Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

1. Start by setting up the development environment and getting the software you'll be working on to run locally. Then, fix a couple of easy to medium level bug fixes as soon as possible. This is the fastest way to learn what your team is talking about.

1.5 If you don't understand something that's being said at a meeting ask, but don't hijack the meeting, make a note and talk to someone who can explain in more detail.

2. Think at a high-level -- what is the product supposed to be doing, abstract away -- some engineers will talk in code -- which you may not understand early on but interpret what they're saying at a high-level.

4. Be available and approachable to everyone on the team.

5. Understand the impact of a bug fix or a feature -- how much QA effort does it require, what is the operational impact of the work, does it break backward compatibility etc.

6. Participate in product meetings and consider designing any new features as homework so you can better discuss it with the engineering team you're leading.

Good luck!

Edit

Some DO NOTs:

1. Do not complain how bad the code base is. No one likes someone new walking in and saying that at once.

2. That said, understand what technical debt there is and address it incrementally. Don't say "we should re-write XYZ."

3. Do not suggest alternate platforms and frameworks unless is absolutely makes sense -- this is especially true if the team is big and no one knows this new framework besides you. You need your existing team to contribute to and maintain projects.

But, as an alternative to 3, and possibly an extension of 4, when you have an idea/experience of a solution to a problem but your team does not, create a dialogue whereby your questioning of their approach allows them to find your solution by themselves. You can pass on skills and techniques you've learnt in a manner where they learn them too rather than being told of the solution. Your team will feel proud of their solution and you can be happy knowing you are cultivating a strong learning environment.

Even if you don't do much actual programming you need to be the one that monitors and accepts all pull requests.

That also means taking responsibility for any of the subsequent angry users because you merged that code and you could have stopped it.

Keeping an eye on pull requests also means gently guiding the junior devs to amend their code when they head down the wrong path (e.g. by pairing with them) rather than just rejecting it outright or (worse), writing a snarky comment.

- Prioritize everything

- Simplify code, processes, and infrastructure at every step

- Build a well-rounded, emotionally stable team

- Loosely follow scrum & agile

- Be realistic

- Be honest, even when it is inconvenient

- At the tech lead level, the most important skill is your own psychology. Hone your personality, establish work-life balance, and take some courses in positive psych

- Have an opinion

- Learn when to talk, when not to talk, when to put it in writing, and when not to put it in writing

- Adopt a "good enough, and let's move on" design approach

- Build strong relationships with non-technical management