The advice that I was given when I temporarily took a team lead position is to overcommunicate everything. Build good relationships with the people you report to and your peers and (hopefully) you can lean on them and ask questions as you learn and adapt to this new role
Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
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Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#32Great absolute clarity on what is expected of you by your manager. Tech lead roles have a mix of manager-light bits and your manager may have very specific ideas as to what the role ‘looks like’ or ‘feels like’. You need that info to succeed.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#33Hello! I did a Show HN recently as I wrote a book on exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129
There's a lot of interesting discussion on that thread that might be useful to you as well.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#34Don't assume what motivated you as an engineer applies to others.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#35A few good resources for this. The different positions of "Technical Lead", "CTO", "Engineering Manager" all vary from company to company so I'm not sure what your new role will entail.
1. https://pragprog.com/book/jsengman/become-an-effective-softw..., which had a good conversation here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22033129).
2. https://managinghumans.com/ by Michael Lopes
3. https://leadingsnowflakes.com/, which also has a good weekly newsletter - http://softwareleadweekly.com/.
4. https://www.udemy.com/course/practical-leadership/
5. https://tomdemarco.com/Books/deadline.html - quite old now, but it's still hugely insightful.
May I wish you the best of luck. It's an exciting and really difficult challenge, but can be hugely rewarding in the end.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#36Few things I would like to say: It will no longer be about you. It will all be about your team. Make sure you create a great team, nurture them, train them, teach them how to think critically (in doing so yourself). Ask your team to write out everything they plan to do before they actually do it. Reason with them on what they wrote and what approach decisions they plan to take. Teach them to think long term. Writing…
I would say you need to stand up for your users not your product. A gorgeous code base that doesn't do what your users want doesn't help anyone.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#37In addition to lots of other good advice I see here, I would say that you should remember the old adage "fake it 'til you make it." By that I mean act the part. Taking a leadership role requires not just a change in action, but a change in mindset. You need to see yourself as the lead, and at least pretend to be confident in that role. In time you will actually feel legitimate confidence in your abilities.
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#38I would advise you to not take the position. It would be a disaster in my opinion to attempt to be a tech lead without years of experience at the senior level. Your high level engineers will catch whiff of your lack of experience. Your mid and associate levels will not accelerate as fast as they could have, and you will feel over your head. You will essentially be Peter Principaling yourself. If you are going to do i…
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Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#39There was a good book, written my one of the first Facebook front-end devs, and she was also interviewed about this topic on an HBR Ideacast podcast...
https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/08/the-challenges-and-triumphs-...
The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
Re: Ask HN: Advice for a new and inexperienced tech lead?
#401. get 2 mentors: a technical one and business one (doesn't need to be domain specific)
2. your job is transitioning from "doing" to "enabling". You'll be responsible for issues of governance AND operation. Learn the ropes equally. As you introduce successful operational concerns (bottom up) start to generalise them so they can be used as a top-down concern (i.e. i do devops -> we all do devops here, it's part of the training)
3. leading by example doesn't scale - stop. Embrace a teaching method that ends in trust: i.e. 1. introduce a concept to dev A, 2. get dev A to demonstrate it back to you independently (monitor and prompt as appropriate), 3. from afar passively observe future implementations of said concept and revert to steps 1..2 if required, 4. inform dev A that they are trusted explicitly with this concept and that it is theirs to run with - encourage them to onboard dev B in a similar fashion.
4. at the top you're more responsible for team morale than you can possibly imagine - random acts of kindness and/or direct conversations go a long way... whether it's donuts or "a quick catchup" over lunch, do it... regularly (if you find your postponing these kind of meetings you've got a priority inversion issue to sort out ASAP).
5. if someone is dishonest in any way take it to HR before they walk over you and your team/product/department suffers. In other words, with HR's help, address slow/no work or unapproved "wfh" days as a threat.
6. push back against harmful designs and rushed/skipped processes.