Every time I listen to people who work in more supportive, interstitial, and underresourced roles in software development I feel a kind of bone-deep recognition with what they describe. Do everything, but deserve nothing; that attitude from people around me marked years of my early career experiences

@Bfordham when I set up a research department, I and all my researchers were squarely on technical ladders thank god but that was entirely due to my ability to read through and negotiate a skill inventory audit that actually made sense for us and recognized the deep bench of quant and software skills needed for research. Many career ladders at companies are lazy, inaccurate, and outdated. Too few leaders take this as their responsibility for those functions

@Bfordham It has an enormous, compounding impact when all bonuses and everything else are immediately set off on a different, lower trajectory when it's shoved into "non technical." I've also had both engineers and non-engineers on my team and it's really interesting that people don't even realize when the engineers have for instance a much higher bonus % than anyone else for the same work. Tons of structures like this.