<story><title>What does a Director of Engineering do?</title><url>https://www.hashtagcoder.dev/blog/director-of-engineering</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bluGill</author><text>What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can&amp;#x27;t get there tell them why.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn&amp;#x27;t matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It has been hard to let go and find a path with real influence. Where I was going is one of those areas that only seen if not done. Lesson learned though : the guy who created the bad design requiring them to come in right before release and work a weekend is rewarded above the guy who wrote good code that works...</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they&amp;#x27;ll actually be pretty similar across different organisations.&lt;p&gt;You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they&amp;#x27;re broadly comparable, and the seniority criteria show a very clear progression: the more senior you get the more influence you are showing across the organisation, whether that means managing larger projects, mentoring other staff, consulting with other teams on best known practices, or influencing other parts of the company inter-discplinary projects.&lt;p&gt;Almost every large organisation will have a neat table telling you exactly what attributes you need to show. They all show that progression - more influence on the organisation as a whole.&lt;p&gt;And yet every single review cycle there&amp;#x27;s always a portion of engineers who think they deserve a promotion because their personal work was high quality. It&amp;#x27;s like they haven&amp;#x27;t read the job spec of the job they&amp;#x27;re applying for. It&amp;#x27;s amazing.</text></item><item><author>lliamander</author><text>&amp;gt; I used to think hard work leads to promotion. This is because I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why different positions exist outside of a title change. Now I see things a bit differently. If an individual on my team is working hard, I&amp;#x27;m going to keep them where they are because they&amp;#x27;re getting the job done. Rather, I&amp;#x27;m looking to elevate my 10x engineer - not the one that&amp;#x27;s the doing their job well but the one thats mentoring those around them to do their job well too.&lt;p&gt;An excellent point.  This misconception that hard work leads to promotion is widespread, and management doesn&amp;#x27;t often do enough to dispel it (if they are even aware of it themselves). I think an important step here is to identify the concrete behaviors and competencies needed to advance.  In the words of Randall Koutnik: &amp;quot;What does it take to succeed at [your] company beyond &amp;#x27;hard work&amp;#x27;?&amp;quot;[0].&lt;p&gt;[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;Questions-to-ask-your-interviewer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;Questions-to-ask-your-intervie...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nogabebop23</author><text>I tell my developers this repeatedly, in the form of &amp;quot;making yourself 10% better is not as good as making everyone you work with 1% better&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;A few get it and shift towards a &amp;quot;rising tide floats all boats&amp;quot; mentality, the rest do nothing and are perfectly adequate, or agree with me then turn back to solely focusing on self-improvement.&lt;p&gt;The kicker? That 1% universal imporvement is soooo much easier than 10% or even 5% personal improvement. You can help your team become more effective just by (1) commiting to the act of (2) giving a sh!t.</text></comment>
<story><title>What does a Director of Engineering do?</title><url>https://www.hashtagcoder.dev/blog/director-of-engineering</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>bluGill</author><text>What is more amazing is their managers who have figured out how to work the system are not telling people that. Your job should be helping your people get where they want to go so if they can&amp;#x27;t get there tell them why.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve wasted years working hard and trying to gain influence only to realize that the areas I was getting influence in didn&amp;#x27;t matter to anyone so I was condemned to get good jobs but no promotion. It has been hard to let go and find a path with real influence. Where I was going is one of those areas that only seen if not done. Lesson learned though : the guy who created the bad design requiring them to come in right before release and work a weekend is rewarded above the guy who wrote good code that works...</text></item><item><author>Traster</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll tell you what amazes me: If you look at any reasonably large engineering organisation they will likely have guidance published from HR stating what the criteria are for different job roles, and they&amp;#x27;ll actually be pretty similar across different organisations.&lt;p&gt;You might be a Senior Software Engineer at one place but called a Staff engineer at another place, but they&amp;#x27;re broadly comparable, and the seniority criteria show a very clear progression: the more senior you get the more influence you are showing across the organisation, whether that means managing larger projects, mentoring other staff, consulting with other teams on best known practices, or influencing other parts of the company inter-discplinary projects.&lt;p&gt;Almost every large organisation will have a neat table telling you exactly what attributes you need to show. They all show that progression - more influence on the organisation as a whole.&lt;p&gt;And yet every single review cycle there&amp;#x27;s always a portion of engineers who think they deserve a promotion because their personal work was high quality. It&amp;#x27;s like they haven&amp;#x27;t read the job spec of the job they&amp;#x27;re applying for. It&amp;#x27;s amazing.</text></item><item><author>lliamander</author><text>&amp;gt; I used to think hard work leads to promotion. This is because I didn&amp;#x27;t understand why different positions exist outside of a title change. Now I see things a bit differently. If an individual on my team is working hard, I&amp;#x27;m going to keep them where they are because they&amp;#x27;re getting the job done. Rather, I&amp;#x27;m looking to elevate my 10x engineer - not the one that&amp;#x27;s the doing their job well but the one thats mentoring those around them to do their job well too.&lt;p&gt;An excellent point.  This misconception that hard work leads to promotion is widespread, and management doesn&amp;#x27;t often do enough to dispel it (if they are even aware of it themselves). I think an important step here is to identify the concrete behaviors and competencies needed to advance.  In the words of Randall Koutnik: &amp;quot;What does it take to succeed at [your] company beyond &amp;#x27;hard work&amp;#x27;?&amp;quot;[0].&lt;p&gt;[0]&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;Questions-to-ask-your-interviewer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;rkoutnik.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;Questions-to-ask-your-intervie...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lokar</author><text>I spent many years deciding promotions at a big tech company, including for Sr managers.  One thing we always looked into was were they growing the talent on their teams, mentoring, growing skills, and getting people promoted.  People understood this was one of the criteria for manager promotions, so they spent time on it (and documented it).&lt;p&gt;Like any other job, people tend to respond to what they are told will be the evaluation criteria.</text></comment>