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That's true but what can you do about it? It's a direct consequence of building large/complex products. To me it seems that you're just advocating for only buil

That's true but what can you do about it? It's a direct consequence of building large/complex products. To me it seems that you're just advocating for only building small/simple products. Typically you have a chief engineering team that is in charge to strike that balance, and drive the compromises with all the specialists.

IshKebab 6y ago
Maybe hire more generalists, make it easier for people to move around the company, have a 2D team structure (i.e. maybe you have a signal integrity team and a PCB layout team or whatever, but then you would also have a subset of each working together on the CPU Card team). There's probably a name for that.
- tomrod 6y ago
  Matrix organization. Great in theory, extra hours if you're a wrench turner.
musingsole 6y ago
Have Special Teams & Product Teams. Special Teams don't get ownership of anything, can't veto anything. They're there to answer any and all questions from the product team and to set the stage for how the product team may solve a challenge (i.e. present a menu of relevant approaches with expert commentary on the applicability to the problem, but implementation is the product team's job). This limbo position helps tamp down on the prestige of a Special Team relative to Product while still attempting to harness expert value.
- gedy 6y ago
  Issue with this approach at some companies though is when Special X Team is measured by the quality of X, but has little authority over Product teams, who have no incentive to do X well.
  - musingsole 6y ago
    > Special X Team is measured by the quality of X So don't measure the special X team by the quality of X, but the quality of service they provide to the product team in pursuit of X.
    - gedy 6y ago
      Agreed that would be nice, but you'd be surprised at some companies thinking..
- marcinzm 6y ago
  So how do you measure the value and contribution of the product and special teams including compared to each other. Somehow promotions, head count, budget and so on needs to allocated. Without ownership or the ability to veto it's not fair to measure the Special Teams on any product related metrics. But if you can't measure them on product related metrics then what do you measure them on? Feedback by other teams which will result in endless games of politics?
  - musingsole 6y ago
    The existential political threat has to be reined in as the check on the Special Team. No one wants to be under Damocles' sword, but if you want power, it's the way it has to be. Give them a veto if you want, but it paints a target on their back. No veto and only able to use soft influence is probably a mercy to the position.

IshKebab 6y ago

Maybe hire more generalists, make it easier for people to move around the company, have a 2D team structure (i.e. maybe you have a signal integrity team and a PCB layout team or whatever, but then you would also have a subset of each working together on the CPU Card team). There's probably a name for that.

tomrod 6y ago
Matrix organization. Great in theory, extra hours if you're a wrench turner.

musingsole 6y ago

Have Special Teams & Product Teams. Special Teams don't get ownership of anything, can't veto anything. They're there to answer any and all questions from the product team and to set the stage for how the product team may solve a challenge (i.e. present a menu of relevant approaches with expert commentary on the applicability to the problem, but implementation is the product team's job). This limbo position helps tamp down on the prestige of a Special Team relative to Product while still attempting to harness expert value.

gedy 6y ago
Issue with this approach at some companies though is when Special X Team is measured by the quality of X, but has little authority over Product teams, who have no incentive to do X well.
- musingsole 6y ago
  > Special X Team is measured by the quality of X So don't measure the special X team by the quality of X, but the quality of service they provide to the product team in pursuit of X.
  - gedy 6y ago
    Agreed that would be nice, but you'd be surprised at some companies thinking..
marcinzm 6y ago
So how do you measure the value and contribution of the product and special teams including compared to each other. Somehow promotions, head count, budget and so on needs to allocated. Without ownership or the ability to veto it's not fair to measure the Special Teams on any product related metrics. But if you can't measure them on product related metrics then what do you measure them on? Feedback by other teams which will result in endless games of politics?
- musingsole 6y ago
  The existential political threat has to be reined in as the check on the Special Team. No one wants to be under Damocles' sword, but if you want power, it's the way it has to be. Give them a veto if you want, but it paints a target on their back. No veto and only able to use soft influence is probably a mercy to the position.