a good technical leader goes to bat for the scientists and engineers in his team, at the VP and C-level, to make sure they are on top and paid at least equally well if not better, compared to anyone else, including marketing and sales drones.
Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
91–100 of 116 posts
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#92A few things that have helped me.
1. Have a one-on-one meeting with every member of your team, for 30 minutes each week. They know when that meeting is coming up, and you know, so things that they want to tell you in private can come up then.
2. A good leader anticipates what his team is going to need before the team knows they need it. Try to do that. If there's a big release coming up next month, do what you can to make that 100% successful. Make sure there are no vacations, company meetings or other things that would impede that. Give your team room to breathe and make sure they are not bogged down with distractions.
If you can make their lives easier, they will make your life easier by kicking ass for you.
3. Oh, one more thing. If you are in a meeting and you are having a group discussion on how to solve a problem, make sure you call in people who are quiet. After the conversation has quieted down a bit and you are dialing in on an answer, if Jim hasn't said much simply say "Jim what do you think?"
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#93Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach - Jerry Weinberg (and many other great books by him) - a book I've read and re-read many times. A brief review here - https://blog.mkorman.uk/book-review-becoming-a-technical-lea...
Strongly second this book. It's a deeply methodical book with questions at the end of each chapter that really help you understand yourself and your leadership style.
I read it 8 years ago and it got me to consistently write everyday what I was thinking and feeling about my projects and team
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#94A few things that have helped me. 1. Have a one-on-one meeting with every member of your team, for 30 minutes each week. They know when that meeting is coming up, and you know, so things that they want to tell you in private can come up then. 2. A good leader anticipates what his team is going to need before the team knows they need it. Try to do that. If there's a big release coming up next month, do what you can to…
Once a week is a lot in the age of Slack. I talk to my people asynchronously all the time, so the one-on-one is less important. Still do it though.
I'll tell my single Golden Rule for managing people is to make sure they always know what's expected of them. Not knowing what's expected of you is probably the single greatest source of stress.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#95The best book on leadership I read was Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership[1]. He was a career US Navy SEAL and bring a lot of great leadership approaches from the SEALS and correlates them to the business world. His principles lead back to the idea of taking extreme ownership of everything related to your team and the "mission". I really liked his no nonsense approach. The best lesson I learnt on leadership is to list…
When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly. One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red". What it m…
Did you read the book?
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I was still a new dev, I had a "superboss" in another city (HQ) managing teams across the country including our little dev team. I was new and did not interact with "superboss"-es from HQ directly. One day after a major release stuff broke in production. The company was losing customers daily. The "superboss"-es from HQ descended on our little dev team in a small midwestern city and ordered "Code Red". What it m…
1. Code Red has been part of broader civilian idiom since, I don't know, the 50s? Use of "Code Red" doesn't indicate anything. 2. Common sense dictates that whenever one transfers skills to a new context, one assess the underlying assumptions and context of those skills to adapt them for use. I'm sure mistakes in that regard will inevitably be made, but I give most people more credit than to assume, a priori, that pe…
Forcing people to sleep in the office asa strategy to fix a complex system is surely a sign that someone was not thinking about context?
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A part of the team had to sleep in the office for a few weeks. So it sounds like OP was coerced to do so and it was not a free choice or an "overreaction" as you characterize it.
i see, I didnt read it as a command but as a "We volitionally chose to solve the issue this way"
"Had to" usually implies coercion of a sort. Like you might say "in PE class we had to stand on one leg for 10 minutes".
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#98> Do you have any recommendation on what should I do, read to become better and better every day? It helps to write a hello world for every hot new tech out there. Not to follow trends, but to actually be knowledgeable enough to have a valid opinion. Think of yourself as a radio station who has to buy or at least sample every popular track. Crystal is hot? Set up a web server and connect to sql. Set up a Vert.X serve…
> These all take an hour max each day.
um, what? If this is based on personal experience I would love to understand how.
In my experience, Setting up a totally new development environment in an unfamiliar toolset generally takes waaaay more than an hour.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#99A few things that have helped me. 1. Have a one-on-one meeting with every member of your team, for 30 minutes each week. They know when that meeting is coming up, and you know, so things that they want to tell you in private can come up then. 2. A good leader anticipates what his team is going to need before the team knows they need it. Try to do that. If there's a big release coming up next month, do what you can to…
Once a week is a lot in the age of Slack. I talk to my people asynchronously all the time, so the one-on-one is less important. Still do it though. I'll tell my single Golden Rule for managing people is to make sure they always know what's expected of them. Not knowing what's expected of you is probably the single greatest source of stress.
An even bigger source of stress is asking questions to try to understand what is expected of you and being told that your leader is confident that you understand what is expected of you.
Re: Ask HN: What makes a good technical leader – any recommended books?
#100So many good book recommendations here, but no one has mentioned Tom DeMarco's The Deadline:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5_kJAQAAMAAJ&printsec=fron...
In style and content, it's a bit like an older version of "The Phoenix Project" that was focused on delivering packaged software, and mostly oriented around a "stocks and flows" model of the development process.
The framing narrative is much more amusing, though.
Also worth reading Edward Yourdon's Death March:
https://books.google.com/books?id=FdAZUX9H_gAC&printsec=fron...