Most examples given are for VP of engineering and other technical management roles. If you are a plain-vanilla engineer (from the article), no $10 million or $1 million for you. Maybe a time slot for playing ping-pong. Please don't try to break your head trying to figure out how to be 10x or 100x or whatever. Totally different skills.
Agreed. The article poorly draws comparisons with 10x engineers and executives. This VP level compensation in Twitter would be a (junior) director level package in most large corporates. The bonus is slightly more generous (I think most would see $50k), but not out of whack.
As an SVP as SFDC he would have had a much larger base salary, and probably damn good options. His Twitter stock grant is probably worth a lot more, but it was also riskier.
Now $150k + $250k RSUs (probably on a 5+ yr schedule) for a new PhD is a lot. I assume they were working on something that Google figured could save them an order of magnitude more than that a year. (Of course the debate is, couldn't a similarly motivated, if not fiscally so, existing staff developer make the same savings? Probably yes.)
How are engineering and VP of engineering "totally different"? AFAIK, there is no special qualification that makes you VP material from engineering material. An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just fine.
"An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just fine."
If you can also manage people.
If you can also manage projects.
If you can also see the broader picture and how your company fits into it.
If you know how to delegate.
If you know how to hire and retain the right kind of talent.
If you can resolve conflicts effectively.
If you can communicate well with both engineers and customers.
Depending on your org structure you may also need to make the correct choices
regarding infrastructure and technical direction as you go consistently and over a long period of time.
I've known a lot of engineers in my career. Most of them were not suitable to become a VP of engineering - including those with many years of experience.
The ability to engineer is often the smallest subset of what a VP of engineering does. It's a starting point.
In reality that's not how it works. No one above senior engineer, and certainly no managers where I work have the ability or desire to design or write software or even cares about software or business. A VP of engineering may be able to talk about technologies and approaches very generally, but technology is changing so fast that even legitimate tech leaders have knowledge that is 10 years old. But these guys are not legit. There is an implied software gangsterism present that says "you better not challenge the abilities or knowledge of someone in power or you know what will happen." These people want their $10 million payday and are willing to enforce whatever reality it takes to make that happen.
Sounds about right. I meet many VPs of engineering of the big companies - they're nice and smart. But they don't know that much about tech. They also don't know that much about management. In fact all you really need to know is appear as a nice guy, make some decisions and delegate 100% of the rest. It's not like if you were recruiting directly whoever you delegate to either.
Most of them spend .. most of their time in the intra political wars to keep their precious salary. I'm pretty sure they'd like to work on their stuff better, but you don't let go your millions that easily... plus you'd be replaced by someone pretty much alike.
For smaller companies, what I wrote above is actually not true. The ones I know are actually passionate, and drive the engine of the company. But then again, they don't make more than the average engineer.
In reality, that generally is how it works... In the companies I've been involved with, the VP of eng typically was a coder who possessed all the qualities the commenter above mentioned. They eventually moved up to that role because that were great as seeing the big picture, making intelligent decisions on how to delegate time and engineers into prioritizing bug fixes, new features, and maintenance/improvements that work the best for the company, and managing those people/decisions. They end up spending more time managing and less time coding, but it's generally for the best.
Tell that to Bill Gates, who was apparently still deep in the weeds (reviewing product specs, challenging design assumptions, etc.) whilst he was CEO of a pretty large company.
(Or maybe that's just part of VP Engineering and above roles - perpetuating the myth that you are still in touch. I often wonder if these mythical sessions weren't coached for by some senior individual contributor.)
Wanna chime in on this and say I spend a fair amount of time with my vps. I am pretty sure I could not do their job. Maybe someday, but not today. And maybe not ever.
You don't believe being a VP of Engineering requires any more qualifications or experience? Seriously? Are you just trying to be obtuse? I can't really imagine that someone really believes this.
There are three big differences. First, to be effective in the role, a VPE must have a much stronger social and communication skills. Most engineers, as a side effect of how they spend their waking hours, are below average in this area. The VPE must be far above average.
Second, the VPE must have a larger focus - seeing what's good for the entire company, not just what's good for engineering, and certainly more than what's good for the current projects. Often a straight up engineer will be (quite properly) focused mainly on whatever their current project is, and may not even have the business knowledge to fully grok how it fits in the big picture.
Lastly, the VPE needs exceptional management and leadership skills. A tech lead will have this too, but it must be much stronger at the veep level.
The main qualification for these jobs is, besides being a software engineer, having experience at project management and political skills to do whatever the company/boss wants...
Comments
Most examples given are for VP of engineering and other technical management roles. If you are a plain-vanilla engineer (from the article), no $10 million or $1 million for you. Maybe a time slot for playing ping-pong. Please don't try to break your head trying to figure out how to be 10x or 100x or whatever. Totally different skills.
Agreed. The article poorly draws comparisons with 10x engineers and executives. This VP level compensation in Twitter would be a (junior) director level package in most large corporates. The bonus is slightly more generous (I think most would see $50k), but not out of whack.
As an SVP as SFDC he would have had a much larger base salary, and probably damn good options. His Twitter stock grant is probably worth a lot more, but it was also riskier.
Now $150k + $250k RSUs (probably on a 5+ yr schedule) for a new PhD is a lot. I assume they were working on something that Google figured could save them an order of magnitude more than that a year. (Of course the debate is, couldn't a similarly motivated, if not fiscally so, existing staff developer make the same savings? Probably yes.)
How are engineering and VP of engineering "totally different"? AFAIK, there is no special qualification that makes you VP material from engineering material. An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just fine.
"An engineer with enough experience can do the job of a VP of engineering just fine."
If you can also manage people.
If you can also manage projects.
If you can also see the broader picture and how your company fits into it.
If you know how to delegate.
If you know how to hire and retain the right kind of talent.
If you can resolve conflicts effectively.
If you can communicate well with both engineers and customers.
Depending on your org structure you may also need to make the correct choices regarding infrastructure and technical direction as you go consistently and over a long period of time.
I've known a lot of engineers in my career. Most of them were not suitable to become a VP of engineering - including those with many years of experience.
The ability to engineer is often the smallest subset of what a VP of engineering does. It's a starting point.
In reality that's not how it works. No one above senior engineer, and certainly no managers where I work have the ability or desire to design or write software or even cares about software or business. A VP of engineering may be able to talk about technologies and approaches very generally, but technology is changing so fast that even legitimate tech leaders have knowledge that is 10 years old. But these guys are not legit. There is an implied software gangsterism present that says "you better not challenge the abilities or knowledge of someone in power or you know what will happen." These people want their $10 million payday and are willing to enforce whatever reality it takes to make that happen.
Sounds about right. I meet many VPs of engineering of the big companies - they're nice and smart. But they don't know that much about tech. They also don't know that much about management. In fact all you really need to know is appear as a nice guy, make some decisions and delegate 100% of the rest. It's not like if you were recruiting directly whoever you delegate to either.
Most of them spend .. most of their time in the intra political wars to keep their precious salary. I'm pretty sure they'd like to work on their stuff better, but you don't let go your millions that easily... plus you'd be replaced by someone pretty much alike.
For smaller companies, what I wrote above is actually not true. The ones I know are actually passionate, and drive the engine of the company. But then again, they don't make more than the average engineer.
In reality, that generally is how it works... In the companies I've been involved with, the VP of eng typically was a coder who possessed all the qualities the commenter above mentioned. They eventually moved up to that role because that were great as seeing the big picture, making intelligent decisions on how to delegate time and engineers into prioritizing bug fixes, new features, and maintenance/improvements that work the best for the company, and managing those people/decisions. They end up spending more time managing and less time coding, but it's generally for the best.
Tell that to Bill Gates, who was apparently still deep in the weeds (reviewing product specs, challenging design assumptions, etc.) whilst he was CEO of a pretty large company.
(Or maybe that's just part of VP Engineering and above roles - perpetuating the myth that you are still in touch. I often wonder if these mythical sessions weren't coached for by some senior individual contributor.)
There are good and bad tech executives. Just because you've met only the bad ones doesn't mean that good ones don't exist.
Wanna chime in on this and say I spend a fair amount of time with my vps. I am pretty sure I could not do their job. Maybe someday, but not today. And maybe not ever.
You don't believe being a VP of Engineering requires any more qualifications or experience? Seriously? Are you just trying to be obtuse? I can't really imagine that someone really believes this.
There are three big differences. First, to be effective in the role, a VPE must have a much stronger social and communication skills. Most engineers, as a side effect of how they spend their waking hours, are below average in this area. The VPE must be far above average.
Second, the VPE must have a larger focus - seeing what's good for the entire company, not just what's good for engineering, and certainly more than what's good for the current projects. Often a straight up engineer will be (quite properly) focused mainly on whatever their current project is, and may not even have the business knowledge to fully grok how it fits in the big picture.
Lastly, the VPE needs exceptional management and leadership skills. A tech lead will have this too, but it must be much stronger at the veep level.
The main qualification for these jobs is, besides being a software engineer, having experience at project management and political skills to do whatever the company/boss wants...
The same way a CFO and an accountant are totally different. There are also no special qualifications that makes an accountant CFO material.
I think that's the qualification - experience.
Successful experience, too.
Not true.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/11/google-offers-staff-enginee...