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Expecting your senior engineers to be producing like exponentially or even linearly more work is not utilizing those engineers' expertise correctly, especially

Expecting your senior engineers to be producing like exponentially or even linearly more work is not utilizing those engineers' expertise correctly, especially at a startup, in my opinion. Seniors and especially higher should be expected to be spending some amount of their time on mentorship, helping others, creating/advancing product initiatives by planning or coordinating. If your product managers are flying solo with no input or even having non-technical managers dictate, that's worse than pulling seniors into some planning. I've never had someone lay this out for me but my experience is there is a large chasm between senior and higher. Bridging that chasm generally doesn't come with increased individual technical output, it comes with utilizing others to advance projects with you. That isn't to say senior+ can have no technical output all the time but I wouldn't be demo-ing an engineering RFC or new engineering initiatives at a demo day which will be consumed by other teams. Demo days aren't for the engineers or even product team; they already know what they did that week, I can go into version control or listen at standup.

mb22 3y ago
I wonder if this is a misunderstanding on accountability. The demo days hold people accountable to others AND themselves. There is a general movement to eschew accountability which is a huge mistake because this concept is critical in continuous improvement.
- JohnBooty 3y ago
  I don't understand how a senior developer partnering with juniors rather than crushing tasks solo equates to eschewing accountability -- especially if the goal is "continuous improvement" of the engineering org. Although, it's not like the first time I've seen it expressed that senior engineers should outproduce juniors in terms of individual tasks/storypoints, and spend lots of time mentoring and pairing with juniors. Which I think is what you're getting at? I disagree mightily with that. Those goals are in conflict and emphasizing individual stats is more or less the emperor of all perverse incentives. Instead, I favor the traditional agile/scrum emphasis on team velocity.

mb22 3y ago

I wonder if this is a misunderstanding on accountability. The demo days hold people accountable to others AND themselves. There is a general movement to eschew accountability which is a huge mistake because this concept is critical in continuous improvement.

JohnBooty 3y ago
I don't understand how a senior developer partnering with juniors rather than crushing tasks solo equates to eschewing accountability -- especially if the goal is "continuous improvement" of the engineering org. Although, it's not like the first time I've seen it expressed that senior engineers should outproduce juniors in terms of individual tasks/storypoints, and spend lots of time mentoring and pairing with juniors. Which I think is what you're getting at? I disagree mightily with that. Those goals are in conflict and emphasizing individual stats is more or less the emperor of all perverse incentives. Instead, I favor the traditional agile/scrum emphasis on team velocity.