As organizations grow more complex, the folks running them interface with reality through increasingly incorporeal abstractions. On the smallest teams, leadership might be deep in the code on a daily basis. A bit larger, and you’re talking about tasks in sprints. Larger still, and you’re talking about collections of tasks, and adopting fancy terminology like ’epics.’ At a hundred plus engineers, you’re likely talking primarily in themes of work with focus on several key initiatives....| lethain.com
I recently had the opportunity to present to a small group of early-stage founders about evolving their engineering organization as their company scaled. While preparing, I realized that the most relevant piece I’ve written about organization design was about running reorganizations.| lethain.com
Building on the framework in “Designations, levels and calibrations”, I wanted to discuss a number of special topics related to designing and running performance systems. These topics are particularly interesting to me because they tend to be the emergent, accidental properties that emerge from common performance management systems and behaviors. Because they’re accidental, they surprise many managers early in their careers, and surprise is the cardinal sin of performance management.| lethain.com
Technical infrastructure is never complete. System processes can always run with less overhead or be bin-packed onto fewer machines. Data can be retrieved more quickly and stored at a cheaper cost per terabyte. System design can broaden the gap between failure and user impact. Transport layers can be more secure.| lethain.com
Fork this template on Google Docs As your company gets larger and more complex, it’s easy to become embroiled in supporting incoming asks from other teams. That’s important work, but it’s also important that your team is operating effectively and prioritizing your goals in addition to the goals of other teams making requests. If you’re getting mixed signals on whether your team is doing the right work, the Business Review Template can help cut through the confusion.| infraeng.dev