On a number of occasions where I’ve applied or been approached as a senior engineer, the organisation say that “they’re in production”, “They’ve got a team already established”, “They’re most of the way there but they want someone to come in with a fresh set of eyes to check that everything is done correctly and make recommendations”. To me, this comes across as a significant red flag. If you’re in production with an established team, then they’re the ones who are experts on it. You could always do things differently but the fact that you’re in production suggests that it works to at least some extent. As for advising on how to do things differently, I don’t get it. If you want to bring in a manager or a lead to do that then perhaps, but I struggle to understand how bringing someone in as a team member and expecting them to do this could ever be well received. The new person will not have the political capital or credibility in the organisation to get sponsorship for any proposals. Invariably you will find that there are people in any organisation who just want to be told that their pile of ${whatever} is the best pile of ${whatever} in any organisation anywhere in the world.
What am I missing here? If an organisation wants some sort of manager, okay I get that. If they want to expand or replace departed members of the team, I get that too but the two requirements are not the same. If there’s a manager in place who’s not able to command confidence in the direction that they’re taking with the team then surely a recruitment process with external candidates is not the best place to pursue that.
Update
Thanks for the thoughtful responses. The majority favour that this is a good thing. I have fallen afoul of the politics in the past. Whilst I have learned from that, part of the lesson I took was trying to avoid getting into that position again. It doesn’t look like it is avoidable in my case so I will need to look at things from a different perspective, thanks.
