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Too many roles / too many hats is far too common and why I find it hard to stay anywhere more than 4-5 years. As a senior IC in a super-flat & growing org.. I'

Too many roles / too many hats is far too common and why I find it hard to stay anywhere more than 4-5 years. As a senior IC in a super-flat & growing org.. I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one. Management administrivia I accumulate administrative things my manager doesn't want to do & pushes down I do unofficially own a part of the team Dotted lines of devs in my "team" that can be rolled in & out sprint by sprint Customer success / product / architecture I collect customer requirements, translate them into stories & documentation I manage customer/manager expectations with status meetings & reports I project plan out 3 months of work with JIRA hierarchies/Gantt chart I design solutions given the requirements Scrum I run our standups, sprint plannings, backlog refinements Corporate citizenship I am involved in recruiting 5-10% of my week I run working groups / long running cross team tech org Development I do IC work - directly assigned sprint deliverable tickets (analysis, development, infra creation) I need to accomplish I've been looking at moving to a more official management role elsewhere so I can focus at being good at a few things instead of decent at all the things.

robertlagrant 5y ago
Sounds like you could co-found a company, which could also be cool but in the other direction.
strgcmc 5y ago
TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc. That being said, if you are doing all of these things, and not being fairly compensated for it, then that's definitely a problem. A $50k/year web dev position at some random agency, doesn't deserve this level of work from you, esp. if you could instead take all these responsibilities, and do them at a serious technology company or start-up, for 2x-5x the comp.
- chris11 5y ago
  Same. As an IC I like ownership. I'd be fine with most of that list assuming it was related to something I owned. I may not specifically like some task, but I'm fine doing it if it's because I'm the person responsible for something. The biggest issue I would have with that list is the description of the scrum setup, and being directly assigned tickets. I find it more engaging if I'm given or find bigger problems to solve, completing individual tickets isn't as interesting.
  - steveBK123 5y ago
    Yes I love ownership as an IC. It's more that I spend near-zero time on any coding anymore, but also have very little visibility into the wider strategy (because there kind of isn't one). So I am tasked to have work for my customer(s) / 2-3 devs on loan to me, planned out for a few months. However my manager doesn't really give us what his quarterly goals are most quarters. Product team doesn't publish them very often either. In order of time spent in applications top to bottom it looks something like - Zoom, Slack, Email, Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint, Gitlab, VSCode.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Right, I'm rather experienced and make many multiples of 50k/yr, so its not really a compensation thing. It's more that it feels very ephemeral / tenuous as none of it is in an org chart or official. It is basically what problems management has to solve and what seniors are available at the moment. I am, officially in title and org chart an IC. In reality 10-20% of my time is IC dev work. 6 months ago it was 50%, 6 months before that it was 0%. Further it feels like too much of a time split to really get any better at any of the aspects - software dev, tech lead, product, people management of this role. What does this look like in FAANG?
  - strgcmc 5y ago
    It can be better, but it also can be just as chaotic sometimes. On balance overall, FAANGs are probably better at managing this "IC utilization" rate if you wanna call it that, vs just randomly expecting you to pick up and wear all the hats all the time or that hats are chaotically assigned, with no plan behind it. Certainly FAANGs aren't perfect, but at least it's easier to find "reference implementations" because there certainly are some very high-performing and well-managed teams, and if you're not on one yourself, then you can at least have the benefit of being able to see-and-compare, which then provides a potential for betterment and learning from others (which might be harder in non-FAANGs).
maxsilver 5y ago
> I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one. This is also me. Except I really like it. But I'm not sure what to do about it, it can reflect super poorly on a resume for some reason. "Oh, your applying to be a Senior Engineer? Look at all this product management and developer manager experience on your resume, you must not really be serious about coding, you aren't strong enough technically, the developers won't trust you" "Oh, your applying to be a Product Manager / Product Director. Look at all this programming and tech experience on your resume, you are really just a developer, you should just be pulling tickets from JIRA/Asana/Linear, you probably wouldn't be able to speak in non-technical terms in front of customers/clients/etc" (loop on repeat) I've not heard of a job name/title/role that accurately represents this sort of work, even though companies generally seem to like it, if I can somehow get through their application process.
- travisjungroth 5y ago
  I believe you, but that's surprising. I've generally had my well-roundedness very well-received.
  - b112 5y ago
    The problem is, some cannot believe that high performers, can be experts in multiple branches of a field. Their development slows to a crawl, as they get stuck in one role. Yours, and others like you, just keep that intense growth happening. It isn't necessarily their fault, either. Circumstances can keep someone slotted deep in a role, with no way to expand laterally. So, they may literally think such breadth and depth of experience is just overstatement.
    - jrumbut 5y ago
      The other aspect is organizational appetite for risk. The first company I worked for let anyone grow into any role they proved they could do. If you solved the hard problems you were the senior developer, if you took the reigns you were quickly promoted to lead/manager. Seniority didn't count for anything and roles were very fluid. That's an uncommon situation and what I've learned is it's hard to imagine if you've spent a career in more traditional organizations.
autarch 5y ago
What you're describing is a Staff or Principal Engineer title and should be compensated accordingly.
- cellis 5y ago
  Not even. This is far past what is expected of a staff, senior staff, or even principal engineer. This is a full-on technical cofounder, or hybrid cto/vpoe.
moneywoes 5y ago
I have 2 yoe and end up doing all of these. Startup life I guess haha
FpUser 5y ago
My last title before I went on my own was CTO/Architect. And I was doing all the things you mentioned down to coding. I could not complain about compensation as it was very fair - $250K in 2000 (the last year). But I was becoming a wreck. Now I have my own company and I still do all those things, LOL. Big difference being I choose what I do, how I do and obviously the size so I can chew it on my own or with my few trusty subcontractors. It is basically development of new products from scratch either for clients or for my own company and once in a while some very short hit and run type jobs. I now also leave plenty of time for myself to enjoy whatever activities make me tick.

robertlagrant 5y ago

Sounds like you could co-found a company, which could also be cool but in the other direction.

strgcmc 5y ago

TBH, reading this as a manager, I have to admit I feel like asking my engineers to take on SOME of these beyond-just-the-code duties... is a good thing? Obviously there are a bunch of caveats, and nuances to whether you want an IC engineer to be 100% coding and 0% talking to customers or doing admin (this seems bad), or is it 90% vs 10% (maybe okay), or 80/20 (sweet spot?), 50/50 (concerning), 20/80 (bad again), etc. That being said, if you are doing all of these things, and not being fairly compensated for it, then that's definitely a problem. A $50k/year web dev position at some random agency, doesn't deserve this level of work from you, esp. if you could instead take all these responsibilities, and do them at a serious technology company or start-up, for 2x-5x the comp.

chris11 5y ago
Same. As an IC I like ownership. I'd be fine with most of that list assuming it was related to something I owned. I may not specifically like some task, but I'm fine doing it if it's because I'm the person responsible for something. The biggest issue I would have with that list is the description of the scrum setup, and being directly assigned tickets. I find it more engaging if I'm given or find bigger problems to solve, completing individual tickets isn't as interesting.
- steveBK123 5y ago
  Yes I love ownership as an IC. It's more that I spend near-zero time on any coding anymore, but also have very little visibility into the wider strategy (because there kind of isn't one). So I am tasked to have work for my customer(s) / 2-3 devs on loan to me, planned out for a few months. However my manager doesn't really give us what his quarterly goals are most quarters. Product team doesn't publish them very often either. In order of time spent in applications top to bottom it looks something like - Zoom, Slack, Email, Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint, Gitlab, VSCode.
steveBK123 5y ago
Right, I'm rather experienced and make many multiples of 50k/yr, so its not really a compensation thing. It's more that it feels very ephemeral / tenuous as none of it is in an org chart or official. It is basically what problems management has to solve and what seniors are available at the moment. I am, officially in title and org chart an IC. In reality 10-20% of my time is IC dev work. 6 months ago it was 50%, 6 months before that it was 0%. Further it feels like too much of a time split to really get any better at any of the aspects - software dev, tech lead, product, people management of this role. What does this look like in FAANG?
- strgcmc 5y ago
  It can be better, but it also can be just as chaotic sometimes. On balance overall, FAANGs are probably better at managing this "IC utilization" rate if you wanna call it that, vs just randomly expecting you to pick up and wear all the hats all the time or that hats are chaotically assigned, with no plan behind it. Certainly FAANGs aren't perfect, but at least it's easier to find "reference implementations" because there certainly are some very high-performing and well-managed teams, and if you're not on one yourself, then you can at least have the benefit of being able to see-and-compare, which then provides a potential for betterment and learning from others (which might be harder in non-FAANGs).

maxsilver 5y ago

> I'm almost like a customer successs engineer, product manager, scrum master, senior developer and tech lead all rolled into one. This is also me. Except I really like it. But I'm not sure what to do about it, it can reflect super poorly on a resume for some reason. "Oh, your applying to be a Senior Engineer? Look at all this product management and developer manager experience on your resume, you must not really be serious about coding, you aren't strong enough technically, the developers won't trust you" "Oh, your applying to be a Product Manager / Product Director. Look at all this programming and tech experience on your resume, you are really just a developer, you should just be pulling tickets from JIRA/Asana/Linear, you probably wouldn't be able to speak in non-technical terms in front of customers/clients/etc" (loop on repeat) I've not heard of a job name/title/role that accurately represents this sort of work, even though companies generally seem to like it, if I can somehow get through their application process.

travisjungroth 5y ago
I believe you, but that's surprising. I've generally had my well-roundedness very well-received.
- b112 5y ago
  The problem is, some cannot believe that high performers, can be experts in multiple branches of a field. Their development slows to a crawl, as they get stuck in one role. Yours, and others like you, just keep that intense growth happening. It isn't necessarily their fault, either. Circumstances can keep someone slotted deep in a role, with no way to expand laterally. So, they may literally think such breadth and depth of experience is just overstatement.
  - jrumbut 5y ago
    The other aspect is organizational appetite for risk. The first company I worked for let anyone grow into any role they proved they could do. If you solved the hard problems you were the senior developer, if you took the reigns you were quickly promoted to lead/manager. Seniority didn't count for anything and roles were very fluid. That's an uncommon situation and what I've learned is it's hard to imagine if you've spent a career in more traditional organizations.

autarch 5y ago

What you're describing is a Staff or Principal Engineer title and should be compensated accordingly.

cellis 5y ago
Not even. This is far past what is expected of a staff, senior staff, or even principal engineer. This is a full-on technical cofounder, or hybrid cto/vpoe.

moneywoes 5y ago

I have 2 yoe and end up doing all of these. Startup life I guess haha

FpUser 5y ago

My last title before I went on my own was CTO/Architect. And I was doing all the things you mentioned down to coding. I could not complain about compensation as it was very fair - $250K in 2000 (the last year). But I was becoming a wreck. Now I have my own company and I still do all those things, LOL. Big difference being I choose what I do, how I do and obviously the size so I can chew it on my own or with my few trusty subcontractors. It is basically development of new products from scratch either for clients or for my own company and once in a while some very short hit and run type jobs. I now also leave plenty of time for myself to enjoy whatever activities make me tick.