Ask HN: Leadership Progression, Isn't this a demotion?

1 points by kclay 3 years ago | 2 comments

I currently work at an agency and it's coming up on 10yrs that I've been with the company (actually longer about 10.5yrs started off as consultant) and 10.8 years since the company was started. We just brought a CTO on board which the CEO looked to my approval prior to offering him the role. Prior to bringing the CTO on board the CEO was acting in the role of the CTO with the VP of Tech and myself the VP of Engineering assisting. During the time the CTO was being interviewed I just so happened to have my review with the CEO and he presented me with a question on my next steps and growth with the company. As the company is growing the CEO is also establishing an org chart that he's been working on for over 6 months.

My understanding of my role as the VP Of Engineering is that I am tasked with establishing the engineer practice, hiring of engineers, solving issues at the organizational level and managing other managers/leads etc.

The CEO's vision would be to have people specialize in one area with me being presented the role of "Head of Backend".

The question I'm trying to gain clarity on is what is the difference between VP of Engineering and Head of Backend given that we have multiple engineering disciplines (React Native, Frontend and Backend).

Right now I wear the following hats:

- Lead on projects max of 2 (small PM tasks, full feature coding , PR reviewing, system Architect, direct client engagement among other tasks), consultant of many. This also includes managing the Frontend teams, getting company to start using Storybook and componentizing our design

- Part of a team of Sr Engineers to redefine our engineering departments and design practices/work flows(building tools, documentation, best practice / structure). This team was something that the CEO and myself came up with over the past year.

- Hiring Backend developers, 1:1 and mentoring. Solution Architect/Problem solver (may be brought in to help solve full tech solutions no matter the discipline. The issue usually starts as a backend need and then goes into Frontend or Mobile implementation/needs)

The issue I'm having here is how to decide on what my next steps are but also if I choose Head of Backend could that be seen as a demotion or should it be seen as a restructure in limiting the need to wear multiple hats and having a clear career growth path.

whitten 3 years ago |

I think it is a demotion only if you choose to make it such.

Is there a Head of React Native, and a Head of Frontend ?

Did you ever do anything that implements change on either React Natve, or on Frontend ?

kclay 3 years ago | |

Not at the moment but I think that's the company plan. As for any company wide changes.. Yes for Frontend I have. It was the introduction and process/flow of using Storybook for our projects. This was about a 1.5yrs ago and we have been using it on projects ever since. The next was standardizing our web projects on using Next.js. This included creating the infrastructure and flow to deploy within AWS. Nothing really on best practices for structuring/building components, atleast not company wide mostly just within my own teams.

Some other things that I started to put in place that have been spread out to other teams where the whole Dev review/QA loop (PR, branching structure, commit writing/linting etc)