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Levels of Technical Leadership
- angarg12 5y agoIt isn't clear to me from the article, but has this ladder been implemented somewhere or is it a theoretical framework? My issue with many such articles is that they propose and idea without having tried it in practice. Unless you have implemented this and seen it working well for a period of time, it's only "armchair leadership".
- gregdoesit 5y agoIt’s not mentioned directly in the article but this is the typical Big Tech IC ladder and levels. Eg ones at Google, Meta, Uber, Databricks, Amazon, Dropbox etc all like up like this, including the level numbers (L6, L7 etc). Though there at small differences on the interpreting and focus points at each level. I agree the article could have been more clear.
- dd444fgdfg 5y agothis is pretty typical stuff these days for a typical well to do SaaS org. I've seen it work well. It can help facilitate the conversation between a manager and direct report when trying to understand what the gaps are between their current role, and where they want to go next. It also helps keep those discussions aligned across different managers/directs across the organisation. It also has it's down sides. There's no perfect solution to soft skills.
- bigcat123 5y ago
- late2part 5y agoWhat's with the unique font? e.g. "sp" and "ct"
- whoisburbansky 5y agoThey're called ligatures [1]. Congratulations, you're one of today's lucky 10,000! [2] 1. https://www.thoughtco.com/ligature-in-typography-1078102 https://www.thoughtco.com/ligature-in-typography-1078102 2. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- wmf 5y agoThose are some really archaic and distracting ligatures though.
- ipaddr 5y agoSeparating those who manage vs those who don't and calling them an ic misses the company wide impact an ic could and should be making. Those who manage are often labelled as multipliers but the truth is they may be multipliers or dividers within the same group. From a scale of doing harmful to everything possible -1 to 1 multiplier effect per person on average is 0 and .999 for the best.
- x3n0ph3n3 5y agoYeah, my VP and I have been talking about my promotion to a senior-staff level position and have been discussing with the SVP how the culture of senior-staff/prinicpals being so hands-off from IC work is a serious waste of talent. We are actively shaping my new role to be much more hands-on than other senior staffs are often expected to be.
- lhorie 5y agoI mean, I think you kinda need to look at historical context too. Traditionally, "leadership" meant managing people pretty much exclusively. What is colloquially referred to as the "IC route" is a relatively new way of recognizing ancillary responsibilities that employees at senior level start to undertake to "dabble" into leadership, especially if you have the more progressive view that leadership is about facilitating rather than imposing. I think there's still value in EM roles in the sense that I feel that communication about large scale strategy tends to flow more freely among managerial-oriented roles, whereas ICs have a tendency to "silo" more.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- whoomp12342 5y agoor you know, you could just write code and not give a fuck about titles :-D
- phailhaus 5y agoUnfortunately, we live in a society.
- yakshaving_jgt 5y agoYeah, but that society is shaped by people like you and me.
- phailhaus 5y agoSociety is much, much bigger than two people, and that's why titles happen.
- whoomp12342 5y agotitles happen because people want to feel good about themselves. The best thing is to just let it go
- phailhaus 5y agoAgain, we live in a society. Titles are a way of communicating your role and seniority in an organization, using a roughly shared language. It's a bit naive to think that titles serve no purpose, as if everyone is just being dumb for the hell of it.
- whoomp12342 5y agosir, this is a wendys
- bigpeopleareold 5y agoTitles never seemed to matter much for many things. I think though that people defer to authority and to do a thing that requires to get other people involved seems to require blessings - from above, from your "authority" etc. Note this is completely anecdotal and that those with a special big sounding title do have sway.
- nunctryses 5y agoLooks like typical SWE ladders / profiles for roles in FAANG. One can go this route, and then create N-1 preso/diff for "L3 to L4" , "L4 to L5", "L5 to L6" etc. But that seems something old companies with a ton of bureaucracy would have, not suitable imo for a "young tech company". For those, I highly prefer this fits-in-one-tweet definition of L3, L4, L5, L6: https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1502550200396750851 https://twitter.com/ZainRzv/status/1502550200396750851
- majormajor 5y agoWell, the article is talking about there being multiple, separate ladders for IC development, which I wouldn't call typical. I have seen "depth or breadth" as mentioned as both potentially valid approaches at some companies, but not always. Breadth/"cross team" impact is usually prioritized. But I agree the tweet is pretty accurate for a small (<20 person) engineering org[0]. I don't think this article really comes into play until 20+ (maybe 50+?) employees. [0] It's also accurate within, say, a single well-isolated smaller team in a bigger org, but then the scope/risk/responsibility is often smaller unless you start adding the typical "across multiple teams" thing to senior/staff/etc.
- xmprt 5y agoEven shorter (but slightly less accurate) is talking about the time scale that you are working on. L3 => you know what you're doing for the next few days to a week. L4 => you know what you're doing for a month L5 => you know what you're doing for a quarter to a half L6+ => you know what you're doing for the next year
- Thaxll 5y ago> you know what you're doing for the next year You think you know.
- chestervonwinch 5y agoI think the spirit of it is somewhere between "you know what you are doing" and "you can envision what you are likely doing". The latter isn't quite as catchy though.