Levels of technical leadership

March 21, 2022

#81 – March 21, 2022

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This document describes why and how a tech company can offer a career path to its engineering technical leaders, that is, different tracks for “deep ICs” versus “broad ICs”.

You probably need to do fewer things right now.

One of the hardest things about being a software architect is gathering requirements. You can work with the greatest team of rockstar engineers on the planet and build the most amazing piece of tech ever seen. So great that you could trick most people who see it into believing it is magic but yet if it is not what the stakeholders wanted or what the market needs it is as worthless as a USB hamster wheel.

Managing teams has taught me a lot about my own behaviors and motivations. For example, I overworked for a long time. This left me continually teetering on the brink of burnout, and I had no energy left to absorb the typical sorts of organizational changes that happen at any company. Despite doing good work, I handled change poorly, and I picked up the reputation for being difficult to manage.

In IT services, we’re consultants at all times — not just to clients, but also to the project team, peers and delivery operations. This means that we’re often juggling many things at once — managing expectations of internal and external stakeholders, supporting teams as well as making decisions across technology, design, architecture and business solutions.

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