# Being VP of Engineering is harder than being CEO - Translating Engineering to Executives

<https://linearb.io/blog/being-vp-of-software-development-is-harder-than-being-ceo/>

- Host: [linearb.io](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/linearb.io/)
- Saved: September 27, 2020 (2020-09-27T12:57:59Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/666698f042b9/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/666698f042b9.json

## What Jamie wrote

Good article that uses VP of Engineering as the position, but is equally fitting for any VP or CTO level role leading a technology team in a company.

> As VP of Engineering we spend most of our time translating between two groups of people in two parallel universes. We’re citizens of both while not fully belonging to either.

There is a lot of truth in here and many lessons that I've learned over the years. The common lexicon section made me chuckle since I've found sharing stories of how great sales teams work, and the parallels to great technology teams, to be very effective. Sales teams close deals. Tech teams ship. Sales teams commit to a quarterly objective with a lot of unknowns. Technology teams estimate and build out plans, but ultimately are committing with a lot of unknowns.

The translation role as leader is a big one, and one that can be hard to keep front and center at all times.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT159: Weekly Thing #159 / 911 Outage, Small Tech, Workflows](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/159/), Must Read

## Saved the same week

- [Jean MacDonald - A Day In The Life of Our Online Community: A Global Photography Challenge](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/8ec8638dc38b/) (micro.welltempered.net, September 24, 2020)
- [The Ring Always Home Cam Flies Around Inside Your House | WIRED](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/03c457b486c7/) (wired.com, September 27, 2020)
- [Workflows in AWS and GCP — Tim Bray](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4e65f2824337/) (tbray.org, September 27, 2020)
- [We Need to Talk About Talking About QAnon | WIRED](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/4f4ccfc11fdc/) (wired.com, September 27, 2020)
- [Small tech](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/b467bda0e47d/) (scattered-thoughts.net, September 27, 2020)

## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://linearb.io/blog/being-vp-of-software-development-is-harder-than-being-ceo/