On 1/13/22 08:50, Steven Walling wrote:
If we are having trouble retaining CTOs and CPOs, the first people for the Board and CEO to ask about why are *not* outside tech execs from venture-backed companies. It’s the tech employees of the Foundation (those past leaders in those roles and their entire reporting chain), community software contributors, other leaders of influential projects like Mozilla that have similar struggles, and potential candidates we liked for leadership roles who declined their offers. If we need advisors with tech skills for our incoming CEO, we have dozens of people (remember our long defunct advisory board? Or perhaps the long-tenured technical staff who have both expertise and Wikimedia values embedded in their bones?)
I entirely agree with you, except WMF upper management (and I guess the board, by their implicit approval) have made it clear that they do not want experienced technical staff in positions of power and decision making by abolishing TechCom and constantly rotating the new "technical decision making process" (which entirely excludes volunteers of course). That plus the intolerance for any dissent, whether public or private, mean that often technical staff are either unable to provide appropriate advice or are ignored.
The two CTO/VP of Engineering that had the longest tenures were Brion and Erik. And it's not even close, I don't think anyone else has made it a full 2 years. What sets those two apart from the others should be obvious :-)
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