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Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

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Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#1

Post by Evgeny »

Dear HN,

You've been a source of great information before, and I'm sure I won't be disappointed by your advice.

I worked as a Software Developer all my career (more than 15 years now), but now I'm interviewing for a Technical Lead position. I have almost two weeks before the interview.

I'm interested in resources and advice on how to be a good Tech Lead, regarding both technology and people skills. Of course I've seen and taken note on how other leads work, but still feels like a big step for me.

The development environment is Microsoft.NET. The main product is a complex software. The main goal would be to develop it so that it is "loosely" built, split into separate modules so that each one can be modified without touching the others.

Re: Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#3

Post by mrlyc »

What worked for me was to learn to listen to people, to let them explain the problem and sometimes find an answer as they were talking. What helped was to do lots of peer reviews of both code and documentation so the the young ones could learn from the old ones and the old ones could get new ideas or more up to date ways of doing things from the young ones. I came to realise that programming is flow based while leading a team is interrupt driven so I had to learn how to do context switching quickly and to block out areas of time when I could do my own programming. I had to learn to help people do their work and restrain myself from rushing in to do the work myself. And I had to learn that my team members were people who had lives outside work that affected the work they did.

For example, I had a team member who was a good programmer but had trouble coming to work on time. He was getting married so I bought him a clock radio as a wedding gift. That fixed the problem.

Re: Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#4

Post by dorfsmay »

- you're going to be part of a lot of meetings, email list etc... Make sure you flow information down to your team, every day.

- your main job will be to:

    - unblock your tam members

    - bring them back on track
- consensus is great, but sometimes it doesn't work. Know when you need to make a decision even if not popular.

- praise publicly, criticize in private

- give people a chance (give warnings)

Re: Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#5

Post by zschuessler »

I would stress this the most: support your team. Give your team the technical and emotional support they need to do their jobs well and have fun doing it.

Some things I've noticed that had the largest impact on employee engagement:

-

1. Poorly defined development processes heavily impacts morale. Define your code standards, your process for picking a library to use, how you handle versioning of code (and which methodologies), how your team should escalate problems, and expectations of individual team members. Document this in a place where anyone on the team can view it.

2. All projects require documentation on how to setup a build. If that doesn't exist, developers ramped up on the project will loathe the project from the start (and in some cases, the team lead). From scratch, setup a project before handing it off. Document everything you had to do.

3. Onboarding of new team members: make yourself or someone you appoint available at all times for the first week or so. Document and fix anything the new team member needed help with. Onboarding is hard, this will be an ongoing process.

4. Setup one-on-one meetings. Once every couple of weeks seems ideal in my experience. Don't have an agenda, but have a few questions you resort to for filling in quiet spots for the more introverted types. Don't be afraid to ask hard questions (did you have a problem with Robert in accounting last week? are you happy with your salary? what would make you happier?). This meeting is key to employee retention and team happiness.

5. Allow for an open discussion on all major decisions. Have a tool in place where anyone can raise problems. If someone can post anonymously to start a topic, that's ideal. That is where some of the best business growth will take place.

6. Read a book on mentorship. Mentor your team. If someone surpasses your skillset on the team, you've succeeded. I've not read all of Maxwell's books, but he has some really great insight in the couple I've read: http://www.amazon.com/John-C.-Maxwell/e/B001H6NROC/

7. Become known as an advocate/mediator for those on your team and the higher-ups. Fight for your team when you need to, and fight for upper management decisions when you need to. Finding a balance is important, but never lose trust of those you lead.

-

In many cases, becoming a technical lead also means you are expected to learn the business side of things. It wouldn't hurt to read business-oriented books. Anything by Jim Collins is great (Good to Great is a must-read): http://www.amazon.com/Jim-Collins/e/B001H6GSHK

Best of luck, and congratulations on your learning opportunity!

Re: Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#6

Post by chetanahuja »

dorfsmay wrote: post #4

- you're going to be part of a lot of meetings, email list etc... Make sure you flow information down to your team, every day. - your main job will be to: - unblock your tam members - bring them back on track - consensus is great, but sometimes it doesn't work. Know when you need to make a decision even if not popular. - praise publicly, criticize in private - give people a chance (give warnings)

your main job will be to:

- unblock your tam members

- bring them back on track

Ditto. Note that the unblocking/course-correcting role is the real job. Depending on the size of the team, you may or may not want to be involved in architecture/design of minor projects that crop up all the time (things that might take a week or two to develop). Your team should trust and rely on your advise/insight around technical issues. Writing code yourself would be a secondary role though if it's a smaller team (2-3) people, you'd be advised to pull your weight there as well.

And yes, that set of responsibilities means that this would be more than a full-time job. You should know that going in. If you're more inclined to a strict 40 hour week, you'd probably better off declining this offer.

Re: Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

#8

Post by NoNotTheDuo »

I'm sure you will get plenty of good advice. My own (limited) experience is that your job is going from a "Individual Contributor" to a "Team Lead". This requires a pretty drastic change in thinking and is not something to overlook, or else things will not end up well. This means that there is going to be a lot of work - much more than you can do by yourself - that's why you have a team to support you. The primary thing I struggled with in the past was delegation. Learning to trust (but verify) your team to complete tasks the way they should be done. I think a lot of people struggle with this and is a primary reason for not doing well in a new role.

Some other quick things that come to mind are: - Don't be a gatekeeper of information. If you learn something that would be a benefit to the team, make sure they know it and don't have to go through you to get it. That is - get the team involved.

- Do take a Crucial Conversations course. You will inevitably have to deal with conflict within the team and knowing how to approach the situation will help significantly.

- Do have 1-on-1's with your team on a regular basis. You determine how often, but it should be regular and should be a priority for both of you. This is where you will learn about conflicts within the team, about their career path and aspirations, about personal issues that they are dealing with, and will help build trust between the two of you.

Good luck! It's a fun role and comes with it's own challenges, but can be very rewarding!

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