The pivot from building your ideal team to watching it dismembered while dealing with micromanagement rings really true. What stands out is the tension btween wanting to operate like founders (shared ownership, rapid iterations, clear values) versus being treated as fungible resources. I've been in similar situations where 80 releases/month got less recognition than teams doing 10, just because leadership couldn't wrap their heads arond the automation and velocity. The Shackleton recruitment parallel is something I've been thinking about lately too - being radically honest upfront filters better than any interview panel. One question though: when you brought in those principal engineers as mentors, how did you structure teh accountability? Were they formaly embedded or more like advisory roles?
First, I talked to their specific managers to ensure that it was something that would fit in with their own career growth within their roles. Once I got clearance, then I set up a recurrent monthly status report where the mentor and the mentees had to provide specific feedback to each other. This provided an accountability mechanism that ensured not only were they engaging, but also getting hopefully useful feedback that they could use for their conversations with their own managers, and I had the feedback about my teammates reporting to me.
The pivot from building your ideal team to watching it dismembered while dealing with micromanagement rings really true. What stands out is the tension btween wanting to operate like founders (shared ownership, rapid iterations, clear values) versus being treated as fungible resources. I've been in similar situations where 80 releases/month got less recognition than teams doing 10, just because leadership couldn't wrap their heads arond the automation and velocity. The Shackleton recruitment parallel is something I've been thinking about lately too - being radically honest upfront filters better than any interview panel. One question though: when you brought in those principal engineers as mentors, how did you structure teh accountability? Were they formaly embedded or more like advisory roles?
First, I talked to their specific managers to ensure that it was something that would fit in with their own career growth within their roles. Once I got clearance, then I set up a recurrent monthly status report where the mentor and the mentees had to provide specific feedback to each other. This provided an accountability mechanism that ensured not only were they engaging, but also getting hopefully useful feedback that they could use for their conversations with their own managers, and I had the feedback about my teammates reporting to me.