From engineering to design leadership

Working notes. The full essay is in progress; this is the argument in outline.

The claim

The fastest way to earn engineering's trust as a design leader is to have been on the hook for the build. Every leadership behavior I rely on traces back to years of shipping code.

The path

• Founded Altered Studio (2006 to 2012): brand and product work for clients including 3M and LexisNexis, doing every job myself.
• WM (2012 to 2016): Senior UI/UX Engineer. Designed and built responsive experiences for a site with two million page impressions per month.
• Project management training, then AIG, SalesStaff: the product management vocabulary.
• Bullish, Meta, Inworld: leadership roles where the engineering fluency became the differentiator.

The outline

1. What "PM and engineering fluency" concretely buys in a roadmap negotiation.
2. Why player-coach is a stage, not an identity.
3. The failure mode: leaders who code too long and stop leading.