Technology and Development in Individual Contributor: How to Turn Code into a Career (Category Engineering)
Appeared. round-table at Techlead Conf X, where we discussed the development of individual contributors. We did it with four gentlemen.
- Maxim Vishnevsky, presenter (Mindbox)
- Gleb Mikheyev (sber)
- Alexander Beloturkin (dellimobile)
- Alexander Polomodov (T-Bank)
To summarize, we managed to talk about the following topics: 1. Defining the role of techlid and IC Techlead must articulate the technology landscape within the team, manage dependencies, and inspire the team to explore technology without having to deal with saw management. Individual Contributor (IC) It is the antipode of management, a high-level engineer who influences processes through expertise, not through people management. 2. Challenges of the current approach Techlids often turn into "playing coaches" - combine managerial and engineering duties Lack of clear market standards for IC roles makes it difficult to recruit and validate competencies In Russian companies, the IC branch is poorly developed compared to Western ones. (T-Bank and several other technology companies) 3. IC evaluation criteria T-bank uses a competency matrix with a focus on influence rather than technical skills.
- Scope - scale of work Impact - the impact of the company and the benefits of actions Leadership: The ability to coordinate without administrative authority Improvements - the ability to improve the processes around you 4. Approximate levels of IC grades in T-Bank
- Staff engineer - scale ~50 man
- Principal - scale.200-250 man Fellow - the scale of the entire company and recognition not only within the company, but also in the industry 5. Practical aspects IC development within the company is preferable to hiring from the market because of the specific role and the need to understand internal processes. Hiring IC includes several stages: technical interview, system design, evaluation of experience and approaches to engineering issues. By the way, about hiring staff + engineers, I recorded a separate Code of Leadership Series along with Alexey Tarasov, my colleague Functional Leadership – ICs should be profession/guild leaders, but not direct people. 6. Challenges and solutions The problem of “guerrilla” is when ICs make changes without consent. Solution: creating guilds, describing problems before making changes, notifying teams in advance. Balance between initiative and coordination – it’s important to take responsibility for improvement while aligning with the team. 7. The Future of IC Direction The discussion of the IC branch returns with each crisis, when it is impossible to solve problems only by increasing funding. We agreed that there is potential in Russian companies to develop a culture of engineering responsibility, although most ICs do not attach importance to formal grades, for them the real impact on processes is more important.
P.S. I highly recommend reading Will Larson’s book.Staff EngineerAnd my review of this book in two parts: 1 and 2.
#Management #Software #Processes #Project #ProductManagement #Engineering #Processes #Leadership #Staff #Architecture #Career