I really appreciated this blog post, John, to know that you're doing what I've been doing without a guilty conscience.

I'm a VP eng/research at a startup and also feel like one of the few people apart from the founders who can push major technical initiatives by just doing it themselves, due to: business context, technical chops, architectural judgment, grit, and seniority to pull in cross-functional stakeholders to help out.

However, I have often questioned if it is correct that so few people in the org can do this and if I shouldn't be enabling others to do it themselves instead.

How have you been able to navigate not having any direct reports? Who does your engineering org report to and how are you able to manage conflict between org builders and your technical vision?