2 ms·

This is part of a whole series[0] that I am reading and finding quite insightful. I think the "pull quote" for me, was this, from the immediate article: Estab

This is part of a whole series[0] that I am reading and finding quite insightful. I think the "pull quote" for me, was this, from the immediate article: Establish team working agreements at all levels. Ensure every team member knows what role they’re playing I think this is a real problem not just in scale ups, but in a lot of engineering organizations. There's no working agreements on what roles that each part of the company plays and expects others to play, its often weighted against some preference of higher up management (often VP / executive / director depending on the size of the org and influence each layer has) that creates these silos and break downs. I think its uncommon to think of start up environments like this, but it is entirely true, once you get past a certain number of employees and start having more delegation layers (directors / VPs) you start to run into these silo problems quickly if you aren't aware of them or don't actively do something about preventing them. Whole thing is worth reading though, very insightful to me at least! [0]: https://martinfowler.com/articles/bottlenecks-of-scaleups/ https://martinfowler.com/articles/bottlenecks-of-scaleups/

righttoolforjob 4y ago
Bad (and common) engineering managers avoid agreements on purpose to: 1) cover their asses 2) change anything at will If you never agreed to anything, then you can keep demanding whatever, and blame whoever as well. It's a really shitty management style. I left such an organisation not too long ago where I would say that the engineering department survived not because of, but rather despite of the head of that department. First few years nobody had a clue what he was doing most of the days and when he decided to get actively involved it was obvious he had no clue about anything. He still has no clue but he's made sure to surround himself with incompetent yes-sayers to cement his position. A real political genius.

righttoolforjob 4y ago

Bad (and common) engineering managers avoid agreements on purpose to: 1) cover their asses 2) change anything at will If you never agreed to anything, then you can keep demanding whatever, and blame whoever as well. It's a really shitty management style. I left such an organisation not too long ago where I would say that the engineering department survived not because of, but rather despite of the head of that department. First few years nobody had a clue what he was doing most of the days and when he decided to get actively involved it was obvious he had no clue about anything. He still has no clue but he's made sure to surround himself with incompetent yes-sayers to cement his position. A real political genius.