There is currently a great deal of potential for disruption of engineering business organization hierarchy. At the heart of the problem is how to cohesively add

There is currently a great deal of potential for disruption of engineering business organization hierarchy. At the heart of the problem is how to cohesively address the limited distribution of control, freedom, money, stability and reward. A good example of one aspect of this is LinkedIn's technical career track. Beyond sole contributor status, you can be promoted to either a Manager or a Staff Engineer. Managers have direct reports, while Staff Engineers lead teams with a technical responsibility, each with their own progression: Manager < Sr Manager < Director < Sr Director < VP < Sr VP and Staff Engineer < Sr Staff < Principal < Distinguished < Fellow. The Engineering track is more of an accreditation system focusing on freedom as opposed to control (control of things vs people). Most Silicon Valley companies struggle with retention, because they internally cannot simultaneously offer a "fair" career progression/compensation and compete with the raw efficient risk/reward of the free market (e.g., poaching). In other words, you can't promote engineers with potential over engineers with good track records without consequently discouraging hard work. On the other hand, you absolutely don't want engineers with potential to leave because of an inability to offer opportunity equal to what they can find elsewhere. Companies will ultimately need to offer choice to engineers: higher vs lower risk/reward. One possibility is a commission based engineering track. Engineers would choose between the stability of traditional progression/salary and a higher reward commission based system with a small base salary. The commission system would require results-based quantitative systems like OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to quantify both the value of the proposal to the company beforehand, and a quantitative measurement of its success. Switching between tracks could occur each quarter allowing engineers to tap temporary motivation increases. Mixing and matching traditional and commissioned engineers would result in unique balances of high motivation and stability (since the team lead is not their manager), which would highly align with stable vs high risk/growing aspects/departments of the company. The increasing competition faced from engineers starting their own companies will require companies to adapt new compensation models to more efficiently allocate resources (e.g., autonomy, cash, responsibility, recognition, etc...). I think a commission based system holds a lot of promise for those of greater capability.