An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management

by Will Larson

With your organization design and head count planning, you can roughly determine when you’ll need to fill each of the technical and management leadership positions. From there, you have four sources of candidates to staff them: Team members who are ready to fill the roles now. Team members who can grow into the roles in the time frame. Internal transfers from within your company. External hires who already have the skills. That is probably an ordered list of how you should try to fill the key roles. This is true both because you want people who already know your culture and because reorganizations that depend on yet-to-be-hired individuals are much harder to pull off successfully. Specifically, I’d recommend having a spreadsheet listing every single person’s name, their current team, and their future team. Accidentally missing someone is the cardinal sin of reorganization.