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I think this article is pretty insightful. But I disagree with this in most contexts I've seen: "A senior developer understands that leadership is not about pow
by calibraxis 11y ago
I think this article is pretty insightful. But I disagree with this in most contexts I've seen: "A senior developer understands that leadership is not about power, it is about empowerment. It is not about direction, it is about serving."
That's an ideal statement about servant leadership, a posture that often works wonderfully. But given real-world dev cultures, you also need straight-up power to protect yourself from other devs, if you don't have hiring/firing power. Those juniors/intermediates are often trained/filtered to be unpleasant examples of humanity. I wish it were otherwise (and there must be many exceptions), but all that "cultural fit" stuff generally means something bleak.
- hacknat 11y agoI think that if someone really should be fired and it is only obvious to their direct report then something seriously wrong has happened. Firing should never be a surprise to anyone. Good tech cultures are good at making expectations clear. I'm a "Lead" Developer without direct firing power, but I know my CTO has my back. If I ever recommended firing someone out of the blue his response would be, "How did you let it get this bad without looping me in sooner?" And he would be correct. I'm glad I don't have autocratic power and I would never work for a company that handed that much power to one person.