By the time you are working with someone who needs to call themselves an Architect it is already game over. The best technical leaders lead from the trenches, by setting an example and empowering those all around them.
This IS largely how it goes down, but I have a very experienced Principal developer; how do I reward them without a promotion into something that sounds like "Architect"? They are still often hands-on, and have a healthy fear of becoming the Ivory Tower version, but what comes next for them?
> They are still often hands-on, and have a healthy fear of becoming the Ivory Tower version, but what comes next for them?
If you can write a title for them, this is usually where a Fellow or Distinguished Engineer lands.
Most Distinguished Engineers I know are actually VP/Director levels of leadership talent, but walk up the whole ladder from building things to deciding strategy every couple of weeks.
I didn't understand the value of a title either, until I was given a big title + a large cash award in an all hands, with the goal of putting me to work in a very specific way.
The title gave me clout when dealing with middle management and then I was dropped wherever there was an ongoing crisis, told me to make decisions without worrying about my job security (including giving me accelerated vesting safeguards, so firing me to appease a VP would be very expensive).
The article ends with the exact same idea that /“Am I willing and able to be there at 3 a.m. to resolve urgent breakdowns in the very system I created?”/
That gets taken the wrong way sometimes - if you optimize to avoid the "need to wake up at 3 AM, being the only person with enough knowledge to fix it", most other things fall in place.
By the time you are working with someone who needs to call themselves an Architect it is already game over. The best technical leaders lead from the trenches, by setting an example and empowering those all around them.
This IS largely how it goes down, but I have a very experienced Principal developer; how do I reward them without a promotion into something that sounds like "Architect"? They are still often hands-on, and have a healthy fear of becoming the Ivory Tower version, but what comes next for them?
> They are still often hands-on, and have a healthy fear of becoming the Ivory Tower version, but what comes next for them?
If you can write a title for them, this is usually where a Fellow or Distinguished Engineer lands.
Most Distinguished Engineers I know are actually VP/Director levels of leadership talent, but walk up the whole ladder from building things to deciding strategy every couple of weeks.
I didn't understand the value of a title either, until I was given a big title + a large cash award in an all hands, with the goal of putting me to work in a very specific way.
The title gave me clout when dealing with middle management and then I was dropped wherever there was an ongoing crisis, told me to make decisions without worrying about my job security (including giving me accelerated vesting safeguards, so firing me to appease a VP would be very expensive).
The article ends with the exact same idea that /“Am I willing and able to be there at 3 a.m. to resolve urgent breakdowns in the very system I created?”/
That gets taken the wrong way sometimes - if you optimize to avoid the "need to wake up at 3 AM, being the only person with enough knowledge to fix it", most other things fall in place.
The AI illustrations are distracting and do not benefit the article in any way.