Talk:Wikimedia Engineering/Careers

A short note
I saw this presentation making the rounds in my RSS feeds recently, and it offers another view on the topics mentioned here. I haven't looked at it very closely, but I thought I'd share the link. guillom 13:58, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice slides! Most of the sentiment in there applies to WMF too I think, though – as for countermeasures – some proposals may be difficult to implement or have other downsides. --Nemo 09:22, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Tech lead
Thanks for the update. Do we really now have "tech lead" as additional layer across the org? The link is only about one team and isn't very explicative: I assume the term doesn't make sense outside that team? New titles always come with a (social/interaction) cost, so their benefit must be made clear if they're made into a "standard". --Nemo 20:50, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's a rôle that all or almost all of the teams have had for a long time – off the top of my head, I know Collaboration, Editing, Fundraising Tech, Mobile Web, Mobile iOS App, Mobile Android App, Parsoid, Services, and Front-End Standardisation all have a tech lead. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Which looks like a small part of Engineering. Do they have a shared definition? If yes, it should be in a generic page. --Nemo 21:06, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Everyone except Operations and MW-core is not "a small part". :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it's important to draw a clear line between one's role/position in the organization and their seniority (and thus, job title). This was a major source of confusion in the past and a such a "cleanup" was widely agreed and implemented (by eliminating the "lead" from all four people holding such a title at the time) around the time this Careers page was created; unfortunately, it creeped in in again. The rationale is that such a coupling discourages or makes more complicated changing roles within the organization, such as when a team's lead decides to move to another team, or when a more senior engineer joins a team that already has a team lead. We have seen evidence of both of the above, but I'd prefer to avoid pointing out specific cases here.
 * Being a "tech lead" also has -and cannot- have a payband equivalency, nor is something that HR should be concerned (or informed) about, especially since it can and should be relatively fluid. Therefore, raising this up to the career pathing and Staff page level is awkward.
 * I'd propose sticking again to what was previously agreed on: drop the "lead" (either as a suffix, or postfix) and similar prefixes ("Head of" comes to mind) from people's job titles. If we really want to surface tech leadership in teams, my proposal would be to add it as a separate "role" line on the staff page. (Full disclosure: I am a Principal Engineer and tech lead; only the former is being listed on the Staff page) Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 13:00, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

On Being A Senior Engineer
I found this post helpful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arlolra (talk • contribs) 23:17, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Engineering/Design Manager
After this page seems outdated. --Nemo 12:56, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Senior Director, VP, CTO etc.
We currently have a few people in the organization holding a "Senior Director" title; in product & technology, I believe the only one is Toby. This is not currently documented. I believe that it has had traditionally a weird limbo status of somewhere between Director and VP but without a separate payband (I'm not entirely sure and I could totally be wrong, though). We should probably clear that up. Furthermore, several people have expressed their dislike of the more corporate "VP" titles; as an example, Technology's new C-level won't be a VP, but a Chief (CTO); our current documentation mentions "VP of Engineering" and it should probably be adjusted accordingly. Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 13:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Engineers-Managers, Operational Managers
Since the reorg, and in contrast to what's currently documented in the page, the split between engineers and managers became blurrier and inconsistent. We now have cases where people that hold an "engineer" title have direct reports, and in many cases more reports than people with an "engineering manager" job title. We also have had managers/directors with no direct reports. During the reorg, we also heard a couple of times distinctions such as "technical manager" and "operational manager" that weren't widely known nor clear to most (including myself) and I personally haven't heard of them since. This inconsistency is something that we should probably fix, or at least adjust our documentation to match reality. Faidon Liambotis (WMF) (talk) 13:14, 10 May 2016 (UTC)