Why Ace is better than Culture Amp as a talent management system for developer teams
Ace is a talent management system built for Engineering managers and their developers
of developers quit in the 1st year facing bad management or lack of career growth.
of Engineering manager’s responsibilities include people management.
of managers have ZERO engineering management skills
Why Engineering managers are better people managers for developers than HRs
HR Manager vs Engineering Manager
Hiring and Interview developer
HR Manager
HR manager can do the initial screening of candidates to see culture fit and experienced tech recruiters can qualify the initial skill fit.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager defines the required skill set, interviews, and finally hires a developer.
Onboarding developer
HR Manager
HR manager onboards developers to the company's wide processes and procedures.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager onboards developer to a role, team and product.
Problems with developer productivity
HR Manager
HR manager doesn’t understand work of developers, so she/he can't notice problems with developer productivity until a performance review.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager is a developer. She/he can notice when other developers are not productive.
Improve developer productivity
HR Manager
HR manager can’t continuously improve productivity of developers, because she/he doesn’t understand real work and the reason of productivity, such as legacy code, lack of skills, etc.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can identify problems that are caused by working experience of developers, such as the lack of skills needed for career progression, work with legacy code, lack of mentorship, etc.
Problems with developer motivation
HR Manager
HR manager can identify problems with motivation that are not caused by working experience of developers, such as personal problems, conflicts at work, salary, etc.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can identify problems that are caused by working experience of developers, such as the lack of skills needed for career progression, work with legacy code, lack of mentorship, etc.
Improve developer motivation
HR Manager
HR manager can help with motivation problems caused by personal problems, conflicts at work, salary, etc.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can help with motivation problems caused by the lack of skills needed for career progression, work with legacy code, lack of mentorship, etc.
Problems with developer's hard skills
HR Manager
HR manager can notice a lack of hard skills based on a skill review performed by developers.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can notice a lack of hard skills based on weekly interaction with developers and intervene faster to mentor them.
Problems with developer's soft skills
HR Manager
HR manager can notice a lack of soft skills based on one-to-ones with developers, however HR manager lacks context of a developer's day-to-day routine.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can notice a lack of soft skills based on one-to-ones with developers, and is involved into context of a developer's day-to-day routine.
Train and Improve skills of developers
HR Manager
HR manager can provide general training on the company's culture or soft skills improvement.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can provide developers with personal mentorship based on skill gaps, working tasks, and desired career promotion.
Career progressions and promotions of developers
HR Manager
HR manager can notice problems with promotion based on feedback from developers or a performance review, however HR manager lacks context about skills and projects of developers.
Engineering Manager
Engineering manager can notice problems with promotion based on weekly interaction with developers and intervene faster to mentor developers for the promotion.
Whose and What problem does Ace solve vs Culture Amp
Tool Category
Ace
EngOps Tool
CultureAmp
People Ops Tool
Primary User Persona
Ace
CTO, Engineering manager
CultureAmp
HR Manager
Problem
Ace
I don’t know how to mentor and improve performance of developers.
CultureAmp
I don’t understand “who” our employees are and "what they do" in the company.
Value
Ace
Use Ace Growth Framework to mentor and improve performance of developers with insights and recommendations.
CultureAmp
Use Culture Amp to organize and visualize information about people performance, motivation and learning.
How Ace Solutions are different from Culture Amp
Ace vs Culture Amp
Tool Category
Ace
EngOps Tool
Culture Amp
People Ops Tool
Career progression and promotions
Ace
Ace provides skill matrices with skills, levels, and career paths for 100+ developer, design, and product roles.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools like Culture Amp, you have general career path templates for all roles. You have one engineering skill matrix, while in tech companies, you need separate ones for each tech stack.
Developer Mentorship
Ace
Ace connects the work of developers (in Jira and Git) with skills that they need to grow to get a promotion, so Engineering managers run mentor sessions and create a personal growth plan being aware of developers' work and the desired career progression level.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools, Developer Mentorship is not working for 2 reasons. First, it's not aligned with developers' real work in Jira and Git. Secondly, it's not connected to role-specific skill matrices like Python or Nodejs.
Developer productivity and motivation
Ace
Ace provides automatic insights about developer productivity, motivation and skill gaps, as well as gives recommendations on how to run one-to-ones and grow the skills of developers.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools, developer productivity is based on surveys and feedback that is created and managed by the HR team, while it's still an Engineering manager's job to interpret reasons and create personal growth plans to improve productivity.
Why Ace is more simple to implement than Culture Amp
Ace vs Culture Amp
Tool Category
Ace
EngOps Tool
Culture Amp
People Ops Tool
Career progression and promotions
Ace
Ace provides skill matrices with skills, levels, and career paths for 100+ developer, design, and product roles, hence you select the template and customize it saving up to 60% of the time.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools like Culture Amp, you have general career path templates for all roles, hence you need to create skill matrices from scratch.
Developer Mentorship
Ace
Ace connects the work of developers (in Jira and Git) with skills that developers need to grow to get a promotion, hence Engineering managers can run mentor sessions and create personal growth plans easily importing the last Pull Requests from Gitlab and seeing the exact skill gaps developer needs to fill up.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools like Culture Amp, development goals are not aligned with a developer's real work in Jira and Git and are not connected to role-specific skill matrices like Python or Node.js, hence to provide Developer Mentorship, Engineering managers have to spend a lot of time to collect this information manually.
Developer productivity and motivation
Ace
Ace provides automatic insights about developer productivity, motivation and skill gaps, as well as gives recommendations on how to run one-to-ones and grow skills of developers, hence Engineering managers can automate Engineering management without sacrificing personalization.
Culture Amp
In PeopleOps tools like Culture Amp, developer productivity is based on surveys and feedback that is created and managed by the HR team, while it's still an Engineering manager's job to interpret reasons and create personal growth plans to improve productivity, hence Engineering managers still need a lot of time to do the management job almost manually, and highlight the problems with performance.