Over my career, I've had the fortune of meeting hundreds of unique companies in the technology space. Consistently, I've found that engineering organizations struggle with the same three problems regardless of size:
- onboarding and training new engineers and leaders
- performance and talent management
- cultural "norms" that didn't align with the company
Every single engineering group wanted to invest more in the above, but fell back on the same pair of reasons for why they hadn't addressed these problems.
There's no time: The pressures of funding and execution has left the organization no bandwidth to develop the team or culture.
What exists is not specialized: Even when a company has a Learning and Development or Education team, that group lacks an understanding of the unique problems Engineers and Engineering Managers face.
My new journey began when I offered to help one company build training materials for their core in-house technology. I worked with another to do a management training cohort for their 4 newly minted managers. By the third engagement, it was clear engineering organizations wanted to solve these problems, but didn't know where to begin.
I decided to become a force of change for these companies, and founded Lead SV.
If you put people first, grow them, and give them the space to flourish, engineers will build something amazing. If you do the same with your engineering leaders, you'll create something truly unique in our industry.