Pawel Brodzinski on Leadership in Technology

Whatever it takes to lead a team, build a product, and run a business

Tag: leadership

  • Closing Leadership Gap

    A theme that pops up every now and then is a leadership gap. An organization or its part finds itself in a situation where they need more leaders that there potentially are available. They might outgrow the old model and the existing leaders just don’t scale up. They might be facing challenges when someone had left the organization. It might be a simple consequence of evolving how the organization works. A list of potential reasons is long.

    A list of potential solutions is surprisingly short though. Typically it’s either hiring some people or promoting a bunch of folks to leadership positions. The former often means a lot of uncertainty. We don’t know whether a candidate would fit existing culture and pretty frequently we don’t even know how to verify that they have the right traits and skills.

    The latter, while it seems safer, is commonly a root cause of having the wrong people in leadership or management positions.

    What is a leader anyway?

    The problem of a leadership gap is actually deeper than we think. A part of it is how we constrain our understanding of leadership. In vast majority of situations when I hear about leadership debt a story is about leadership positions.

    You know, it’s about a position of a technical leader, line manager or something along these lines. This will never scale well.

    Even if scaling wasn’t an issue a situation when a team relies on a single leader is a huge risk itself. I would simply question that any single person is competent to make all the leadership calls you can think of. For example, on any given team I’m likely one of the last folks you want to enlist to lead with a technical issue.

    My answer to leadership gap starts with defining leadership as a contextual role and not position. This means that depending on circumstances anyone can act as a leader. It doesn’t matter what position they are in, what their tenure is or how much formal power they have. The only thing that matters is that within a given context they are the right ones to lead a team.

    Suddenly leadership gap doesn’t exist anymore as basically everyone is a leader and acts as one in appropriate moments.

    Where Leaders Thrive

    Obviously it’s not that easy. The magic won’t happen without a right environment. There are two critical bits to make it happen.

    The first is empowerment. Everyone has to know that they are supposed to be leaders whenever they feel like it. It starts with formal leaders, people in leadership positions, ceasing to execute their power. It’s not dodging the responsibility. Pretty much the opposite. It’s taking responsibility for decisions made by someone else. That’s quite a challenge for most of us.

    The best summary of such attitude are Grace Hopper’s famous words:

    “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

    If your people believe in that and act accordingly, they truly are empowered. It also means that from time to time they will make you willing to yell at them: “Why the hell hadn’t you asked before you did something so utterly dumb?” What you should do instead is shut up. Don’t ruin that.

    The second bit is trust. If you don’t trust your team you will always be struggling with a leadership gap. Without trust the empowerment part would be meaningless empty words. No one would attempt to play a role of a leader and even if they do it once there wouldn’t be a second attempt.

    This is difficult because it means giving up control. But wait, we want more leaders so we are talking exactly about this – giving up control. How is anyone supposed to lead if their every action is double-checked by someone else?

    Closing Leadership Gap

    I have an idea for you. Instead of asking how to close a leadership gap think whether your people feel empowered or rather carefully managed. Ask yourself how you react when they screw something up and how it affects their future actions. Finally, be brutally honest with yourself: do you trust your people?

    The leadership gap problem is never solved by getting more leaders. The solution is creating an environment where leadership thrives.

    In other words the key to this puzzle is not outside the system but within it – in a way existing leaders act. And obviously the more senior the leaders the more they influence the situation. If you are complaining that you lack leaders in your team it’s likely your fault.

  • Manager-Free Organization

    One of frequently mentioned management ideas these days is that we don’t need management. If I got a free beer every time I’ve heard the examples of W.L. Gore, Valve or GitHub and how we should act as they do I could stay drunk for weeks without needing to buy any alcohol. A common message is that if they can everyone can.

    I don’t subscribe to that idea.

    Well, being a manager myself that’s not really a surprise, isn’t it?

    I mean I’m really impressed with what these companies do, especially W.L. Gore given its size. It doesn’t mean that I automatically think that it is the new management model that masses should adopt. I simply don’t treat is as the true north of management or leadership if you will.

    First, such an approach is very contextual. You have to have a lot of right bits and pieces in place before it works. For the start it will fail miserably unless you have the right people on board and, let’s face it, most companies have way too many bad apples to make it work.

    Second, scaling up a manager-free organization is a huge pain in the neck. This is why I respect so much W.L. Gore work.

    Being a fan of evolution I also try to imagine how to become such an organization evolutionary. I guess I must be too dumb but in vast majority of companies it is beyond my imagination. Revolutions, on the other hand, have surprisingly crappy success rate so that’s not a feasible solution either.

    So far you might have considered me as a skeptic.

    Well, not really.

    While I don’t think that the managerless approach is, or will be, for everyone there is a specific context where it is surprisingly easy to implement. If you run a small company, let’s say smaller than 30 people, there’s not that much of managerial work anyway. Unless you introduce tons of that crap, that is.

    It just so happens that Lunar Logic is such a small company. When you think about small and stable size you can forget about scaling issue. It is much easier to find the right people too because you simply need fewer of them. While Valve needs few hundreds of them we’re perfectly fine with twenty-something. Besides, smaller teams generally tend to have fewer bad apples as everything, naturally, is more transparent. Everyone knows everyone else, sees others’ work, etc. There’s no place to hide.

    Suddenly, the manager-free approach doesn’t seem so scary, does it?

    It may be a hit for managers’ ego though.

    I can hardly remember when I wasn’t a manager. Obviously there were countless occasions when I used my formal power to do what I believed was right. So yes, it took courage to intentionally strip myself off of power and just put myself in a row with everyone else. Not that I’m already done with that; it’s a gradual process. A nice thing is that it can be done in evolutionary fashion though.

    While I still make salary and some other financial decisions, that’s basically it. The good part is that I’m forced to wear my manager’s hat very, very rarely. I spend the rest of my time fulfilling all the other roles I have which hopefully can be summarized as me helping others.

    You know, all the fun stuff, like setting up daily conference calls with the clients, writing longish boring emails, keeping task boards up to date, solving mundane problems, etc. Typically, just being there and looking for ways to help the rest of the team doing their best. An interesting thing is it does feel damn good even if the tasks sound less-than-exciting. I help people to do their awesome job. What else could you ask for as a leader?

    That’s why I can’t be happier when I witness others treating me just as a regular team member. It means we are closer to being a manager-free organization.

    So while you shouldn’t expect me proposing the managerless office to everyone I definitely thing that this is something small, knowledge-based companies could try.

    Would it work that easily if we were twice as big? I have no freaking idea. I mean we definitely aren’t yet where GitHub or Valve is. I don’t even know if we want to be there. If the company’s growth is a threat for the culture we grow and cultivate here, so much the worse for the growth.

    And this basically summarizes why I think that the manager-free approach isn’t for majority. I think pretty few businesses would prefer to sacrifice growth just for the sake of preserving the culture.

    By the way, do expect more on the subject soon.

  • No Authenticity, No Leadership

    There’s one thing about me that virtually every boss I’ve had so far has tried to correct. If you look at me all my emotions are painted on my face. You just can’t fail guessing whether I’m happy, worried, tired, excited, etc. I’ve heard so many times that I should do something about that since having people see my negative emotions definitely isn’t a good thing.

    You know, they see you worried so they instantly start worrying too and you don’t want to have worried people.

    I think I’ve even tried to change that. Fortunately, I’ve failed. Not that I don’t see how leader’s emotions can influence team’s behaviors. I do. And I know that sometimes I’m not helping, sorry for that.

    On the other hand, I’m honest and transparent this way. I’m all for honesty. I believe that transparency is a crucial ingredient for building a healthy team or a strong organization. In the worst case this attitude is a mixed blessing.

    But that’s not why I won’t try to change the behavior any more. I won’t do it because it’s who I am.

    One doesn’t have to like it. Such attitude doesn’t fit every organizational culture (and I learned it the hard way). But you aren’t a leader if you aren’t authentic.

    I was reminded that recently by Gwyn Teatro with her story about what leadership is. One bit I really loved:

    The man was successful because he did not pretend to be anyone else. His communication style included fun, laughter and humility. It worked for him simply because it is who he is.

    More than about anything else it’s about authenticity. People catch false tones sooner than you think. Then, they start guessing what really happens under the mask. It’s likely that their guesses are worse than the truth that one tries to hide. After all we are a creative bunch, aren’t we? It soon becomes worse: they don’t listen to the truth, even when it bites their butts. They just know better thanks to the gossips and far-fetched hunches. Their “leader” hasn’t been authentic so what’s the point of trusting him?

    So no, I’m not trading my authenticity for anything. Not worth it.

  • Flying Office

    I’ve been working as a manager for the vast majority of my career. Teams I led consisted between a couple to 150 people, most of them being bigger than 20. Throughout that time I’ve had my own office once. And I don’t think it’s been a good idea.

    I decided to move to the office as I didn’t really see any reasonable setup that would work with a team spread across 40 rooms. It was then, when I first thought about the idea of sitting with one team for a week or two before moving to another office to join another team. I didn’t decide to pursue the idea though.

    The thing that kept me from doing that was the organizational culture. I was a parachute boss for everyone and the division hadn’t existed before as a single entity, thus there was very little to no trust to me, or between teams.

    If I’d popped one day in a random office stating that I’d been planning to sit in for a couple of weeks it would have been interpreted as spying on the team (or some other, more sophisticated form of repression).

    Fortunately, this time the situation is different. The organizational culture in Lunar Logic is way more open. No one assumes that the boss has bad intentions. In fact, I’ve had first discussions with people being concerned about my actions just a couple of weeks after I joined.

    It takes courage to go to your new boss and interrogate them about their plans and intentions. Such an attitude means that people voluntarily become vulnerable. It also sets up a completely different environment a leader acts in.

    So this time I’m not going to have a private office, not a chance. After just a few weeks spent in a neutral place I fetched myself a flying office. What’s that? A bean bag, a laptop table and a cardboard box.

    Flying office

    A bean bag works extremely well as a sitting device. It is extra-comfortable for short periods of time. On the other hand it would be painful, and unhealthy, to sit there for 8 hours. The latter reminds me that leader’s place isn’t on their butt but on their feet – running around, removing obstacles and solving problems.

    A laptop table solves a problem with keeping a laptop on, well, you lap, which, despite its name, isn’t the most convenient way of working.

    And I use a recycled cardboard box to store all my office belongings, which is simply a handful of sticky notes and a couple of pens and markers.

    This way I can grab my flying office to my hands and move it to the place where I’m needed or I feel like I can be helpful. I need just a bit of space in a corner or by the wall and done – a new office set up.

    Surprisingly, sitting in the corner and almost on the floor has a few unexpected advantages . First, you need very little physical space, which means you will fit to almost any room (unless it is already packed beyond any healthy limits). Second, this way you become almost invisible, which definitely helps if your goal is to understand how the team functions, and not just scratch the surface.

    Third, and arguably most importantly, you strip yourself from status symbols. Instead of a huge desk dubbed by your colleagues as the airstrip, a leather armchair and a locker just the simplest set that does the job.

    All in all, you’re way more accessible and much less intimidating. Isn’t that something every single leader should strive for?

    The flying office isn’t only very mobile; it also renders quite a few barriers that leaders often face irrelevant. Bringing oneself to a floor level is a challenge for ego though, but I’d say it is a good thing too.

    All you need to start it is just a bit of trust.

    Honestly, I regret I didn’t try it, despite the odds, when the only other option was a private office. I can hardly think of a different setup now, that I potentially have half a dozen more common solutions.

    How about you? Given that your team doesn’t work in a single room, are you courageous enough to try?

  • Why Organizational Transformations Fail

    You can’t reorganize the way a business thinks by reorganizing the business.

    ~Stephen Parry

    I can safely state that every company I worked for was attempting to make an organizational transition during my time there. Motivations varied from simply surviving, through adjusting to a new environment, to improving the whole business. Approaches to run a transition also differed, but one common part was a reorganization.

    Oh, reorganizations. Who doesn’t love reorgs? Shaking everyone around. Bringing in good old insecurity and fear of unknown. Quite an interesting strategy to introduce a positive change, although the one which is most prevalent and often inevitable. Unfortunately, a strategy that has a pretty low success rate too.

    After all, coffee doesn’t become sweeter simply because you stir it.

    The interesting part, however, is that I can come up with an example or two in which reorganizations helped to make a transition a success, or even make it possible in the first place.

    How come? The answer is hidden in Stephen Parry’s words at the beginning of the post. It’s not about the reorganization itself; it’s about changing the way business thinks. The problem with most reorgs is that they’re driven from the top, which usually means that the top of hierarchy remains the same. It also means that the way business thinks, which spreads top-down, remains unchanged.

    If the organization’s leaders’ mindset remains the same, any change that is introduced down there isn’t sustainable. Eventually, it will be reverted. Depending on how many layers of isolation there are it may take some time but it’s inevitable. Prevailing mindset just goes top-down and unless you can address its source it’s a battle you’re not going to win.

    I can think of, and have been a part of, reorganizations that shook the very top of a company, introducing new leaders and thus enabling the new way of thinking. Yes, the business was reorganized but this was neither the only nor the most important part of the change.

    Because coffee doesn’t become sweeter simply because you stir it. Unless you’ve remembered to add sugar before, that is.

    The game-changer here is mindset; that has to change in order to enable the successful transition. And I have bad news for you: it has to change at the very top of the organization. You don’t necessarily have to start there, but eventually it either happens or things, in general, remain the same.

    So if you consider a reorg as a way to change how your business works, ask yourself a question: does this change affect the mindset of the organization’s leaders? If not, I wouldn’t expect much chance of success.

    Besides, there are many ways to skin a cat. A reorg isn’t the only tool you have to change mindset across the organization. Heck, it isn’t even a very good one. Remember that when you start the next revolution just to see that virtually nothing changes as a result.

    By the way, there is a neat application of this idea in a bit different situation too. If you want to preserve mindset across the organization when changing leaders, pay very close attention how new leaders think. Your company can be a well-oiled machine, but when steering wheel is grabbed by a guy who neither understands nor cares about the existing mindset, the situation is going to deteriorate pretty quickly. You just don’t want to hire Steve Balmer to substitute for Bill Gates.

  • Leadership, Fellowship, Citizenship

    There was a point in my career when I realized how different the concepts of management and leadership were, and that to be a good manager one had to be a good leader. Since then the idea of leadership, as I understand it, has worked for me very well. I even like to consider my role in organizations I work for as a leader, not a manager.

    Perceptions of leadership shift these days. Bob Marshall proposes the concept of fellowship. The idea is based on the famous Fellowship of the Ring and builds on how the group operated and what values were shared among its members, so that they eventually could achieve their goal.

    A common denominator here is that everyone is equal; there’s no single “leader” who is superior to everyone else. At different points in time different people take over the role of leader in a way that is the best for the group.

    As Bob points, leadership doesn’t really help to move beyond an analytical organization (see: The Marshall Model). This means the concept of leadership is insufficient to deal with further challenges our companies face on a road of continuous improvement. We need something different to deal with our teams, thus fellowship.

    Another, somehow related, concept comes from Tobias Mayer, who points us to the idea of citizenship. Tobias builds the concept on a balance between rights and responsibilities. It’s not that we, as citizens, are forced or told to keep our neighborhood clean – it’s that we feel responsible for it. This mechanism can be transferred to our workplaces and it would be an improvement, right?

    I like both concepts. Actually, I even see how one can transit to the other, back and forth, depending on which level of an organization you are. On a team level, fellowship neatly describes desired behaviors and group dynamics. As you go up the ladder, citizenship is a nice model to describe representation of a group among higher ranks. It also is a great way to show that we should be responsible for and to the people we work with, e.g. different teams, and the organization as a whole.

    Using ideas introduced by Tobias and Bob we can improve how our teams and organizations operate, that’s for sure.

    Yet, I don’t get one thing here. Why fellowship and citizenship concepts are built in opposition to leadership?

    OK, maybe my understanding of leadership is flawed and there is The Ultimate Leadership Definition written in the stone somewhere, only I don’t know it. Maybe fellowship and citizenship violate one of The Holy Rules of Leadership and I’m just not aware of them. Because, for me, both ideas are perfectly aligned with leadership.

    Leadership is about making a team operate better. If it takes to be in the first line, fine. When someone needs to do the dirty work no one else is willing to do, I’m good with that as well. I’m even happier when others can take over the leader’s role whenever it does make sense. And what about taking responsibility for what we do, people around and an organization around? Well, count me in, no matter what hat I wear at the moment.

    When I read Bob and Tobias I’m all: “hell, yeah!” Except the part with labels. Because I still call it leadership. This is exactly what leadership is for me. Personally, I don’t need another name for what I do.

    I don’t say that we should avoid coining new terms. Actually, both citizenship and fellowship are very neat names. I just don’t see the point of building the opposition to ideas we already know. The more so as citizenship and fellowship are models, which are useful for many leaders.

    I don’t buy an argument that we need a completely new idea as people are misusing concepts we already have. Well, of course they are. There are all kinds of flawed flavors of leadership, same as there will be flawed flavors of fellowship and citizenship when they become popular.

    I don’t agree that leadership encourages wrong behaviors, e.g. learned helplessness. Conversely, the role of a leader is to help a team operate better, thus help eliminate such behaviors. A good leader doesn’t build followership; they build new leaders.

    That’s why I prefer to treat citizenship and fellowship as enhancements of leadership, not substitutions of it.

  • Being a Leader

    Recently a subject of leadership pops up on Software Project Management pretty often, but usually I look at it from manager’s perspective. After all that’s something I do for living – managing teams. So yes, being a leader is the first and probably the most important role of manager (by the way, the post on role of manager turned into full-blown presentation which causes some buzz every time I deliver it). But leadership isn’t exclusively attached to management.

    We are leaders in our workplaces, but we lead in different communities and informal groups as well. And even if we stick to our professional lives we can lead in technical areas or be typical people leaders. Leadership has many names. This was exactly the theme of my recent presentation on the subject which I delivered as a guest on Toastmasters contest.

    Being a leader

    A very interesting discussion followed the session. I used leadership definition I’ve heard from Mary Poppendieck: “Ability to attract followers is exactly what makes you a leader.” The definition neatly covers all sorts of tech leads – if I believe you’re knowledgeable and experienced person in a specific area I will come to pester you every time I need help with that matter. In other words I will follow you, which according to definition makes you a leader.

    The argument against that approach is that we call it authority and not leadership and leadership is/should be discussed from a perspective of leading teams/groups. I can’t say I agree with this point of view as we’d have to cross out many leaders who build their follower base thanks to extraordinary knowledge and technical skills. What do you think?

    By the way, after criticism I faced on my slides from AgileEE I built this slide deck differently. Happy now?

  • So You Promoted Wrong People to Management, What Now?

    It seems recently I’m telling you a lot stuff about people management and managers in general. If describing the role of manager wasn’t enough you could also read a rant about screwed promotions which we see so often. This all stuff is good (yes, such a shameless self-promotion), but it assumes one optimistic thing: you can still make decisions who will be promoted to management.

    However sometimes we don’t choose who is promoted to managerial positions. These decisions have already been made and they’ve been made wrong. If your task is to deal with that you’ll need to follow a three-step scenario.

    1. Coach

    OK, great engineer doesn’t make a candidate for a great manager. But it doesn’t make you can’t make a good manager out of great engineer. The trick is to raise awareness that someone doesn’t perform well as a manager and coach them to improve their people skills. Help them to change their focus from engineering to people management. However this effort can’t be unlimited. If someone isn’t willing to change you won’t force them. Then it’s time to move to the point number 2.

    2. Find a better place

    If someone excelled as an engineer and you can’t make a good manager out of them you might try to move them back to some engineering-related role. Maybe design, maybe architecture, maybe even project management would be a good place. It all depends on an individual case. Of course it is tricky – what you basically do is you move someone back from management to engineering, so you better have pretty prestigious engineering roles. And do it if, and only if, you believe the person would perform well in a new role. If you can’t find such role or leaving management isn’t really an option all you’re left with is a solution number 3.

    3. Let them go

    If you can deal with an issue other way you should let wrong people go. And yes, this means you’re losing a great engineer, who unfortunately became poor manager and is unwilling to switch back to the role which he performed well at. What you’re left with at that point is either to keep someone who do crappy job, which also affects their team, or to let them go and find possibly a better candidate. Well, if we discuss someone who failed at points 1 and 2 of the plan I’d let him go. As harsh as it sounds it is a good decision for both of you and for the discussed team.

    Keeping poor managers is much worse than admitting you’ve made wrong decision promoting them in the first place.

    And if you want to see more stuff about being a good manager you will appreciate my recent presentation titled Good Manager, True Leader, which I delivered at our internal company conference.

    Good Manager, True Leader

  • The Role of Manager

    I took part in a very interesting discussion today. We were talking about criteria we should use to appraise leaders and managers in the organization. The most surprising part, at least for me, was discussion about notion of line manager among disputants.

    It came out that we considered average functional manager as anything between pure-manager to person who does 90% of engineering work mixed with 10% of managerial tasks. That’s a variety of options, isn’t it? As you may guess I supported rather the former than the latter.

    Well, if I’m such an opponent of letting people do what they used to do before they were promoted to management, likely coding if we talk about software teams, what I think they should do all day long? In other words what is, or should be, the role of manager.

    Leader

    This vague term describes first and most important trait most managers should have and only few have. If I’m a team member I expect my manager will show leadership and charisma. I want to be ignited to follow his ideas. I need to be sure he knows why and where we are heading. I have to see him around when problems arise. I eager to be managed by someone I’d like to follow even if no one told me so. A good manager is also a good leader but these two are not the same. What a pity it isn’t common mixture.

    Coach

    Help newcomers with learning the organization. Help inexperienced with gaining experience. Help everyone with growing. Help those with problems with fixing them. Easy? No, not at all. First, you need to know who needs what. Then, you need to know how to reach people so your helping hand won’t be rejected. Finally, you need to work carefully and patiently sharing your knowledge in experience in a way which doesn’t frustrate or dishearten people. Repeat when finished.

    Shield

    As a line manager you have some senior management over your head. This is a bad news. Actually there’s usually a lot of crap flying over there and, because of the gravity, it’s going to land down on heads of your team. There will be blame games. There will be pointing fingers. It is your time. Be a shield. Take enough bullets on your chest for the team. You’ll earn respect. You’ll earn a bunch of loyal followers. And that’s how you earn your spurs.

    Advocate

    As a manager you’re also an advocate. Devil’s advocate to be precise. You have to present and defend different decisions made up there, in the place where only C-level execs are allowed. Sometimes these decisions you won’t like. But for your people you’re still the face of the company so don’t play the angry boy and act like a man. We don’t always do what we want. After all, they pay you for this, remember?

    Motivator

    Sometimes everyone needs a kick in the butt to get back to work at full speed. It would be quite a pleasant task but unfortunately kicking butts is used as a metaphor here. It’s all about motivation. And I have a bad news here, there’s no easy answer for a question what motivates people. You have to learn each of your people individually. Oh, forgot to mention, it takes quite a lot of time to learn what drives all these people.

    Adviser

    Yes, an adviser. Not a decision-maker. At least not unless you really have to make a decision by yourself. People will come to you asking different things. Well, they will if they think your opinion may add some value and you’re capable to understand what the hell they are talking about. Of course you can guess or shoot or use magic 8 ball but you better learn (oh no! more learning) what the problem really is and help your team to solve it. Note: it is different than solving it for them, even if you know the answer. If an association which comes to your mind is delegation I must praise your reasoning.

    Now if you are done with those and still have enough time to keep up your outstanding engineering skills, please do Mr. Anderson. Unfortunately chances are good it is enough to fill more than a full working day so you’d have to choose between focusing on your management or technical skills.

    And if you happen to spend two third of your day coding, well, I dare to say you aren’t a manager I’d like to work for. Your people would say the same, but you don’t talk with them so you don’t even know. After all there’s no time to chit chat, you have to code, right?

  • Don’t Promote Best Engineers to Management Positions

    I remember one of first post ideas for this blog back then, 4 years ago. It was about choosing people to promote them to management roles. I’ve never published the post and I’m glad about that. A few years ago I didn’t know about hiring and promoting managers more than typical decision maker in IT companies now.

    I knew nothing.

    During these few years I’ve met a number of managers who should never be promoted to any position which touches leading people whatsoever. I mean they were great engineers once. But engineering, and software development isn’t an exception, and management are two different things. They don’t even rhyme with each other. So why the hell do we keep promoting our best engineers to management positions?

    Vast majority of best developers I’ve met were crappy candidates for managers. They were thinking in terms of code, not in terms of people. And a manager isn’t the go-to-guy when you have a technical problem. (The guy is called Google by the way.) A manager should work with people, not with code, architecture or build server. Yes, the transition is possible. Hey, if someone is willing to pay me real money for managing people it is some kind of proof. But the switch is painful and time consuming. And unfortunately most of the time it just doesn’t happen.

    We end up with a lot of people around who are still good-to-great engineers but crappy managers. And we let them lead. Then, when we need to promote someone even higher we have basically no good choice. And we end up with a bunch of managers-by-accident all over the organization. As a side effect you lose your best brains when it comes to engineering.

    Skills required to be technical leader and people manager are so different it is highly unlikely that your best engineer is also your best candidate for a manager. You can safely assume your engineers aren’t different. Why should they?

    If you want to offer your best engineer management position, rethink it. Twice. Is it possible you do it because it is exactly how things were done around for years? Is it possible you’re going to lose great developer and gain crappy manager instead? Is it possible to find a better candidate within the team or outside?

    If the answer is triple yes, and surprisingly often it is so, you’re doing wrong thing. I would even say that sometimes it’s better to let your great engineer go than to make him a manager. Of course if he is a crappy candidate for management position.