Career Ladder

How to Communicate With Former Peers

After being promoted to Director of Engineering, the author found it difficult to maintain relationships with former peers due to the change in perception of their words. They learned to adjust their communication style to be more roundabout and open-ended, and to offer help before asking questions. They also learned that when climbing the ladder, people will perceive them differently and the purpose of their interactions will change. Lastly, they realized that perception shapes how we communicate more than anything else.

Infrastructuring On-Call Rotation

This article outlines the infrastructure and strategies put in place for on-call and after-hours support. It includes a three-person rotation with a primary and secondary engineer, plus a product team member, and a weekly hand-off meeting. Everyone participates in the rotation, and the primary keeps a journal. Communication is clear and regular updates are sent every 15 minutes. The article also highlights the importance of a release schedule and exposing junior engineers to on-call.

How I Moved Away From A Flat Organizational Structure

When the CTO of Narrative Science took over, the company was flat-structured with 14 engineers and 40 employees in total. To prepare for growth, the CTO implemented a QA and DevOps team, created a career ladder with five levels, and set up a program to hire recent graduates. He also had to explain the reasoning behind the changes to the existing organization and train people in having difficult conversations. He learned that it is important to make sure the requirements for each level are clear and that he should deliver on any promises made to employees.

Seek openness to conflict-resolution when hiring

This case study outlines a problem between two leads in a technology product management team. The manager took a number of actions to try to resolve the issue, including working with the lead on the "ladder of inference" concept and bringing in a third-party consultant. Ultimately, the lead was not willing to see the positive intent of others. The lesson learned is to hire for self-awareness, a willingness to grow, and an understanding that everyone in a system is responsible for how it is working.

Aligning An Individual’s Goals with Company Objectives

This article discusses the problem of a team running fast but needing maturation, resulting in pain points, technical spikes, and tech debt. To improve prioritization and productivity, OKRs were established to ladder up to the business focus and career ladders were determined for each individual. The goal was to align individual career success with OKRs and business perspectives. The key lessons learned were the importance of goal setting, finding alignment between business needs, individual interests, and abilities, and being able to make technical decisions that have an impact on the bigger scope of the business.

A Founder’s Dilemma: Choosing Between Technology and Customers

This article discusses the importance of understanding customer needs and not getting too caught up in the technical details of building a product. It emphasizes the need for founders to become emotionally detached from their products and to talk to other founders and get an advisor to help them prioritize their priorities. Ultimately, the goal is to build something that customers are looking for and to focus on customer needs rather than the latest technology.