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The Workplace Masquerade
Due to a series of departures, I have been the acting Head of Engineering for a small company for about a year and a half now.
It’s been… fine. Underwhelming perhaps. Certainly educational.
Some of the job is familiar. The engineering problems are the same — though there’s a greater breadth that I need to know with less depth. The leadership work is the same. Yes, managing managers brings some subtle complexity that managing engineers does not. Yes, things are different (and usually harder) when you need to lead dozens of people rather than a handful of people. But they are variations on a theme. Leading people is familiar. Engineering is familiar.
Other parts of the job, less so.
Part of the job is managing budgets and making strategic bets and being heavily involved in the business side of the business. Directing not just the people in the org, but the direction of the company as a whole. I’ve never had to do that before. That was unsurprising and interesting and challenging and not altogether pleasant.
Part of the job is doing a lot more cross organization work, collaborating and negotiating with other department heads to build cohesive products and define consistent company-wide policies. Instead of working all day with engineers and managers of engineers (who are usually ex-engineers…
