Roles & Titles

Creating Focused Paths for Growth

In response to feedback from team members, the organization created three paths for career growth: a technical lead path, an architect path, and a manager path. This was supported by the TILES framework and a strategy document, as well as an engineering health framework. The implementation of these paths was adjusted to provide a softer transition for those crossing over to a manager role, and to separate tech leads from HR duties.

Effective 1:1s

To keep track of his growing engineering team, the author implemented weekly 1:1s with each engineer to ask questions about their accomplishments, blocks, and what should and shouldn't be done. He also keeps a shared Google Doc to make the twice-yearly review process easier. The goal is to ensure no one gets blocked for long, get a pulse on what people are working on, and make sure people feel heard.

Creating a Useful Product Vision

A product vision is an important part of a company strategy that serves as a North Star for the product organization, motivating them to create a compelling product that solves customer problems. It should not be confused with the company mission or product roadmap. It is important to create a product vision when teams need to be aligned in a common direction. It is worth the investment to create a product vision that is short and straightforward, and everyone should understand the purpose behind it.

Implementing a Clear Promotion Process in a Growing Company

This article discusses the challenges a company faced when trying to promote employees in a systematic way across all leadership. To address this, the company created an engineering ladder and a promotion readiness document to provide clarity on expectations for everyone. This system opened up honest conversations between individuals and their managers, and it was so successful that other departments adopted similar approaches. As a result, people felt more inspired to challenge themselves and go after certain things.

Solving a conflict between a team of back-end engineers and a team of ops engineers

The VP of Engineering at Happn faced a conflict between the ops and back-end engineering teams. To resolve the conflict, the VP gathered an equal number of engineers from each team and had them use the "Six Thinking Hats Method" to identify action plans. The teams were able to resolve the conflict with the help of action plans and follow-up meetings. The VP learned three lessons from the experience: it's better to gather both teams in the same room, they must have a common objective, and action plans and follow-up meetings are key.

Training a developer to fill a management role

When a company grows quickly, it may be necessary to add another layer of management. In this case, the team of seven people had no one with leadership skills, so the manager hired a senior developer and spent eight months training him for the role. This allowed the developer to gain legitimacy and the team to be happy with the promotion. The manager learned that it is difficult to delegate and that a new layer of management can have a big impact.