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Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead?

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

#41

Post by joe_the_user »

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)

- Don't be a part-time developer while managing. Managers who fight for code with the people they're managing are the worst.

- You are there to filter the more outrageous demands of other department into something manageable rather than just forwarding everything people say down to the department.

- Don't quibble team member's estimates for time required to implement feature X. Just forward that to management.

- Encourage each team member's professional development. Encourage members to mentor each other. If someone screws up, it's possible they didn't have the tools to succeed, have them investigate what they need.

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

#42

Post by wpeterson »

As a tech lead, you're a mixture of manager and lead engineer.

As a manager, you should be clear to represent your team in public in terms of giving everyone credit for success and taking personal responsibility for failure yourself.

As a manager, you need to balance what technical work you assign yourself - it should be a mixture of interesting projects and valuable scutwork. Don't be the guy who takes all the good work for himself and only delegates work no one wants.

As a lead engineer, the most valuable thing you can do for your team is to focus on helping them start things and finish things. Folks do well in the middle between those two, but most of the wasted time and frustration comes from not knowing how to begin working productively on things or getting lost and not knowing how to wrap them up successfully.

As an architect, be able to quickly change altitude when explaining the behavior of the system or code that you're responsible for. When debugging an issue with a developer, be able to dive deep into the technical details. When explaining a schedule or cost estimate, be able to talk about the system at a high level to the CEO.

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

#43

Post by mopoke »

I get asked this a fair bit so I started to collect a few of my favourite links together in a blog post: http://www.andykelk.net/leadership/the-big-list-of-managemen...

Specifically to new tech lead roles, I'd recommend "Peopleware" and "Behind Closed Doors"

And a couple of articles specific to your situation: http://firstround.com/review/this-90-day-plan-turns-engineer... and https://blog.stackexchange.com/2015/08/developer-turned-mana...

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

#45

Post by dclowd9901 »

A good tech lead in my mind is someone with a strong technical vision who has the backbone to see their vision through, but is also very adept at ironing out the myriad issues that fracture teams. It means being an advocate for the best technical solution but compromising with the other teams in the org to meet their needs. It also means being very unpopular as a good technical lead will give commandments from on high even when they're not popular or well liked opinions.

Basically your job will be reducing friction by pissing everyone off. So it's even worse than "if you've done it right, no one will know."

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

#46

Post by mizchief2 »

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)

With your experience you will likely know the right course of action to take immediately, but will still have to reach consensus with the team to keep them engaged as solving the problem is the fun part.

Get good a steering the conversation to your solution vs. just handing it down. You know the whole making it seem like it was their idea thing.

If your team perceives you as an authoritarian, they will be afraid to make any decisions on their own and you will become a constant roadblock.

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

#47

Post by unusximmortalis »

hluska wrote: post #21
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)

This is one of the more useful set of management tips that I have read. First, thanks for adding this information. Second, congratulations on keeping it so concise. Excellent job.

no wonder, they have the tech lead skills :)

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

#48

Post by mopoke »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #45

A good tech lead in my mind is someone with a strong technical vision who has the backbone to see their vision through, but is also very adept at ironing out the myriad issues that fracture teams. It means being an advocate for the best technical solution but compromising with the other teams in the org to meet their needs. It also means being very unpopular as a good technical lead will give commandments from on hig…

In my experience, a good technical lead won't give commandments from on high. A good technical lead will consult and facilitate a discussion and mediate conflict. They will also be directive when the time is right, but only after having listened and weighed the arguments. They will also be able to explain the rationale behind those decisions.

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

#49

Post by grandalf »

There is some great advice in this thread. One thing that I've learned is that different organizations have very different cultures and ways of viewing technology (and thus technology leadership).

Some are more deadline oriented, some are more bug/problem oriented, and some are more product oriented, and others care a lot about the price per head of engineers and would prefer to outsource everything to the third world if they could ever manage it. A small number of companies care about open source contribution, attracting top talent, and innovating.

So whoever is hiring you probably has a very clear idea of what they want from the tech lead, so considering that the goals can be very different, you might want to ask this question. In my opinion, it won't seem like a naive question to ask because there are so many facets to people and technology leadership.

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

#50

Post by methodover »

OP, I'm sort of curious why they're hiring a tech lead from the outside. Why hasn't someone taken that position from within the organization? Someone who's worked on the project, who understands it, who has the moral and political authority to lead? I worry that your task will be really, really tough. If you can, in the interview, try and understand the situation over there. Why do they need an outside lead?
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