Who is the boss?

I found organizations can be roughly categorized into three types based on the dominant voice on “what, why and when to do”. 1. Product Manager (PM) driven org. This type of organizations compete in the market by delivering products with the most attractive features to external customers. E-commerce organizations and social media companies are naturally this kind. Customer Obsession is hopefully the No. 1 leadership principle of these organizations when they do well. They use A/B testing etc. to build close feedback loop from feature launch to customer adoption rate, so they can rapidly validate a feature is successful or not. The downside of this kind of organizations is the engineering team may lack the time or know how for technical innovations. Time to market is the only thing that matters. The engineering teams under the organization are so busy developing “features”, before they know it, their code base has become a big ball of mud. 2. Engineering driven org. This type of organizations are engineers’ dream. The technical domain is usually deep and broad. The organizations compete by offering products with the best qualities: security, durability, availability, scalability, extensibility etc. Top engineers - usually principal engineers or sometimes managers with strong technical background - have the dominant voice in the org. Organizations under CTO or research labs, or the organizations that own platforms for internal customers, tend to fall into this category. This kind of organizations thrive on technical innovations. Dive Deep and Think Big are the top leadership principles of these organizations. The downside of this kind of organizations is they might lose touch with their customers. They deliver abstract frameworks and platforms nobody care about. Keep in touch with real customers’ pain is their challenge. 3. Manager driven org. This type of organizations mainly focus on keeping things running. They own the important “legacy” stacks. They have a set of established ways of doing things. The “managers, but often some tenured engineers too” have the dominant voice in the organization. The downside of this kind of organizations is their engineering teams are mostly in sustaining mode. They don't write much code because the legacy stacks are so hard to change. They complain about not having time for innovations but unconsciously they spend most time jumping from one meeting to another, or putting out fires. Real world is never black and white. We rarely see an organization that is completely PM driven, engineering driven or manager driven. Depending on the life cycle of the organization or its leadership changes, it’s org culture might morph from one type to another. Each type of organizations has its pros and cons. The important thing is to be aware of which type your organization belongs now, and where you want to take it next.