Ask HN: Becoming a Director of Engineering | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Becoming a Director of Engineering

28 pointseaglehead19 comments

What tips do you have for someone looking to become a director of engineering at a large tech company. Should I look into courses at Stanford or MIT or how do I go about finding a mentor?

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One key I think is controlling your emotional reactivity & gaining perspective on issues.

I think when you are a junior IC, you can easily see things in black and white. You can get worked up over perceived issues, judging too quickly, and can easily see things from an us vs them perspective. You need to be able to gain the full perspective on an issue. The saying "be curious not judgmental" is very front and center to engineering leadership.

So for example, when a coworker rants to you, don't amplify their rant. Try to de-amplify it. Ask questions, be curious about the other side, try to listen and validate, but don't take too much stock in their rant. This keeps you in a more objective, thoughtful problem-solving mindset, rather than the reptilian brain that responds with a 'fight or flight' fashion.

This is important for moving up in the leadership ladder because

(a) Emotional immaturity will stress out your superiors. You're seen as someone that needs to be 'managed' not someone productively getting your work done

(b) It helps you better see a solution to a problem in a more objective way, not a punitive way

(c) It creates blame-free leadership, where you focus on the dynamics between people and systems, not how one person screws up

When you can gather these facts and think about issues objectively, then you can create more informed opinions about the direction the team(s) should take, lead more effectively, and include everyones input getting much more buy-in.

I am not a director of engineering at a large tech company. But looking at the profiles of those who are, I get the impression that in addition to having an amazing CV, those people have an excellent professional network. To an outsider it might look like a meritocracy, but it is most positively more about who you know, and how you connect socially, etc.

@drdunce, it really does depend where you are starting from. Regardless, start hustling your network and build up an incredible profile. A PhD + MBA might be useful but most certainly not sufficient.

Interesting insight. How does one go about creating this network? I have a network with my fellow colleagues but with remote/hybrid settings, its hard to make that personal connection with them that I could do if we were in person.

If you work with vendors and suppliers, you should have good rapport with those folks. Ditto for peers in technology or business in your company. It’s something you need to always work on. Be kind when you don’t have to. Listen to people. Be fair when things go wrong and generous when they go right. Build trust and bridges, help when you can, etc.

Being able to pick up the phone and get action is key to any director role. I’m a senior director for a few years, and who I know has been more important than what I know more times than not.

One example is a few months ago, there was a critical failure in another part of our technology org, a legacy system that has alot of impact to the business. I was in a rotating major incident commander role, and the primary teams were all impacted by COVID.

Being able to call the business leader and let her know that we have a serious problem, but are working on it kept the situation calm was key to preventing intra-org issues. You need to project calm leadership, even when you’re flipping out internally when the normal processes are all useless.

Having relationships with suppliers and SMEs allowed us to leverage key people and get them engaged - they were ultimately essential to getting things running again.

Certainly professional network plays an important aspect of one getting the job.

It depends on where you’re starting from. In general, the easiest way is to join a smaller, high growth organization where you can grow into the role and then transfer to a large company. I recommend being very clear about your expectations upfront so you don’t end up somewhere that never could accommodate that growth. You may have to go above a Director role (e.g. Sr Director or VP) in order to transfer to a director role at some companies (e.g. FAANG).

Alternatively, you could join a large tech company and try to grind your way up the ladder. That will depend a lot on your ability to navigate complicated politics and deliver on impactful projects.

1. Forget about schooling as the checkbox to get you to Director Eng as you'll be more likely self-focused, and more disappointed when people don't check the promotion box along with your personal ambition. Your personal ambition will be a motivator -- to no one but you. Now, get more schooling and shut up about it - people will recognize it in your words and action.

2. Understand that responsibility and authority are inseparable. Be prepared to take fullest possible responsibility of results (good/bad/ugly) in exchange for true authority both formal and more importantly, informal.

3. Have a decent (B or better) set of relevant technical skills and then, consider it malpractice to further develop those skills on your team. You're now a developer of them.

4. Forget about your career, rather for your team members, figure out how you will AMP their careers - more Autonomy, more Mastery of their craft, and more Purpose (AMP).

5. Work on your RELATIONSHIP/LEADERSHIP skills by determining honestly what type of leader you are and will become. Hint, servant leaders, when necessary, will make severe personal sacrifices for their team members, not throw them under the bus to those higher up. They will love you for it.

6. Work on your communication skills / Lead some project meetings whether internal or external and involve everyone you can, while showcasing their contributions.

7. Develop a behavioral Code of Honor with Values congruent with those of the organization at large that you, first, and everyone on your team will subscribe to, and expect from each other. This is about Trust, particularly when the kitchen gets hot - and yes, the kitchen will get hot.

8. Without pissing off your current boss, craft an approach to get to someone who has the authority to make such a call and then, ASK....ASK. "if at some point, I was a developer and steward of a team with these attributes - A, B, C to this organization, what would we ideally help you accomplish over the next 18 months, and how would you know it was successful?

9. Oh and generally (not cause I know you) reduce the use of the word "I, Me, My" by like 80%.

> 4. Forget about your career, rather for your team members, figure out how you will AMP their careers - more Autonomy, more Mastery of their craft, and more Purpose (AMP).

Is this good advice? I understand that that's the kind of boss we as ICs want, but from my observation, managers like that do worse than your typical career-oriented brown-noser who doesn't care at all about their reports.

No, not really good advice. At least too pithy to be complete.

The real meaning is that your career will take care of itself as a byproduct of focusing on these other things. It's not the endgame, not a worry, and certainly not an obsession - recipes for failure actually.

The most effective focus rather is on personal improvement - i.e. Virtue - i.e. Strength aligned in Serving your stakeholders (team, executives, both sides, etc).

This is something you don’t find any scalable and predictable strategy to get to.

There seems to be no causality (let alone stable correlation) between you getting this position and your education, years of experience etc etc.

I guess the best bet as with startups would be to just maximize your chances by getting on board of anything you expect to rapidly grow soon (and you feel you’d be able to handle the growth).

Be it a startup or a department in a big company where you feel you can make it.

Director is where you really need to expand beyond the engineering domain and understand and speak the language of the business. As an engineering manager we can still get away with really focusing on execution. Making it work. Making the team work. Interacting with the other disciplines that we are adjacent to, but really operating from the mindset of engineering.

Director has got to be able to step back from that. Understand and identify when the issue isn’t in engineering. Understand how to effectively collaborate and innovate with groups that are on much different cadences and timelines than we’re used to. I think https://www.reforge.com/blog/overcome-the-tech-strategy-spir... has a lot of very relevant thoughts. (Disclaimer: I have been the EIR for the course related to this post).

I think the journey to the destination probably depends a lot on where you're starting out from.

For an existing/established large tech company - I'd imagine STEM PhD + MBA, 10 years experience in a senior management role.

Phd and MBA will account for nothing in regards to being a director of eng, having or not having those will make no difference.

It’s really not that hard. If you do well enough as an IC, are respectful, reliable and make sure to help others instead of bashing them you’ll be offered a manager role. Then all you need to do is put in the effort to learn your new responsibilities, read books and blogs and seek out feedback and you’ll get promoted over the course of a few years. Make sure you are at a growing company so that manager and director roles open up regularly and you’ll be fine. You most definitely don’t need an MBA or other degree/courses in advance.

> Make sure you are at a growing company so that manager and director roles open up regularly and you’ll be fine.

If you do this you often don't even need to do well enough as an IC or learn your new responsibilities.

What does your current experience look like? It’s more about

I just became a Distinguished Engineer hence thinking about the next steps in my career

have you ever managed people?

Yes, I ran a startup where I managed/lead a team of 10 people. But that's a different world (at least according to me)

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