In that case, I would politely thank you for the chance to interview and decline to speak further with you, because it would be clear I would not be empowered to get my job done in the face of all the time-waster politics to lobby for projects or quarterly goals, etc. I would feel, “why have they hired an expert like me if they don’t plan to trust my advice on what action to take?”
> anyone who comes in as a Staff Engineer expecting to simply dictate their ideas to lower-ranked engineers without selling those ideas, is going to fail
was almost certainly about the field in general, not this person's immediate org or even company. So it's more like, "why would we hire an expert like you if we won't actually get the value we're paying for?"
I don't think it's fair to use the label "pre-existing political barriers" when talking about being able to convince people that your ideas and vision are worth the cost it takes to implement.
It might be just me but I think a lot of people read "Selling ideas" as "demonstrating the technical merit of ideas".
Unless the requirements are brain-dead simple, you'll need to sell at the very least the criteria on which you're measuring technical merit: is a latency number a hard requirement, will it scale for x of years, will it be buildable in y months or years.
At least some of that is going to come to convincing someone you've done your homework even if they couldn't make a better decision right?
I disagree. It is a basic and ubiquitous distinction in any corporation, because the distinction between appraising the technical merit of a proposal and assessing the political implications, who gets credit, bonuses, etc. etc. is so vast.
The connotation of “selling your vision/plan” is obviously political, getting buy-in from a political / authority sense, unrelated to any technical specifics.
This is just corporate day-to-day 101 stuff. My use of this distinction is not unique in any way, it is the obvious interpretation that would be used anywhere someone is discussing any type of business project.
That seems inapplicable. This part of the comments is just about being given the political authority to implement the course of action you determine is best.
Of course that always starts with developing trust and belief from the engineers and probably even needs to be based on what they know and their experience.
That’s a separate issue from being a political lame duck hire who, even with engineer support, is blocked from being effective.
