How are your teams structured?

How are your teams structured?

1. ztoz

   5 hours ago

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   Generally, there are three to four levels of individual contributor (IC), from new grad to about six to ten years of experience. After that, there is a fork, where a person can start going up the manager track (which has one or two levels of managing ICs only, to managing managers and experienced ICs, to managing successively larger orgs), or go up the IC track. In my experience, the number of managing levels scales with the size of the org, but the number of IC levels (at least occupied) depends on the complexity or need for disparate impact within the company.

   In an aerospace company I worked, they created new levels if they needed to retain super talent, They also created titles to reward superior technical competency, although the titles weren’t really a new “level” or pay grade. In a startup, we had multiple levels of ICs that weren’t occupied for years as we 1) didn’t have anyone of that stature and 2) didn’t need anyone of that stature yet. This is to say that, while there are patterns, companies create these structures as the need arises.

   If you are looking for tools in providing better guidance and structure, I recommend the tools in the book Radical Candor by Kim Scott. She presents a way to draw out what motivates individual employees. (I have personal experience with it in both directions.) Tailoring opportunities for employees based on their desires, or being able to tell them that their desires aren’t realistic within the company, can be a more meaningful way for growing careers than trying to define what a title means.

2. Your team is made of people, who each have individual skills and motivations. As long as you remember and internalise that, you probably won’t go too far wrong. The worst management I’ve seen has always been as a result of failing to get that step right.

   1. IMO, the book Engineering Management for the Rest of Us does a good job at pointing that out, how to deal with conflicts that arise and so on.

      1. Thanks for the recommendation, I’ve not seen that one before. Of all the management books that I’ve read, the one that I’d recommend if you were going to read only one is PeopleWare. I’ve read the first and second editions. I’ve heard good things about the third edition but not seen a copy.

         In my spare time, I’m writing a book specifically about managing remote teams, since it’s something I’ve been doing for most of my career and people keep telling me that it’s hard. I hope to finish it over the summer.

         1. Thanks for reminding me of PeopleWare, it’s supposed to be a classic but I haven’t read it (yet).

3. fs111

   59 minutes ago

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   The book that I see recommended a lot in the last years is The Manager’s Path In my previous company that was required recommended/required for anyone going from IC to Management. I follow Camille on twitter/mastodon for ages. I think she knows her stuff.

   I personally have never much given thought to career development or planning that. Any plan typically falls apart with the next re-org or whatever else may be happening to your team/group/company. I guess I have been lucky in that I have a good career even though I am doing it all “wrong”.

   That being said as a manager you have to be more receptive to people that are not like that. There are people that are more driven by job titles. They have “goals” they want to reach. So I believe empathy is the number one thing you need to be a good manager. Understand that people are not like you and you will be fine. Also, last but not least I have always liked honesty with my managers and I appreciate it whent they don’t say corporate word salad to me but talk straight.

   1. I personally have never much given thought to career development or planning that. Any plan typically falls apart with the next re-org or whatever else may be happening to your team/group/company. I guess I have been lucky in that I have a good career even though I am doing it all “wrong”.

      There are different scales here. The ‘exactly what do I need to do to get the next promotion’ is subject to reorgs and so on (and suffers a lot from the fact that the easiest way to get a promotion in tech is to move to a competitor). The macro scale is a lot easier to think about. What skills will you need for your longer-term career goals and how do you get there? This can be technical things like wanting to get a deep understanding of something so that you become the company’s leading expert in technology X. More often it’s the skills involved in tech-lead positions, which include taking ownership of things, mentoring mor junior people, and so on. Sometimes it’s management things. Once you understand what your people want to learn, it’s easy to give them opportunities to develop those skills.

      For a lot of folks, understanding the expectations for other roles is also useful. This happens even for more senior people. Someone managing a moderately large team may not know what a VP or a CxO’s job actually entails, for example, and so doesn’t have a clear idea of whether that’s something that they’d want as a career goal.