The Tech Leader’s Dilemma: Coding vs. Managing as Your Team Grows
Startups thrive on agility and innovation, but as they scale, the complexity of managing teams and aligning goals increases exponentially. A critical question arises: How should product development organizations structure their teams, and what role do people leaders play in fostering growth while maintaining technical excellence? This blog explores best practices for structuring product organizations, defining leadership roles, and addressing whether people leaders should still code as the company grows.
Key Responsibilities of a People Leader
People leaders—whether engineering managers, product leaders, or team leads—play a pivotal role in shaping high-performing teams. Their responsibilities include:
Mentoring and Development: Coaching team members to enhance their skills and career trajectories.
Setting Objectives: Aligning individual goals with broader business outcomes.
Designing Effective Teams: Building collaborative teams that maximize productivity and innovation.
Culture Building: Promoting inclusivity, collaboration, and shared purpose.
Conflict Resolution: Addressing interpersonal challenges swiftly and fairly.
Change Management: Guiding teams through transitions like scaling operations or adopting new technologies.
Continuous Improvement: Champion cross team Initiatives to improve overall team productivity and/or team capabilities. Help the team remove roadblocks and resolve cross team issues.
Should People Leaders Still Be Hands-On as a Player-Coach?
The decision depends on the startup's stage and the leader's role. In early stages or during critical transitions (e.g., adopting new technologies), hands-on coding is necessary to set standards, create frameworks or fill resource gaps. However, as the organization scales, senior leaders should focus on strategy, mentorship, and removing roadblocks rather than individual contributions.
Structuring Product Development Organizations
Why Structure Matters: As startups grow, informal collaboration becomes unsustainable due to the sheer number of relationships within larger teams (e.g., a 100-person team has 4,950 potential one-to-one relationships). Without a clear structure, coordination costs skyrocket, leading to inefficiencies.
When to Introduce Leadership Roles
Early-stage startups often rely on Founders as de facto leaders combined with a number of Player-Coach roles.
By 50–200 employees, dedicated functional leaders are essential for scaling operations without losing agility.
Optimal Span of Control
At NorthBound Advisory, we recommend the following best practices for managing the span of control within growing organizations:
1. 5–7 Direct Reports for dedicated managers:
This range is ideal for most managers, allowing them to balance oversight responsibilities with personalized mentorship and team development.
2. 3–5 Direct Reports for Player-Coach Roles:
Leaders who split their time between individual contributor (IC) work and management should have fewer direct reports to avoid burnout and maintain effectiveness.
3. Scale Thoughtfully as You Grow:
Keep the organization as flat as possible for as long as practical.
Introduce additional layers of management only when necessary to maintain efficiency and prevent leaders from becoming overburdened.
4. Avoid Command-and-Control Leadership:
Manage through clear objective setting, mentoring, and performance management rather than micromanagement or rigid hierarchies.
Empower teams to take ownership of their work while providing guidance and removing roadblocks.
5. Define Clear Responsibilities:
Clearly outline each role’s responsibilities and set expectations for how time should be allocated between IC work and leadership duties.
For senior people leaders, reduce the expectation of hands-on technical work as their role becomes more focused on strategy, mentorship, and team alignment.
6. Adopt a Graduated Scale:
The more senior the leadership role, the lower the expectation that the leader will directly contribute to software development or other IC tasks on a daily basis.
Guarding Against Misaligned Career Progression
One common pitfall is promoting top individual contributors (ICs) into management roles as the only path for advancement. This can lead to losing exceptional technical talent in roles they may not enjoy or excel at. To avoid this:
Establish clear career tracks for both ICs and managers.
Ensure ICs can progress without transitioning into management by creating senior technical roles (e.g., Staff Engineer or Principal Designer).
The Verdict: Balancing Structure with Autonomy
Scaling a product development organization requires balancing autonomy with alignment through clear structures:
Empower cross-functional teams while maintaining functional reporting lines for skill development.
Avoid rigid hierarchies; instead, foster collaboration through shared goals and decentralized decision-making.
Define clear career paths for ICs and managers to retain top talent in roles where they can thrive.
Provide clear expectations in the responsibilities of each role on the span of their ownership and the percentage time expected to be spent on IC activities.
By thoughtfully designing your organization’s structure and leadership approach, you can scale effectively while maintaining innovation and agility.
Checkout a 11 minute Podcast from Rick and Amanda on Northbound’s approach to setting up Engineering Leadership and how it needs to evolve as the Startup scales and grows.
