Engineering Archetypes
One of my favorite coaching tools is the concept of engineering archetypes.
This tool identifies that at the staff level, engineers tend specialize into different styles (or “archetypes”). They might lead projects spanning multiple quarters; diagnose and resolve deep technical issues that affect the whole company; or even be an inspirational thought leader that persuades an entire organization to adopt a new approach. The tool gives each of these styles a memorable name.
There are 2 different ways to use this tool: formally referring to named archetypes or informally referring to specific people.
Named Archetypes
In the formal version of this tool, I have pre-defined stories for each of the archetypes and names for each of them.
For some examples, Will Larson has an reasonable set of archetypes:
- The Tech Lead guides the approach and execution of a particular team. They partner closely with a single manager, but sometimes they partner with two or three managers within a focused area. …
- The Architect is responsible for the direction, quality, and approach within a critical area. They combine in-depth knowledge of technical constraints, user needs, and organization level leadership.
- The Solver digs deep into arbitrarily complex problems and finds an appropriate path forward. Some focus on a given area for long periods. Others bounce from hotspot to hotspot as guided by organizational leadership
- The Right Hand extends an executive’s attention, borrowing their scope and authority to operate particularly complex organizations. They provide additional leadership bandwidth to leaders of large-scale organizations. (Larson 2021)
Facebook has another set:
- A Generalist owns all aspects of leading major projects end-to-end.
- A Specialist is an expert in one specific (generally critical) area.
- A Fixer debugs really complicated problems and finds the small fixes to improve critical systems.
- A Coding Machine produces “high quality code that solves problems few engineers can.”
- A Product Hybrid solves a “vague and complex business problem that requires a product/engineering solution”
The First 90 days has a slightly different set of archetypes, ableit not for an engineering team: Builders, Customer service reps / sales, Integrators / XFN coordinators, Historians.
I have not made my set yet, but I imagine it will not be precisily any of these.
Named people
If I don’t have pre-defined stories for the archetypes, I can still have this conversation by identifying specific people that exist in each archetype Rands has a similar conversation where he talks about executives at a startup because “you can see with your own eyeballs how these leaders work” (2021)
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I’ll say something like:
At the staff engineer level, there are different styles of being a leader. Look at Prerna and Pablo – they’re very different in how they work, but they both have a large effect on the company. When you advance in your career, do you want to be more like Prerna, Pablo, or someone else?