My expertise is your expertise
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I have 25 years experience managing global programs in engineering and technical talent management. My role as the owner of the Voice of the Developer Initiative for Amazon worldwide gave me a unique insight into how best engage with and support technical talent. I understand the factors that impact developer effectiveness, stall their career growth, and cause attrition. I know how to design actionable surveys that engineers want to respond to. I have a solid track record of success influencing senior leaders to invest in changes to improve the employee experience. I have significant expertise defining job expectations by level for both technical and non-technical roles. I can advise on mentorship program and affinity group formation that fosters beneficial change in a company culture.
Poorly articulated company role guidance is a major root cause of serious engineering and business problems. The solution is "skills-based" job level guidance, for both individual contributors and management. Guidelines containing objective statements that can be tested offer companies a foundational mechanism that supports fair hiring, compensation, performance, and promotions practices.
CONSULTATION SERVICES
JOB LEVEL DEFINITION
Poorly articulated company role guidance is a major root cause of serious engineering and business problems. The solution is "skills-based" job level guidance, for both individual contributors and management. Guidelines containing objective statements that can be tested offer companies a foundational mechanism that supports fair hiring, compensation, performance, and promotions practices.
TECH TALENT PROGRAM DESIGN
Technical roles require an evaluation of skills to make sure they can meet expectations at their designated level. When a company is small this is easy to manage, but at a certain stage of growth these processes can get bureaucratic, misaligned, and/or bottleneck at a certain level. The solution is a lightweight technical assessment to align hire and promote processes.
ENGINEERING EXPERIENCE
Technical roles have different concerns than their non-technical peers making the traditional engagement survey approach less effective. To take the right actions, leaders need to understand what engineers are dealing with. They need context - specific questions diving into what slows engineers down, how effectively technology projects are managed, source code quality, business prioritization vs. engineering backlog, testing, DevOps, and other issues that make delivering new features a challenge. How questions are asked also matters. Engineers respond best to clear, actionable statements. Results need to be shared openly to build trust.
ORGANIZATION DESIGN
Engineering problems caused by a poor organization model can be easy to resolve. Determining what systems a team owns and how many engineers can be hired is only the first step. It's important to think through the ideal engineering team composition for the mission. Not all layers of management need to be technical. Knowing where to place a PM/TPM, Product Manager, and/or Sr. Engineer can enhance productivity. Deciding on the right QA and Support strategy is critical, as the wrong approach may unnecessarily slow down product launches and cause other problems..