I came across a new phase here the other day. The term is “bus count.” As in, how many of your people could get hit by a bus before your team/company/etc was in real trouble. That gave me a good laugh and it got me thinking about the sales and SE organizations in a company.
In any technical field it can take a long time to rebuild lost expertise. The ramp time for a typical SE is 2-4 months, and that’s just for basic profieciency. Mastery of course takes much longer.
This timing varies by industry and product portfolio, but a theme I’ve recognized is that the more depth on your team (your bench strength) the easier it is to rebuild and maintain talent levels. That means it’s much easier to replace talent that exists elsewhere on your team than it is to gain a new competency.
I think there are a couple reasons for this. The primary one being the mentorship equation. If someone can be “shown” how to do it, it’s far simpler than asking someone to figure out how to learn something new on their own. Receiving direction, having a sounding board, and even the perception of having a safety net helps immensely.
The implications for SE Managers then becomes 1) keeping an accurate inventory of your critical skills, 2) keeping an eye on your perverbial bus count to insure you’re not in the danger zone, and 3) always be looking for ways to operationalize the skills acquisition process so that you have learning paths in place before you really need them.
The implication for SEs is far simpler: Specialize where your team’s bus count is dangerously low. Also see Unique Value on TSE more on this.
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