Camille Fournier
Engineering leader and writer; wrote The Manager's Path and Platform Engineering, and blogs at Elided Branches.
Camille Fournier did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
Latest Bluesky
What they believe
-
A career ladder must not be a checklist that guarantees promotion, because a promotion depends on the organisation’s needs as much as on the employee’s skills.
You should not try to create a ladder that functions as a pure checklist or scorecard that guarantees promotion if people check enough boxes; promotions are as much about the needs of the organization as the skills of the employees.
elidedbranches.comSaid 28 May 2025This on korrents
-
A manager’s output is the output of their team and of the people they influence, not the work they personally produce.
As a manager, your output is not measured by your individual work. Rather, your output is measured by the work of your team and the people that you influence.
elidedbranches.comSaid 9 Oct 2021This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
Feed
As its own page →Hiding
4 November
31 May
22 November 2025
5 June 2025
28 May 2025
From one piece 10 Years of Engineering Ladders 4 beliefs · elidedbranches.com
-
Their words
The Tyranny of Structurelessness has yet to be overcome, and for those who still care about creating strong, transparent, equitable organizations, this work matters.
-
Their words
Assuming you are still hiring junior engineers (you really should be even in this AI era), the good ones will learn quickly and want to see career progress in their first few years of working.
-
korrents.com
Defining what expertise looks like in a job family is not HR’s work, and a career ladder left to them will be wrong.Their words
Don’t let (or make!) HR do all of the work. It’s really not their job to define expertise in your functions.
+ 1 more
-
Their words
You should not try to create a ladder that functions as a pure checklist or scorecard that guarantees promotion if people check enough boxes; promotions are as much about the needs of the organization as the skills of the employees.
15 September 2024
-
Recommendsrcmnd.app
What Got You Here Won’t Get You ThereTheir words
first one is what got you here won't get you there I love it I think anybody who is trying to challenge themselves and grow should read it
-
Recommendsrcmnd.app
When Things Fall ApartTheir words
the second one is called When Things Fall Apart by pemin that is when you are for me anyway when I am struggling with whatever circumstances around me I find it a very soothing reminder
-
Lovedrcmnd.app
Alien: RomulusTheir words
I loved alien Romulus it was great if you like a scary aliens movie fantastic
+ 1 more
-
Lovedrcmnd.app
WhoopTheir words
I'm a big whoop fan um I I I got it during the pandemic and it is like one of my I'm just a weird fan girl for it I don't know I just really I enjoy it I use it every day maybe it's totally inaccurate but it seems accurate enough and I just find it a very interesting and cool product
28 July 2023
14 August 2022
15 January 2022
9 October 2021
From one piece How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors 6 beliefs · elidedbranches.com
-
Their words
New managers, make sure that you aren’t trying to be a senior engineer who has direct reports.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
-
Their words
great engineers really shouldn’t need to manage large teams to get promoted, and companies lose out on a critical skillset when they push all of their good engineers into management.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
-
Their words
But it is critical that you step back on the technical decisions to make room for the team members to own things and grow.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
+ 3 more
-
korrents.com
Passing tasks to a team without the context behind them tells them they are the doers and the manager is the decider.Their words
When you don’t give your team the context for the work and just pass on tasks and work items to them, you make it clear that they are simply “doers” and your job is the job of “decider.”
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
-
korrents.com
A manager whose own code finishes every project is adding their value rather than multiplying the team’s.Their words
If it’s your code that gets you over the finish line for every project, you aren’t providing multiplicative value for the team, you’re providing the additive value of your work as an engineer.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
-
Their words
As a manager, your output is not measured by your individual work. Rather, your output is measured by the work of your team and the people that you influence.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributorselidedbranches.com
12 June 2021
29 May 2021
24 January 2021
22 November 2020
22 September 2020
9 May 2020
12 May 2019
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 13 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
A career ladder must not be a checklist that guarantees promotion, because a promotion depends on the organisation’s needs as much as on the employee’s skills.
You should not try to create a ladder that functions as a pure checklist or scorecard that guarantees promotion if people check enough boxes; promotions are as much about the needs of the organization as the skills of the employees.
10 Years of Engineering Ladders Said 28 May 2025
Defining what expertise looks like in a job family is not HR’s work, and a career ladder left to them will be wrong.
Don’t let (or make!) HR do all of the work. It’s really not their job to define expertise in your functions.
10 Years of Engineering Ladders Said 28 May 2025
Companies should still be hiring junior engineers in the AI era, and should give them visible progress in their first few years.
Assuming you are still hiring junior engineers (you really should be even in this AI era), the good ones will learn quickly and want to see career progress in their first few years of working.
10 Years of Engineering Ladders Said 28 May 2025
Show 10 more
Flat, manager-free organisations do not deliver the equality they promise: they get abandoned, and the informal power left behind is unaccountable.
The Tyranny of Structurelessness has yet to be overcome, and for those who still care about creating strong, transparent, equitable organizations, this work matters.
10 Years of Engineering Ladders Said 28 May 2025
A manager’s output is the output of their team and of the people they influence, not the work they personally produce.
As a manager, your output is not measured by your individual work. Rather, your output is measured by the work of your team and the people that you influence.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
A manager whose own code finishes every project is adding their value rather than multiplying the team’s.
If it’s your code that gets you over the finish line for every project, you aren’t providing multiplicative value for the team, you’re providing the additive value of your work as an engineer.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
Passing tasks to a team without the context behind them tells them they are the doers and the manager is the decider.
When you don’t give your team the context for the work and just pass on tasks and work items to them, you make it clear that they are simply “doers” and your job is the job of “decider.”
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
A new manager has to hand over the technical design work, because doing it themselves leaves the team no room to grow and the manager nobody to delegate to.
But it is critical that you step back on the technical decisions to make room for the team members to own things and grow.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
Making management the only path to career progression is a mistake that costs a company the senior engineers it needs.
great engineers really shouldn’t need to manage large teams to get promoted, and companies lose out on a critical skillset when they push all of their good engineers into management.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
Engineering and management cannot both be improved at once, so a new manager has to stop trying to be the senior engineer as well.
New managers, make sure that you aren’t trying to be a senior engineer who has direct reports.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
Past a certain point no senior individual contributor is promoted on the strength of their ideas and their code alone.
Few senior ICs get promoted beyond a point on the strength of their ideas and code alone.
How do managers* get stuck? Said 6 Sept 2017
An overwhelmed team is partly the manager’s fault, because pushing back on the team’s work commitments is the manager’s job.
If your team is completely overwhelmed with work, well, it’s partially your fault. You are the manager, and you are the person who is responsible for pushing back on the work commitments for the team.
How do managers* get stuck? Said 6 Sept 2017
The test of whether someone is ready to manage managers is whether their peer managers would want to work for them.
Ultimately, if you want to manage managers, a manager should want to work for you.
How do managers* get stuck? Said 6 Sept 2017
Beliefs others hold too
Flat, manager-free organisations do not deliver the equality they promise: they get abandoned, and the informal power left behind is unaccountable. 2 hold this
The Tyranny of Structurelessness has yet to be overcome, and for those who still care about creating strong, transparent, equitable organizations, this work matters.
10 Years of Engineering Ladders Said 28 May 2025
Making management the only path to career progression is a mistake that costs a company the senior engineers it needs. 2 hold this
great engineers really shouldn’t need to manage large teams to get promoted, and companies lose out on a critical skillset when they push all of their good engineers into management.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
Engineering and management cannot both be improved at once, so a new manager has to stop trying to be the senior engineer as well. 2 hold this
New managers, make sure that you aren’t trying to be a senior engineer who has direct reports.
How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors Said 9 Oct 2021
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 5 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Loved Whoop
I'm a big whoop fan um I I I got it during the pandemic and it is like one of my I'm just a weird fan girl for it I don't know I just really I enjoy it I use it every day maybe it's totally inaccurate but it seems accurate enough and I just find it a very interesting and cool product
youtube.com 15 Sept 2024
Loved Alien: Romulus
I loved alien Romulus it was great if you like a scary aliens movie fantastic
youtube.com 15 Sept 2024
Recommends When Things Fall Apart
the second one is called When Things Fall Apart by pemin that is when you are for me anyway when I am struggling with whatever circumstances around me I find it a very soothing reminder
youtube.com 15 Sept 2024
Show 2 more
Recommends What Got You Here Won’t Get You There
first one is what got you here won't get you there I love it I think anybody who is trying to challenge themselves and grow should read it
youtube.com 15 Sept 2024
What others say about What Got You Here Won’t Get You There →
Loved Turn the Ship Around
The most successful book I tried to get folks to read was Turn the Ship Around . I read it with my leadership team, and we would discuss it in our team meetings. It is a book that is so deeply applicable to the practice of managing engineering teams that I think it was easy for my team to appreciate its value.
elidedbranches.com 1 Apr 2016
Where they publish
Blog Elided Branches Her blog on engineering management and platform teams. Has a feed.
Recent
- Guidelines for Respectful Use of AI 31 May 2026 As companies adopt AI tools, a lot of time is spent on thinking about AI policies from a security, compliance, or even cost-focused angle. But many leaders are neglecting to address how their teams should work with AI i…
- Revisiting Manager READMEs 22 Nov 2025 Several years ago, I published a critique of manager READMEs that succeeded in stirring up a lot of feelings, pro and con. I’d like to believe it prompted some people to reconsider whether these are actually effective t…
- Dude, Where's My Strategy? 5 Jun 2025 I’m working on a talk about rewriting platforms for LDX3 later this month. Spoiler alert: a lot of the talk centers around why rewriting platforms is usually a very bad idea. For more on that you can read the rearchitec…
Show 17 more
- 10 Years of Engineering Ladders 28 May 2025 On March 26, 2015, I posted a short blog post to the Rent the Runway engineering blog, Sharing Our Engineering Ladder, with a quick intro to the RTR engineering career ladder and links to both spreadsheet and long…
- The Next Larger Context 28 Jul 2023 “Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan” — Eliel Saarinen Frequently we will be given problems…
- The Product Culture Shift 14 Aug 2022 Adding product management to more traditional software infrastructure organizations, sometimes with a shift towards platform engineering, is all the rage today. As someone who has done both these things, it doesn’t surp…
- Structural Lessons in Engineering Management 15 Jan 2022 Software engineers are attracted to formulas, algorithms, and structures. As people whose job it is to take ideas and turn them into predictable executable code, it is unsurprising that we’re drawn to ways of thinking t…
- How New Managers Fail Individual Contributors 9 Oct 2021 Most companies have carefully created separate senior career tracks that provide details of the differences between being a manager and being an individual contributor (IC). And yet, many people still believe that…
- An incomplete list of skills senior engineers need, beyond coding 12 Jun 2021 For varying levels of seniority, from senior, to staff, and beyond. How to run a meeting, and no, being the person who talks the most in the meeting is not the same thing as running it How to write a design doc, take fe…
- Management Basics: Determining a Performance Rating 29 May 2021 originally posted on LeadDev.com One of the most stressful parts of the end-of-year process for managers is the dreaded performance rating. This process forces you to boil down all of the work that a person did ov…
- Make Boring Plans 24 Jan 2021 You’re probably familiar with the concept of Choose Boring Technology. If you’re not, I’ll wait for you to read the excellent blog post by Dan McKinley that inspired a much-needed correction in tech to balance “innovati…
- Driving Cultural Change Through Software Choices 22 Nov 2020 This tweet got me thinking about change, and how software engineers (and especially, Platform teams) can drive cultural change throughout companies. First, let’s take the question. You want to change the engineer…
- The Management Flywheel 22 Sept 2020 Have you ever worked on a team that felt like it was just stuck in a rut? Somehow things were always just one fix away from improving: the next project, the next quarter, the next hire, this would turn the situation aro…
- Product for Internal Platforms 9 May 2020 For the past 3 years, I have been running a platform engineering organization. Since that term is vague, where I work it means the software side of infrastructure. Compute platforms like kubernetes, storage systems, sof…
- OPP (Other People's Problems) 12 May 2019 A hard lesson for me over the past several years of my career has been figuring out how to pick my battles. I’ve seen many friends and colleagues struggle with this as well: how do you know when to involve yourself in s…
- I hate manager READMEs 23 Nov 2018 I got feisty on twitter this week and wrote up some tweets on manager READMEs, a recent hot trend in management. Let’s break them down: Dropping f-bombs is one of my "quirks" Well, what can I say, I’m sick of this trend…
- When is someone ready to manage managers? 17 Nov 2018 When I wrote “The Manager’s Path” I talked about what it means to work at the various levels of leadership, but I didn’t really talk as much about how you actually climb to those levels. For some people, it just happens…
- Engineering Productivity 22 Sept 2018 I’m often asked about the characteristics of great engineering managers. This is a question that almost always has a long answer that involves “well, she’s good at X, and he’s good at Y, and then there’s Z…” Every manag…
- Delegation: When being helpful is actually hurting 29 Jul 2018 Effective delegation is one of the most critical skills a manager can learn. Without effective delegation, you fall victim to micromanaging your team, losing control of your time, and eventually failing to put yourself…
- Are you out of alignment? 7 Mar 2018 Alignment, in the teamwork sense, means “a position of agreement or alliance.” It is one of the critical qualities that determines success in an organization, particularly at higher levels. Many individual contributors…
Link verified 20 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Bluesky @skamille.themanagerswrath.com Their Bluesky account.
Recent
- I'm so glad Collins lost I thought she might be unstoppable due to strange internecine Maine politics, such a relief to know that's not true. 4 Nov 2026
- LATEST ESTIMATES: HOUSE 255, SENATE 55. GOING TO BED, NORMAL CAPS TOMORROW. USA! USA! USA! 4 Nov 2026
- FUCK ABBOTT CRAWL IN THE HOLE WITH VIVEK 4 Nov 2026
Show 8 more
- TALARICO FUCK YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH BLEXAS GOD BLESS BLEXAS 4 Nov 2026
- VIVEK CRAWL INTO A HOLE AND NEVER COME BACK 4 Nov 2026
- THAT'S RIGHT 4 Nov 2026
- SOUTH CAROLINA RAISE UP 4 Nov 2026
- TEACHERS IN TEXAS MAKING THE WORLD TURN 4 Nov 2026
- THAT'S RIGHT MFER 4 Nov 2026
- ME RIGHT NOW 4 Nov 2026
- OSSOFF 2028 4 Nov 2026
Link verified 23 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.