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> I also think it’s ok for a monarchy as opposed to democracy ruling what gets approved, assuming merit based is not an option. Just to share: I've been an out

> I also think it’s ok for a monarchy as opposed to democracy ruling what gets approved, assuming merit based is not an option. Just to share: I've been an outside advisor to a few companies where some developers may think "this is a politics based monarchy and we're not looking at proposals rationally". Where as an outsider it was clear to me that the higher up roles just had more context to make their decisions. Especially decisions coming from the CTO and VP Engineering kind of roles tended to be driven by input from the wider company strategy, due to daily interaction with the rest of the management team. In those cases there was a clear need for coaching the higher ups on how to explain and communicate their decisions, but what they were deciding were the right things. And everybody leaving before they improved communications would be on here posting about how bad their higher ups were and what a political mess it was. While that wasn't really the issue. I'm sure that's not always the case and big political dumpster fires exist (I've seen a few), but there are also many cases where it's only an issue with communicating more clearly from the (technical) management side of things.

barefeg 4y ago
Out of curiously what kind of advisory roles have you had?
- t0mas88 4y ago
  Advisor to the CTO on request of their investors after an acquisition. The big challenge was to merge the two technologies. And advisor to the CEO in a scale-up where they used to have a quite technical founder as the CEO who left and got replaced by a not so technical outside hire. I'm also trying to get a few more board advisor kind of roles, but so far everything has been with an emphasis on the tech side of the business.
pbronez 4y ago
Yeah that tracks with my experience. Sucks when more junior folks blow up over things they don’t have total context on. You give them as much as you can, but sometimes people decide they want to be a prophet of doom and close their minds.
JohnBooty 4y ago
but there are also many cases where it's only an issue with communicating more clearly from the (technical) management side of things. This is true, although I've been through versions of this process where there was pretty good PR effort from the RFC backers (talks, slide decks) but it was an extension of the charade. A lot of the slides were just absolute hooey, and pointing this out did nothing to slow down the process one bit. They communicated well, but the actual thinking was bad.
stefan_ 4y ago
So the RFC process was a sham because it never reflected the "wider company strategy" because the people with that context withdrew from it totally apart from being kingmakers? I'm not sure you are making the case for it here. You are just making some other unrelated point.

barefeg 4y ago

Out of curiously what kind of advisory roles have you had?

t0mas88 4y ago
Advisor to the CTO on request of their investors after an acquisition. The big challenge was to merge the two technologies. And advisor to the CEO in a scale-up where they used to have a quite technical founder as the CEO who left and got replaced by a not so technical outside hire. I'm also trying to get a few more board advisor kind of roles, but so far everything has been with an emphasis on the tech side of the business.

pbronez 4y ago

Yeah that tracks with my experience. Sucks when more junior folks blow up over things they don’t have total context on. You give them as much as you can, but sometimes people decide they want to be a prophet of doom and close their minds.

JohnBooty 4y ago

but there are also many cases where it's only an issue with communicating more clearly from the (technical) management side of things. This is true, although I've been through versions of this process where there was pretty good PR effort from the RFC backers (talks, slide decks) but it was an extension of the charade. A lot of the slides were just absolute hooey, and pointing this out did nothing to slow down the process one bit. They communicated well, but the actual thinking was bad.

stefan_ 4y ago

So the RFC process was a sham because it never reflected the "wider company strategy" because the people with that context withdrew from it totally apart from being kingmakers? I'm not sure you are making the case for it here. You are just making some other unrelated point.