

Leadership without Management: Scaling Organizations by Scaling Engineers - bcantrill
http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/surge2013

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crazygringo
> "every line of code is a business decision" (slide 18)

That's one of the best quotes I've ever come across. And it's a great
counterpoint to the idea that programmers should be isolated from the
business/strategy, as opposed to participating in it.

Still, I'm not sure that "ranking" is inherently bad, as long as it's just
division into junior/senior/etc developers for salary purposes. I mean,
there's _always_ going to be a ranking based on salary, even if that's not
made public. Job titles can be considered a form of partial salary
transparency, no? And just because you have multiple job levels, doesn't mean
that quotas are necessary.

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gruseom
This is great! I hate reading slides, but this has to be one of the best
things I've read on the topic. Is there a video?

It would be better if it talked about the good things to do in as much depth
as the bad things.

A gelled team completely focused on the work is the peak of creative
organization. What's not clear is how to build structures that keep hitting
that peak as the organization grows. I think the answers to this are evolving
bottom-up from experimentation in startups. (It has to be startups because
organizations can't much change their DNA.) What I like about these slides is
that they come from that layer of experience and point in a direction that
feels right, at least to me.

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jreimers
Agreed, many of those thoughts really resonated with me. I would love to see a
video!

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NonEUCitizen
Slide 9, "Demotivator: Hierarchical titles," is absolutely true. Yet the 1st
slide shows the author having a title of SVP, Engineering.

