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Other have noted how bureaucratic this seems to be for a 200 person company but to me it also seems so top down/hierarchical. Strategy that flows top down with

Other have noted how bureaucratic this seems to be for a 200 person company but to me it also seems so top down/hierarchical. Strategy that flows top down with little visibility, input or involvement from ICs except when forced to avoid the ICs getting too annoyed (why aren't the ICs trusted to help more directly contribute to the strategy?). A VP being involved in helping teams say no versus the teams (or their EMs) being empowered to do so (do the other teams/execs have such fragile egos?).

choppaface 3y ago
Sometimes decision making ends up primarily in the hands of the VP Eng and Directors because none of the ICs really care too much about the underlying product or customer. That’s not to say the ICs aren’t smart but rather the management has found an unglamorous yet profitable (or potentially profitable) problem. Unglamorous can also mean the company is struggling for traction and so it’s not even clear what there is to be glamorous about. And thus the VP Eng has to make posts like these to make the work appear more notable and honorable. When the post is so light on substance, it indicates the VP Eng is fundamentally struggling to focus the team. And as a bonus, the VP Eng gets their story out in front of investors.
- marcinzm 3y ago
  That's true but in my experience it's more often that the management chain tries to implicitly not have the ICs care about the product or customer. They may not even realize consciously that they're doing twenty little things to cause this. The reasons are many but often it's once you dig into it because management (both eng and product) then needs to do all the boring and risky work around those ideas but won't get most of the credit. There may also be perception that the ICs lack enough context so these thoughts aren't worth the time to think about. Sometimes the business domain really is unglamorous but more often I've found that the it isn't as unglamorous to ICs as management thinks. In my experience it's also not that hard to make ICs care about the business and try to drive it forward even if it's not glamorous. Make their promotions, yearly reviews and raises be partially based on the business impact tied to the projects they were on. There's side effects of that to manage but even if the monetary gains aren't massive the team will care a lot more. Of course, many managers don't actually like it when their team point blank asks them "what's the value of this project, looking at data it's not going to help the business."

choppaface 3y ago

Sometimes decision making ends up primarily in the hands of the VP Eng and Directors because none of the ICs really care too much about the underlying product or customer. That’s not to say the ICs aren’t smart but rather the management has found an unglamorous yet profitable (or potentially profitable) problem. Unglamorous can also mean the company is struggling for traction and so it’s not even clear what there is to be glamorous about. And thus the VP Eng has to make posts like these to make the work appear more notable and honorable. When the post is so light on substance, it indicates the VP Eng is fundamentally struggling to focus the team. And as a bonus, the VP Eng gets their story out in front of investors.

marcinzm 3y ago
That's true but in my experience it's more often that the management chain tries to implicitly not have the ICs care about the product or customer. They may not even realize consciously that they're doing twenty little things to cause this. The reasons are many but often it's once you dig into it because management (both eng and product) then needs to do all the boring and risky work around those ideas but won't get most of the credit. There may also be perception that the ICs lack enough context so these thoughts aren't worth the time to think about. Sometimes the business domain really is unglamorous but more often I've found that the it isn't as unglamorous to ICs as management thinks. In my experience it's also not that hard to make ICs care about the business and try to drive it forward even if it's not glamorous. Make their promotions, yearly reviews and raises be partially based on the business impact tied to the projects they were on. There's side effects of that to manage but even if the monetary gains aren't massive the team will care a lot more. Of course, many managers don't actually like it when their team point blank asks them "what's the value of this project, looking at data it's not going to help the business."