1y ago

I got promoted to tech lead. Now what?

Now have direct reports under me. No idea wtf I'm doing, I guess I did a good job? Any advice you have for me?

29 comments

Hope you like Jira, confluence, and neverending meetings.
- Haha yeah, I really avoid "stepping" up career wise, I rather like to code (and guide the "managers" (and other team members) in technical "questions").
- The first and third items are not a big deal for me tbh. Confluence, on the other hand, is pain. Useless, expensive, buggy pain.

Keep faking it, everyone else is too.

Set up 1on1s with your team. Weekly or biweekly, depending on level and team size.
The other, most important task is to delegate. Learn how to identify when you should step back and let your team solve a problem. Lead from the front, but start to learn how to effectively delegate. This is the thing I’ve seen many others struggle with as they get promoted.
You are no longer a dev. You are now your team. Your future success depends on not only your own performance, but your whole team.

get the lay of the land first, talk to others in your role at your org, there are in-house politics to contend with and you need to learn when and where to standup for/aginst things like your teams personal time or a unreasonable deadline.
- A lot of what I have to do as Tech Lead is this ☝️ Deciding what the devs can reasonably do and what has to be pushed back. Also a lot of translations from manager/higher-up musings into actual requirements via making them up myself.

Tech Lead means different things at different companies. You say you have direct reports, do you mean you do their performance evaluations or not? If so then I'd call that a manager. To me that's where the difference is. If you handle any of the "HR" parts of the process (for lack of a better term) then that's a manager.
I ask what you mean because the advice differs.
For example, I was a tech lead but not a manager. It was sort of funny, sometimes my team would ask me if it was okay if they took off or left early and I'd explain to them that "I'm not your boss" lol. Basically I'd tell them I have no problems with it but I'm not really the person who can grant that or whatever. The sort of role a tech lead has (at least in the context I was in) was maybe something like a team captain. If folks didn't have specific tasks in the sprint they wanted to work on I'd assign it to them. Most folks never really had a preference but I never wanted to seem like I was being bossy.
- Yeah, I'm approving PTO and doing performance reviews. I was told that 30-40% of my time will be spent on coding, the lesser the better if I can unlock my team.
- Same here. I'm a Tech Lead right now, but I still live in the code. I see myself as on-trajectory to Architect. I have no direct-reports or any of the responsibilities they go with direct-reports. That role is called a Team Lead at my company (which is on-trajectory for management). I stay at from that stuff like the plague 🤮

Also start improving your “management” skills. Someone recently linked me this list, there are some great resources for senior devs/tech leads on there as well: https://github.com/kuchin/awesome-cto
For me tech leadership is mostly about making the team run as efficiently as possible. Code reviews, pair programming, 1 on 1s, facilitating design discussions, etc
I also talk more with architects, product management etc and prepare the work for the team on a feature level. This also gives me opportunity to delegate part of the work so others can grow too.
- More generically, [The Coaching Habit](The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever https://a.co/d/frq3nEh) is the best book about leading people that I've read (and re-read)

Join us at !engineering_managers@programming.dev
The community is still small but you can ask questions and there are some good resources there already.
- Joined. Thanks!

StaffEng is a great resource for "how the fuck do I staff engineer", including tech lead:
https://staffeng.com/guides/operating-at-staff/

Now lead the techs?

Get used to not knowing everything and try to prevent feelings of imposter syndrome overwhelming you. There are too many new technologies that will come up and it's impossible for you to be an expert in all of them. Rely on your team to be good at their jobs, and focus on defending them and pushing back to prevent the team from getting overwhelmed or beat up.

I enjoyed the book "Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager"

Have fun spelling shit out for the product owner.
Sincerely, A product owner

Your new job is to regularly listen to your direct reports and help them succeed. You will do less of your own work. Don't work more to offset. Consider taking notes or making to-do lists to keep track of your tasks.
Good luck, congrats!

You need to understand very soon that you can no longer have projects assigned to you. Everything your management asks you to do is actually something that they want you to ensure gets finished- you are not supposed to do it yourself. Delegate, follow up, and guide someone else to do it.
The moment you take a project on by yourself, you’ve become a huge bottleneck for your entire team’s productivity. Your team needs your guidance and help, and you can’t offer that if you’re designing, coding, and debugging a project on your own.
98% of coding for you should be paired programming from here on out, where you are not the developer at the keyboard. You are providing suggestions and guidance so that experience can transfer to your junior team members.
Edit: You are not just a “tech lead,” you are a manager if you have direct reports.

Welcome to hell.
Middle Management type of jobs are demanding and frustrating. You have to keep your superiors happy, and also keep a close relationship with your team members. It's not an easy role to keep everything balanced.
If you manage to slowly work your way up in the corporate ladder, things might become better.
- That really depends on the culture of the company and your mindset. If you think it is going to be hell it is going to feel like hell.
  You work more with people and less with computers, but ultimately you are still working on solving problems. Instead of inside code on a computer it is inside a team within a larger organization.
  
  That might be the case, I only have experience in big companies, where you were an insignificant cog in a mechanism nobody understands.
- Oof, I hear you on that.
  It's like trying to do customer service 24/7 while on the clock from all angles.
  Then you have the stuff that people tell you but don't want you to do anything about. You have to follow that (when reasonable) to keep your team's trust in you. I want to make sure that they feel safe coming forwards if they have a problem. I want to be the team lead that I wished I had when I started working.
  Many people heavily avoid a few of our supervisors over poor tact and empathy. A guy had to go to the hospital one day for a broken hand that happened at work. His supervisor insisted that he brought in a doctors note the same day. He understandably quit. I couldn't begin to list the number of HR complaints that this supervisor has had against them. Nothing skeevy, luckily, the person is just very unlikable and short tempered. People in other departments avoid this supervisor like the plague. Some will literally physically try to hide behind stuff when this supervisor walks in so they don't have to worry about talking to them. No, I don't know why this supervisor is still there.
  I'm lucky in the sense that I'm good at calming most situations and figuring stuff out. It kind of feels like my job believes that they need me to stay there for that.
  I am one of the few people who is good at dealing with that particular supervisor, which is kind of ironic because I totally laughed in their face for raging at me over a dumb thing that someone else did.

Schedule monthly 1 on 1s, set individual goals to help them when review time comes.

29 comments