Wikimedia Engineering/Careers/Discussion notes

September 10, 2013 - Continuation of Careers Discussion

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Careers

Possible challenging things // What are the hairy issues we need to talk about?


 * What do things mean (like "Architect")?
 * Are changes in technology reflected in current titles? Back in the day challenges were different (scaling, etc.), now different (mobile, front-end presentation) - do we represent current issues well enough in titles?
 * In Ops, no disambiguation in roles/titles - SRE not used so far (except for postings), just Operations Engineers and Architect; Senior Ops vs. Ops?
 * "Straight-forward" but process needed to evaluate promotions?
 * People aren't here forever - titles should reflect what they did here for their next place (e.g. external market/industry/…)
 * audiences are "each other", "future employers", "larger community", "the government (for visas)", "future employees (sexy/attractive job titles)", others?
 * Titles vs. roles - "Senior Software Engineer" vs. "Features Infrastructure Lead" - you could have both at the same time.
 * No Architect roles (titles?) in Features / front-end
 * What's the path beyond SSE - is "Architect" a promotion? Is it the promotion? What other promotions exist, if any? What if you want to be "Epic Engineer"? (And at the other end - no Associate Software Engineer?)
 * Want to be as flat an organisation as possible - how do we stay flat(ish) with title variance?
 * Could we all just pick our own titles? Or different strokes for different folks?
 * Need for calibration of "Senior" (etc.) between different rank systems (Senior Engineer vs. Senior Designer vs. Senior Product Manager)
 * Do remote people get promoted less often (no, not frequency, we're talking statistically) than people in the office? Is there data?
 * Is there causality?
 * There's general industry data that says that remote staff almost always get promoted less and which establishes (to the best of "management science"'s ability) causality - however, it's not a slam-dunk that that's the case at WMF specifically.
 * That does not establish causality. It establishes correlation.
 * http://www.economist.com/node/21564581 && http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters/
 * Hard when hiring to have a job title structure that is externally-understandable. (See above re. attractive job titles.)
 * Having a standard for announcing changes? (explaining rationale behind the promotion, for example)
 * Having a standard for announcing changes? (explaining rationale behind the promotion, for example)

Chat
 * Does anyone care about job titles? They're useless pretty much everywhere, but particularly in non-profits.
 * Part of the proposal is to continue the link between titles and salary bands AIUI. I take it people care about their salaries? ;)
 * So then does "senior" mean anything besides "paid more"?
 * In theory it means "you have this set of qualities that we value and therefore we pay you more", I suppose
 * They do actually mean something (everything?) when you want to move to another org. I've already had people at conferences tell me that my job title is underwhelming when I described what I actually did. It's also important when talking to vendors and you're trying to get donations.
 * If you think your job title means everything when you want to move to another org... you're mistaken. :-)


 * We're not even close to flat...
 * You have no idea how bad it can get. :-)
 * I believe we should be flatter, but that issue is orthogonal to that of titles
 * Should? Could? Will?


 * Re. remote promotions: some of the teams that have very little title diversity are also very strongly remote (e.g. operations), so that might skew things
 * Salary transparency (at least on OfficeWiki)?
 * could cause emotional turmoil!
 * Are paybands on office wiki?
 * Would be good
 * They are for Features Eng :)
 * Where?
 * Sue's safe
 * I guess they're not; other stuff about titles is. The numbers were given to everyone in features eng though, FWIW
 * Helpful. :-)
 * Ask Terry to put them on officewiki then :)
 * If visible outside of WMF, potentially decreases bargaining power for a new job
 * We could put it on office wiki
 * So what is an Architect again? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architect_(The_Matrix)

Form 990: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/b/b5/Form_990_-_FY_11-12_-_Public.pdf
 * Key phrase: "FY 11-12". These things are always ~18 months behind.
 * Per Erik: Ask Sue. :-)
 * See also: https://gitorious.org/floss-foundations (related NPOs eg EFF, CC, etc 990s and other docs)


 * Let's not re-invent the wheel here - there's the industrystandard SFIA ("Skills Framework for the Information Age"): http://resources.civilservice.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/13_skillsframeworkv4_tcm6-9059.pdf (outline)
 * different context- 'Enterprise Architect' ;)
 * Context switch, most descriptions probably apply to us anyway !

Actions


 * Gayle to get data on remote promotions vs. local promotions
 * Gayle will bring up with Engineering Management that:
 * Streamlined and regular process for announcing hires and promotions/title changes - centralise?
 * Having a mailing list for announcements without reply-all for joins/changes/parts?
 * Just don't reply all! Reply only to the new/leaving person! +1
 * Google+ -1-1
 * Is this an action or a chat? :)
 * Replace hiring/leaving thread
 * Consistency in announcing hires/promotions/role changes
 * on @wikimediaatwork?
 * Some hires weren't announced for some reason
 * also, blog.wikimedia.org and/or wikitech-l is "sometimes" used to announce role changes and/or hired people
 * I find the @wikimediaatwork handle completely unengaging. We can make it more attractive as an outreach tool about working at wiki.
 * See http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=%40wikimedia&q2=%40wikimediaatwork&q3=%40jointheflock&via=Topsy
 * Engineering mgmt to flesh out titles/role descriptions
 * Specific focus on architect role to ensure that this is an actual career path that is accessible to people