4 ms·

Good point. Generally, Senior is the most experienced title for an employee without direct reports, e.g. Senior Engineer. Lead, Director and VP usually entail d

Good point. Generally, Senior is the most experienced title for an employee without direct reports, e.g. Senior Engineer. Lead, Director and VP usually entail direct reports, e.g. a Lead Engineer or "Engineering Lead"

kleinsch 16y ago
I worked for a company where there were a bunch of Engineering Leads with no direct reports. Makes no sense, I realize, but titles rarely do. You might want to make that a checkbox.
- rdl 16y ago
  I'm used to engineering lead vs. manager being "leads technology" vs. "leads team" within a group, so an engineering lead should never have direct reports. Sometimes the engineering lead is sort of a mentor to junior members of the team, too, and it can be training for becoming a manager. It would be unusual for an engineering lead to be responsible for HR-type management of Senior Engineers, at least at every place I've worked.
rdl 16y ago
Right, but sometimes you hire someone as "Director of Engineering" with only contractors or even zero staff, at a 1-10 person startup, on the assumption that he will add direct reports later. I really prefer hiring people as individual contributors and then promoting them, with "employee #5" or something being enough "status" to get a Director or VP at a larger company (who is still a great individual contributor himself) to accept the position. Plus, a lot of more tech-heavy companies have somewhat parallel technical vs. management tracks, with Senior going to maybe Lead (who doesn't necessarily have reports, and may just be a tech leader, supported by a product manager), going up to maybe a Fellow or CTO or Chief Scientist; this is parallel to pure-administrative managers (PM) or hybrid Director of Engineering/Engineering Group types who then become VP Engineering. Honestly I find few things more pathetic than a startup with 5-10 people and a CTO, VP Engineering, CIO, CEO, COO, ...; probably the best at a 1-10 person company is to skip the title entirely (except for CEO) and just specify job role, like "Engineering" "Product" "Server Operations"; let the individual contributor vs. manager roles follow in time. Figuring out some way to title-ify "employee #5, first full-time back end engineer" would be cool; "Founding Engineer" as one-step down from Founder might work. There should be some way to compensate employees 1-n (n=5-15) at a startup with title in addition to equity in a way which still allows people with management experience or specific domain expertise to maybe come in above in the hierarchy later.

kleinsch 16y ago

I worked for a company where there were a bunch of Engineering Leads with no direct reports. Makes no sense, I realize, but titles rarely do. You might want to make that a checkbox.

rdl 16y ago
I'm used to engineering lead vs. manager being "leads technology" vs. "leads team" within a group, so an engineering lead should never have direct reports. Sometimes the engineering lead is sort of a mentor to junior members of the team, too, and it can be training for becoming a manager. It would be unusual for an engineering lead to be responsible for HR-type management of Senior Engineers, at least at every place I've worked.

rdl 16y ago

Right, but sometimes you hire someone as "Director of Engineering" with only contractors or even zero staff, at a 1-10 person startup, on the assumption that he will add direct reports later. I really prefer hiring people as individual contributors and then promoting them, with "employee #5" or something being enough "status" to get a Director or VP at a larger company (who is still a great individual contributor himself) to accept the position. Plus, a lot of more tech-heavy companies have somewhat parallel technical vs. management tracks, with Senior going to maybe Lead (who doesn't necessarily have reports, and may just be a tech leader, supported by a product manager), going up to maybe a Fellow or CTO or Chief Scientist; this is parallel to pure-administrative managers (PM) or hybrid Director of Engineering/Engineering Group types who then become VP Engineering. Honestly I find few things more pathetic than a startup with 5-10 people and a CTO, VP Engineering, CIO, CEO, COO, ...; probably the best at a 1-10 person company is to skip the title entirely (except for CEO) and just specify job role, like "Engineering" "Product" "Server Operations"; let the individual contributor vs. manager roles follow in time. Figuring out some way to title-ify "employee #5, first full-time back end engineer" would be cool; "Founding Engineer" as one-step down from Founder might work. There should be some way to compensate employees 1-n (n=5-15) at a startup with title in addition to equity in a way which still allows people with management experience or specific domain expertise to maybe come in above in the hierarchy later.