is... hiring people and leveraging their labors! End of the day, the size of your tribe or budget is a physical manifestation of your power in an organization. Power is how you get stuff done -- all of the right answers don't matter if you cannot realize the outcome. IMO, it's critical to grow as an engineer to be able to get others aligned to whatever task is at hand. My career is very much in the applied space -- my perspective is someone delivering solutions, not inventing tech. It may be different for different disciplines/scopes.

pm90 7y ago
This is an excellent point. About 80% of the time, this is how it plays out in most larger orgs. The interesting thing is what happens in mid size to smaller companies, where organization structures are not as well defined. You still need people here, however, if you know the stack very well or are a proficient IC, you can make contributions that can have a significant impact on the org, and gain the trust and allegiance of many engineers, albeit informally. I've seen this happen a lot. A senior engineer will either create or integrate a new tool or process which makes life easier for other teams. They are grateful to the person and are much more willing to hear the engineer out for future designs and projects. All that to say... just having a title doesn't get you anywhere. You have to build trust by delivering value, however incrementally. Maybe this is really trivial stuff, IDK.
- vkou 7y ago
  You're not making a great case for senior ICs being impactful. I mean, what you described is one way to deliver senior-level impact for a team. However, this has a very important problem. Every time you join a team, you have to build up this rapport from scratch. If you switch jobs every few years, you'll find half your professional time consisting of busting your ass to build up rapport, only to have to start from zero at the next job. When you're hired as a manager, you don't need to do (this kind of) rapport building. You just tell people what to do, and they will build it.

inerte 7y ago

When I was an IC wanting to be promoted ASAP I kept hearing from management "We need to see if the org needs this [particular high level] role" Took me a while to understand this is true. You can't have an org with the wrong ratio of "architects/leads" and coders. Or tech leads and engineers, whatever terms you prefer. An org with 2 teams doesn't need 5 people coordinating cross-team work. An org with 40 teams needs more than 40 engineers, and so on.

LordHumungous 7y ago

> But sometimes all you need is to be able to assign someone to a specific project that isn't all that glorious or interesting or hard but is valuable and needs to be done by a certain time There's a lot of business value in certainty. The value of the senior IC is the certainty that your business critical project will get completed correctly and on time. Sort of like how you want a good electrician to work on your house even if the job isn't technically that "hard".

nilkn 7y ago
That's just a solid senior engineer, though. You don't need a Senior Distinguished Technical Fellow to come to your house for some electrical work. That's the person you have designing the electrical grid for a city of 5 million people. I guess if you have a lot of title inflation things might be different. I've definitely seen places where a senior developer is pretty much anyone 2-3 years out of school who does a decent job but still requires supervision and oversight.
- LordHumungous 7y ago
  That depends. For example my company we are trying to move all of our infrastructure to kubernetes, and we are trying to hire a very senior IC who can lead it.

nine_k 7y ago

There is little point to be a senior engineer in a company which us not growing, or at least seriously changing their technology. Once the technology works well enough, and the ongoing changes can be supported by mid-level engineers, and there is no big challenges ahead, it's time to move on. No, this is not how you grow in power and importance for 15 years within the same company. If you want that, management is your path.

shrimpx 7y ago

I think the important point that's being missed is that super senior ICs are usually promoted for specific reasons. You're making it sound like they are a disposable commodity. But in my experience someone is super senior IC because they have proven to add key value when it was really needed and nobody else was up to the task.