What does a VP of Engineering “Do”?
Last week I began having 1:1 intros with the engineers. These intro calls were for me to get to know each engineer, and also create space for each person to ask me questions. A few people were curious about how I envisioned my role and responsibilities here.
In short…
Given that, I wanted to take a moment to articulate how I am approaching my role as VP of Engineering at Forerunner.
What does a VP of Engineering “do”?
Put simply, I will do whatever I can to make the business successful.
My goal is to make Forerunner the best place where engineers are doing the best work of their careers. If I can do this, I believe this will directly ladder up to making the business successful.
I find the puzzle of matching individual interests and goals with company needs endlessly interesting to solve.
On first blush as I get up to speed on the codebase and processes, I am impressed with how thoughtful and intentional the organization is run. Kudos to everyone who has been a part of fostering that. As is the case with every company - big and small, old and young - there will always be areas for improvement. I will iteratively and continuously try to improve our processes, tooling, and engineering quality and velocity.
So… where will my time go?
Hiring
As has been the case with Forerunner historically, every hire will be done so intentionally. I want to ensure that every person we bring on to the team is additive and a strong yes. Neutral and not-bad will not be strong enough to hire. There are a number of open roles we are hiring for, and I’ll be heavily involved in the recruiting and interview process.
Managing senior technical staff
I’ll be directly managing Rylan, Sam, and future TLMs. This will include professional development, tactical and strategic guidance, and likely taking some work off their plates.
Leaning in to engineering areas as needed
I’ll be hands-on with teams as needed, and plan to attend all engineering team ceremonies (standups, retros, planning, etc). This reflects one of the ways to build trust as well, which is to “Do the work”.
Cross-functional (XFN) partnership with Product, Design, CS, Sales, Ops, Finance
I believe that engineering’s responsibility is not only to build products for end users, but to enable every function to do their job better. This may mean investing in building internal tooling, or incorporating requests from other departments into the roadmap.
Engineering culture
I’ll continuously evaluate the good and the bad by speaking directly to engineers, and xfn partners. I will foster a culture where engineers are empowered to voice their opinions, and are heard.
Where is my time going this week and the coming weeks?
Onboarding
Team ceremonies
+ 1:1s with engineering
Building relationships with cross-functional (xfn) partners
Getting up to speed on product + business strategy
Understanding our customers, current & potential
As important as it is that I share what I will do, I want to articulate what I will not do.
What I won’t do:
I will not be directly coding on any critical path projects.
However, I do plan to code, and it was a priority to me to set up the repos locally, run the apps, and push a PR this week.
I will not be prescriptive on the technologies or architecture.
You are all much more familiar with the codebase, tooling, and systems than I am. I plan to bring my perspective and will voice if I see any risks or other potential solutions, but I will not be the decision maker as I believe that lies in the hands of engineers closer to execution of the projects. I plan to spot check PRs as a way to get up to speed on the codebase and systems.
Own product or business decisions.
I believe very strongly that engineers should have a voice in product strategy, however ultimately the decision is product’s. As strong engineers and partners to product, engineers need to help product make the best decisions by providing solution-oriented thinking and tradeoffs (often due to technical constraints). A lot more to be said here, but thought it was important to note this.
I will caveat all of the above that if doing any of the above (that I said I won’t do) is what will be best for the business, then I will absolutely do it.
