Engineering Leaders Must Pivot Beyond Hiring

Engineering leaders should treat engineers as capable adults, not children who need protection from hard problems. This shift in perspective is becoming more possible in today's market where retention is less of a singular focus.

For years, many engineering organizations have sheltered engineers from difficult business realities and accountability, which actually limited their growth potential. When we coddle engineers by hiding hard problems from them, we prevent them from developing the skills needed for senior leadership roles. This approach stems from an era where hiring and retention were the primary metrics for evaluating middle management, creating incentives to avoid challenging engineers.

The current market presents an opportunity to reset this dynamic. By holding engineers accountable to higher standards, we can actually put them in more senior roles with greater responsibility. This creates a virtuous cycle where engineers get what they've wanted all along - meaningful responsibility and growth - while the organization benefits from their full capabilities.

This perspective has practical implications for how you lead engineering teams:

1. Share difficult business constraints openly rather than filtering them
2. Present engineers with hard problems instead of simplifying challenges
3. Hold engineers to high standards of accountability for outcomes
4. Create paths to senior leadership that include business responsibility
5. Recognize that treating engineers as peers capable of handling complexity is ultimately more respectful than protection

The most effective engineering organizations don't separate engineers from business realities - they integrate them into solving the organization's hardest problems. This approach not only produces better results but creates more growth opportunities for the engineers themselves.