And they say "Look, you're great at communication. Your soft skills are outstanding. We just don't think you're an engineer. Consider becoming a project manager instead?"
So what's wrong with promoting this person to a project manager?
So what's wrong with promoting this person to a project manager?
One of the best PMs I've ever worked with was a technical individual contributor until he was told given the feedback that he is really really really good at organizing and leading, and that's what he should do.
There are two different approaches here: 1. You can't do technical work, so try this other role that you've been doing already because hey, it turns out we need that role and 2. Hey, we've noticed you've been independently filling a gap we know or didn't know we had. Nice work! Want to transition to that role full-time?
If the "glue" in this scenario actually doesn't want to do the glue work, and wants to get promoted into technical SE roles, the appropriate thing to do would be to "manage upward" and make the organization aware of the need for more PM/Product Lead types of resources, while at the same time ensuring their own technical output is solid. I agree it is absolutely a crappy situation to need that glue work to be done and have no one tasked with doing it, but ignoring a portion of the work that is actually in your job description is counter productive if you want to get to an even more senior role that requires more of that work you haven't been doing.
In short, the fact that someone has to become the glue to begin with means the organization has some structural issues. The path to take raising awareness of that problem, not ignoring a portion of your responsibilities.
Ideally, whatever criteria used for the different rungs of the engineering IC ladder should call these out as contributions that are taken into account.
At the end of the day your goal should be having impact (usually) by shipping something and people who do this glue work are literally the reason something does/doesn't ship. Routing them to job roles that don't align with what they want is the quickest way to drive them away.
I get the whole "team effort" thing, but at the end of the day, you have to be a little selfish about the work you take on. If you start mopping the floors, rather than building features, don't be surprised if you start getting evaluated as a janitor.*
* note, I'm not intending to make a point by comparing eng/PM/janitor jobs in any absolute value sense. Just that the author did a job that wasn't in her description, and is bothered by the fact that it mattered.
(for what little it matters, I generally do a ton of glue type roles... but am conscious about taking them on.)
To me senior engineers deal with ambiguity and unclear ownership in a decisive way and that sounds exactly like what the author was doing. I can easily see how you would think delivering on metrics senior engineers on evaluated on(getting things out the door) would mean advancement as an engineer.
It ran contrary to what I had been told - do the work of the next level, and you'll be promoted to that level. It was tough adjusting, and I ended up moving into management. I got lucky in that I enjoy it, but I do miss doing the hands on work from time-to-time.
I view software as one of the few creative disciplines where you can actually be creative. Most people wanting to do far more creative things tend not to realise their dreams - working in the arts, getting published as a novel writer etc. These creative types don't imagine software to be creative, or imagine it to be a cutting edge medium.
I don't meet many programmers that see it that way, they would prefer to get promoted away from writing code. With more money.
It also matters to me for my work to be in the final product, not in a design document that nobody follows. Again, people aren't generally desperate for that.
So why the reason to have 'engineer' status? This being at Squarespace which is a bit like mySpace to some extent and not really 'engineering' in quite the same way as normal 'engineering' in manufacturing.