As an ic engineer, I never hear of what TDS are doing, or have done for that matter? Does anybody have a tangible example of what TDs produce? I’m genuinely asking because I never hear of anything , no presentations , no internal docs for us plebs; I mean we do hear from the c level right? And have an idea of what they do .
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@4gga+1lsZvDAl , obviously, they're not golfers.
Most people didn't get the reference from office space movie the first commenter made ?
That guy literally copy pasted a dialogue as is from that movie
@4fod+1lsZvDAl , I think it's safe to say that TDs at Netapp only know what they know. Are they encouraged to explore alternatives? I don't think so ...
They are "graded" on domain expertise and mentoring, i.e. keep doing what you're doing and pass it on.
TDs at NetApp understand only ONTAP and not the latest tech
Our Td only surfaces to the plebs when organizing a hackathon or enforcing the time limit during hackathon presentations ; he eventually decided to delegate that to the poor office admin ,,who comes across as nothing but beachy when interrupting the presenter. 3MINUTES LEFT!! 2 MINUTES LEFT!!! 1 MINUTE LEFT!! This is our TDs influence . Then they ask “why don’t u do a hackathon? Brilliant.
If you don't know what your Technical Director is doing, then they're not doing their jobs. I was a TD at NetApp for 5 years, and just like everything else there are good ones and bad ones. The bad ones ranged from ivory tower architects who could never drive results to CTO's we acquired from startups and had no other job so they just worked on PowerPoints and "architecture". The good ones rolled up their sleeves, fixed real problems, solved quality issues, buffered the engineers from management bullsh*t, and mentored.
I know/knew approx. a dozen TD/STD and couldn't tell you what ANY of them did. I couldn't name one who wrote any code (or even knew how to since their skills had atrophied) but they sure were full of themselves with their "Respect my authoritay" attitudes.
If you don't know what your Technical Director is doing, then they're not doing their jobs. I was a TD at NetApp for 5 years, and just like everything else there are good ones and bad ones. The bad ones ranged from ivory tower architects who could never drive results to CTO's we acquired from startups and had no other job so they just worked on PowerPoints and "architecture". The good ones rolled up their sleeves, fixed real problems, solved quality issues, buffered the engineers from management bullsh*t, and mentored.
They deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to.
Isn't that sustaining and customer service's job?
They are all slackers. You have one person on the team working and a director, manager, project manager that don't do jack that just do PowerPoints and want your story updated. This company deserves what is coming their way.
Thanks for the replies ; I’m the op of this thread; this sounds like a big company ‘fat’ layer, at least the bad ones, as the other poster mentioned. Maybe if they were more visible they would be challenged more, better for the company, but worse for them , at least the bad ones . And distinguished Td means what? Never mind doesn’t seem to matter at my level . I’ll keep producing till I get rif’d or find a “better job” .
Our TD is definitely not involved involved in arc design ! Our code is a mish mash of cr-p , no coherent design. and he had not intervened. Us lowly mts’s have to battle it out, causing rifs in the team . Where’s the leadership! Direction? Hes more involved in release mgmt, and product shipment stuff like that. Talking down the vp guy..
I'll be dating myself here, but I was with Netapp in the "early days" when TD wasn't a rank. Mind you, then, every IC was MTS. It was created to retain folks who didn't want to go into management and wanted to stay on the engineering track. Ironically, those people who the company wanted to retain left anyway. And since then it's become this bullsh-t rank which doesn't come with any real responsibilities other than flexing.
@giu+1lsZvDAl do you know what TD is?
Yeah, they just stare at their desk; but it looks like they're working. They do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week they probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
Good ones? Protect their teams from bullsh-t and provide them with the tooling they need to succeed. Often times participating in valuable architecture and systems design, but also contributing to the business discussion.
Bad ones? Their work speaks for themselves. Look at where most of the big layoffs have come from in the last 5-7 years. If you end up underneath one of those directors you should probably be concerned. The lack of product vision and leadership leads to products that are either too far behind market (looking at you HCI) or not even wanted.
Technical director.
WTF is a TD?
Any have any tangible production from a Td? I’d like to know too. Ideas and consult ? Maybe astra? Firetrap ? Spot? 😁
What exactly would you say you do here ?
@giu+1lsZvDAl do you know what TD is?
I already told you: They deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. They have people skills; They am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the he-l is wrong with you people?