Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?

You can't shortcut these things.

Meetings, other than 1 on 1 meetings/collaborations, are best for making decisions, NOT for sharing information.

Information sharing relevant to the decisions to be made should happen before the meeting via group emails (or possibly through a software tool like Jira) with questions and responses. Written information is easier to reference, quicker to search through, and can be multiprocessed in that multiple people can share information or ask questions simultaneously. If additional information is needed after the fact, you can email after the meeting.

Going into a meeting about building a feature or product for example, you should know the constraints on that, and be able to weigh them in making the decision. When is it due? Who is available to work on it, who will test it, who will maintain it, and who is it for? What aspects/functions are necessary, and what are merely desirable? What resources are available? Why is the feature being added? How might it be constructed?

Finally, be ruthless about moving forward in meetings to get to decisions. If a couple of people agree on something, and begin to quibble over the details? Ask if anybody is opposed to that general idea or has a better one to offer. If not you have made that decision, and can decide on the details, but if so, the detail discussion is premature. It's quite probably also premature if you haven't decided who is going to work on it; the point is you want to nail down the higher level decisions, not get lost in the weeds.

1.) Delegate. Have nothing to do.

This is not about being "lazy" or not doing "actual work," it's about giving autonomy to your team. If you do not delegate, your team will constantly be blocked by you and you will not retain them. If you delegate properly, and trust your team, it'll feel like you (sometimes) have almost no job at all.

A pretty solid way to delegate, is to find out where people want to go next in their career, and offer up decisions/work based on helping people get there. It also prevents #2 on my list...

2.) Do not horde work.

It's shitty, I've done it, and learned from it. Every-fucking-time I accidentally did it, it sucked, it would (a) take forever because meetings can eat your life, (b) stress you out because of the time constraints, and (c) MOST IMPORTANTLY someone on my team would have benefited from, and enjoyed, doing the work more.

3.) Hire people smarter than you.

Don't be afraid to hire people with more experience than you or who are "smarter" in some specific field of expertise than you.

You will learn so much by being open to others knowledge, your team will benefit even more by having other people able to guide/mentor/coach them.

4.) Blame process, not people.

When shit hits the fan, you should ALWAYS be cool as a cucumber. It doesn't matter what the reason is, if someone pressed the wrong button, configured something badly, whatever it was cannot be undone.

What you need to do (AFTER) is a root cause analysis; I have always been a fan of the "Five Whys" but to each there own (you can probably google that to get started if its new to you or to find others). You can then implement, document it, and develop new process so that shit storm doesn't happen again.

Just in case the focus here on process wasn't clear, let me spell out the other part to be clear: do not every fucking blame your team. Do not ever blame an individual. You will fix nothing, and your team will grow to hate you as you toss people under the bus.

5.) Shit rolls down hill, it also rolls up hill, and you're always stuck pushing it.

Depending on where you are in the org, this isn't quite so heavy, but truthfully, as a manager/lead the bullshit you weather for your team is what defines you. The more you prevent rolling downhill onto your team, and the more you prevent rolling uphill to your boss(es), the more loved you will be by both.

At some places, without bullshit densities strong enough to make a strange-quark, this won't be an issue... At other ones, this will very likely be what keeps your bosses and your team happy in an otherwise (i.e. other departments) not-fun workplace.

6.) Be kind and be honest.

Don't treat people like family. Treat them better. Families have bullshit, families hide things, families have history, families might be kind, but they can also be brutal. You also can't fire your "family," but you might have to your co-worker... So, just fucking don't.

What to do instead? It turns out, when push comes to shove more than anything they want (a) honesty about the state of the company and their status, (b) to be communicated with kindly. Don't yell at people, or talk about them behind their backs, don't marginalize people or groups you don't think are in the room (I cannot believe what some people will fucking say when they think "no one" is listening)...

And we all can have a bad day and maybe rudely reply to someone or do something not our best-selves, and in those situations you just gotta learn to proactively and meaningfully say "I am sorry." It's even good for you if people find out you did, because it means you're not an asshole, and again they'll trust you more.

The best will be when people give you that same respect because you've set the standard and they want to uphold it...

7.) Your title doesn't mean anything, your experience does, it is the real investment here and completely defined by what you do and how much you put into it.

8.) If it truly fucking sucks, leave. Don't be afraid to jump shit; with a "lesser title." See #7 again, as long as you've done it right, you'll very likely be getting paid more anyway :)

Your product is whatever you end up with after the long tenuous period of being startup, which often evolves/pivots drastically over time. Your product is your ability to execute.