junhopark

I'm an engineering VP at a small (50ish) company in Chicago. I've been in my role for a little over 2 years and before then, I grew up writing software from the age of 7. I started my first programming job at 16 and for nearly 20 years I was a sole contributing developer. Just before my current role, I was a lead developer and although I had a few folks that I was managing, I was more of a sole contributor than a manager/director/etc.

Now that I've been in my role for a little while I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. Having said that, I'm at a point where I really feel the need to be part of a larger (but not too large) group of CTOs and engineering VPs. This is my very first job where my direct boss (who oversees the entire company) is completely non-technical. For the last 6 - 9 months or so, I've had some serious doubts with "agile" (or at least how WE do agile) and am looking to connect with other technology leaders on better ways to do software development from an organizational and process standpoint. Of course I've been doing a lot of reading on this topic but we all know that reading just isn't the same as talking to someone.

I'm looking to talk to other CTOs & engineering VPs who I can learn from & even teach a few lessons I've learned. I'm looking for people who are still coding & love coding, but still have to devote most of their time at work on managing & directing. And it's important to me (at least for now) that I'm able to meet in person. I work in the loop in Chicago--right near Willis Tower.

If you're interested in connecting with me, please comment on this post or email me (included in my Hacker News profile).

(FWIW - I posted something very similar to this a little over 4 months ago (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11643390). I got some people who were interested and exchanged emails with several people; however, it's resulted in only a single face-to-face meeting)

I'm an engineering VP at a small tech (sort of) company in Chicago. I've been in my role for almost 2 years now and before then, I grew up writing software starting from the age of 7. I started my first programming job when I was 16 and for nearly 20 years I was a sole contributing developer. Just before my current role, I was a lead developer and although I had a few folks that I was managing, I was more of a sole contributor than a manager/director/etc.

Now that I've been in my role for 22 months I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. There's a lot that I've learned about being a good engineering VP and I finally feel like I'm getting comfortable in my role. Having said that, I'm now at a point where I really feel the need to be part of a larger (but not too large) group of CTOs and engineering VPs. It just dawned on me the other day that this is the very first job where my direct boss (who oversees the entire company) is completely non-technical. If I just spent my entire evening removing a whole bunch of duplicated logic in the code base, I have to explain to him why that wasn't a waste of time on my part. Or, if I just spent my weekend deleting a whole bunch of dead code, I have to explain to him why that was time well spent. This is the first time in my career where I have a significant say in how 10+ folks in the company spend their time and decide what they work on. I could go on and on with more "this is the first time..." comments, but you get the point.

I'm looking to talk to other CTOs & engineering VPs who I can learn from & even teach a few lessons I've learned. I'm looking for people who are still coding & love coding, but still have to devote most of their time at work on managing & directing.

If you can point me in the right direction, I'd really appreciate it. If you're in the Chicagoland area and would like to start/join this sort of a support group - please let me know.