Not Just Software Engineering Management

I realized recently that not only had I not written in this blog for quite awhile BUT that my professional focus has expanded beyond software engineering and, as such, my occasional musings should reflect the experience I’ve gained in the last year.

One of my consulting clients convinced me to join the company as an employee in a newly created engineering director role. Initially I said no but after further pro/con analysis I decided that this particular adventure was one not to miss.

The factors that inspired me to join this team included leading edge technology, very smart and very hardworking people, pre-IPO status and a global engineering team. As the VPE who recruited me said “you don’t have any Asia experience and this opportunity would provide that.” It certainly has; in fact I am composing this blog entry from Shenzhen, China, being on my 6^th trip here in 15 months!

Another recruiting enticement was the statement that shower(s) were imminent in our Silicon Valley headquarter which would have enabled me to occasionally bike to work; sadly this has not yet happened and instead the space which might have been converted to a shower or two morphed into more cubicles. Who can complain about increasing revenues and growth, however, especially over the last few year? Good problem to have!

Anyway, this particular role, creating some Program Management in a startup which now has several hundred employees is a very delicate dance. Some of my colleagues absolutely fear bureaucracy to a ridiculous extent and thus rebel against any process and others would like to use the few people in the program management organization for every bit of administrative work that they personally prefer not to do. Fortunately, I think a critical mass is realistic enough to accept more process while action oriented enough to avoid becoming a mindless slave to it. Time will tell...