True -- there are LOTS of engineering managers who would struggle greatly with the move. They are just too far away from the details and haven't been hands-on in long enough... and don't want to be "in the weeds" anymore. (Good luck to them).
But by the same principle inverse argument is that a lot "tech leads" have the opposite problem: there's no point at which they have been out of the weeds.
That's a key skill that managers have to learn to early: what are the things you DON'T have to look at or know to be most effective. If you are reviewing every bug fix, or have to sit in on every single planning session, you will very quickly hit ceiling of your career as a manager.
I think that a great manager who has done the tech lead job and always worked a few levels above it is best positioned to succeed. But completely agree that good tech leads are very well positioned to make this move too.
I'll second that. It makes CB Insights look good because it now is well-known that a slightly more unscrupulous competitor stole the otherwise brilliant design of CB Insights because they were unable to come up with something they could call their own (or do better than CB Insights).
It's the lazy way. The beautiful thing about it? Those who copy (blatantly) are doomed to fail. In most cases, they will lack the understanding and foundation of how you arrived at the designs in the first place which certainly consisted of iteration and changes based on interactions with & feedback from customers.
“A tobacco store lady talking about physics in the wee hours of the morning doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” [General Carey] said in an interview with Air Force investigators, according to the report. “You need to watch out for that because that’s just like our training says, you know, people are trolling for information.”
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Nuclear disarmament never sounded like a better idea.
Yeah, the Blueprint folks are great: They've been amazing sponsors for the Health Devs meetup group and have hosted our meetups in their space since we started.
I organize Health Devs, which is pretty much exactly as you describe: we do monthly events where people show off things they've created, get help on code, etc. Our next meetup, on Tuesday, will focus on the Open mHealth project: http://www.meetup.com/HealthDevsNYC/events/138467042/
We are always looking for people to help organize more events though, and would love to have you (or anybody else interested) involved. Events are informal and always free. Shoot me a line: michael @ aqua.io
I'm trying to think of what else to do, too. The current strategy of elected officials, all the way up to Obama, is to try to change the conversation (to the economy, to the Zimmerman shooting, to the credibility of Snowden as a person, etc.).
I'm planning on keeping up on Mike Rogers until I get a response, and keeping the correspondence public until the shame factor kicks in and he gives a response. If somebody has a better idea than that, please let me know.
I wrote an e-mail to Congressman Mike Rogers about his misleading quote in this article. I encourage others to reuse my template and also ask him to justify his misleading remarks about Snowden's statement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6134672
We should start hold our public servant to task for lying to the American people about these programs.
But by the same principle inverse argument is that a lot "tech leads" have the opposite problem: there's no point at which they have been out of the weeds.
That's a key skill that managers have to learn to early: what are the things you DON'T have to look at or know to be most effective. If you are reviewing every bug fix, or have to sit in on every single planning session, you will very quickly hit ceiling of your career as a manager.
I think that a great manager who has done the tech lead job and always worked a few levels above it is best positioned to succeed. But completely agree that good tech leads are very well positioned to make this move too.
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