In my experience, you don't really want to say "I'm the lead" (it can come across insecure), but you do need to be able to confidently say "Ok, here's what we're going to do" or "Here's what I'd like you to do" once you've gathered all the relevant information and come to a decision.
How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
41–50 of 146 posts
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#42> When the product team requests a "simple" feature, I'm thinking about the 3 teams that need to be involved to update the necessary microservices. God I hate modern web sometimes
What's the alternative?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43925892 "Microservices are a tax your startup probably can't afford" (310 points, 263 comments).
First build the thing that works, and only if it's really necessary, split it up in separate (networked) parts. You won't have to deal with unreliable network communication, or coordinate on a breaking API change with several teams when a simple search/replace on several function definitions and calls suffices.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#43> I often get "eye rolls" when I say this to developers: You are not going to convince anyone with facts. True in technical leadership and true in life. Engineers are especially prone to this sort of frustration, where you're technically right but socially aren't speaking the right language for your audience.
Need ethos, logos and pathos. Not just the logos.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#44"I'm the lead, and we are going to do it this way": avoid it for as long as you can, but do NOT hesitate to use it when it's the appropriate answer. Take the time to listen to everyone and to form an educated decision. Explain your conclusion once, twice and even thrice. But sometimes teams can get caught in an endless futile discussion over details that don't matter for the stated goals. In that case, it's *your dut…
100%. I worked for a brilliant lead, he had a team of excellent engineers. But he was stuck on the socratic method, determined to lead by asking thoughtful questions and letting us sort it out. Important discussions would go in circles a lot, frustratingly so. Sometimes you have to be the decision maker.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#45"I'm the lead, and we are going to do it this way": avoid it for as long as you can, but do NOT hesitate to use it when it's the appropriate answer. Take the time to listen to everyone and to form an educated decision. Explain your conclusion once, twice and even thrice. But sometimes teams can get caught in an endless futile discussion over details that don't matter for the stated goals. In that case, it's *your dut…
Humans sometimes yearn for the leader to put their foot down.
The quiet ones may want the yapping voices silenced so progress can be made.
And sometimes the yapping ones get out ahead of their own skis and don't know a graceful way to back down so they're happyish to be closed down, even if they're primed to come back with an "I told you so" if the leader gets it wrong.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a lesson I learned the hard way. When I was a first time manager I had the naive idea that I was going to build consensus for everything and get everyone to come to an agreement naturally. It worked at first with a good team. Then later I inherited a fragment of another team with some older know-it-all engineers who thought everything modern was garbage and we should be doing everything like they did 25 years…
You can build consensus around the decision making process and build a culture where the outcome of that process is widely accepted. As long as people have the time and pathways to make their case and input, and understand there will be some verdict that may or may not align completely with their opinion. Then its just the decision makers duty to synthesize things in good faith but probably has bought themselves some…
One thing I like to do with sr+ engineers who will feel burned by a decision - esp. those very publicly against it - is to lead with some sort of concession... maybe a project they expressed interest in, greenlight for a week to research some POC.
Whatever it is, it tends to be considerably less value to the business than the decision itself, but it directly acknowledges their discontent and allows them to get something out of the process besides platitudes, (perceived) public embarrassment, and frustration.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#47> When the product team requests a "simple" feature, I'm thinking about the 3 teams that need to be involved to update the necessary microservices. God I hate modern web sometimes
What's the alternative?
Funnily enough, microservices. In the macro economy you don't have to have such strict coordination with Microsoft, or OpenAI, or Google, or whomever you interface with. You just figure out how to make your solution work within the confines of the service they give you. Like it or not.
Microservices is exactly the same concept except in the micro economy of a single organization. Each team is like Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, etc. You don't coordinate with them, you deal with what they give you. Like it or not.
I expect the earlier statement confused microservices with a multi-process application.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience that's usually just the tip of the iceberg. You've heard the expression "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way"? It's like a link broke in a chain, and usually it's many links correlated. Maybe they just distrust expertise, well I have a phd and I assure you it'll come up later. Maybe he's an immigrant from Russia and he just distrusts everything to do with the n…
> I have a phd and I assure you it'll come up later. Will it? One would have to dig pretty deep into one's personal life to learn about that. Someone who thinks COVID was a hoax isn't going to be one to dig deep. And, well, if he really did somehow dig deep enough to find that information, you can just laugh it off as a hoax.
> Someone who thinks COVID was a hoax isn't going to be one to dig deep.
This is kind of a side point, but people with fringe beliefs tend to dig a lot deeper to validate those opinions than those with a mainstream view.
You can bet that someone who thinks that the moon landing was a hoax to the point that they would tell someone about it will know more about the moon landing than a random person who believes it was real.
It often takes an expert in something to shoot down the arguments.
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#49"I'm the lead, and we are going to do it this way": avoid it for as long as you can, but do NOT hesitate to use it when it's the appropriate answer. Take the time to listen to everyone and to form an educated decision. Explain your conclusion once, twice and even thrice. But sometimes teams can get caught in an endless futile discussion over details that don't matter for the stated goals. In that case, it's *your dut…
“If you want to make everyone happy, don't be a leader.”
This is the most important line. You shouldnt be afraid to hurt some peoples feelings (though not intentionally and as kindly as you can of course). Absolutely nothing will get done if you want everyone to be happy
Re: How to Lead in a Room Full of Experts
#50What is a lead developer in this context? An engineering manager? Is it like an architect (staff engineer/whatever)? An engineer who is in charge of a specific project?
There are different dynamics at play in each role and reading the guy's bio I'm getting the sense that he is a freelancer? or has a consulting company? which would have a whole different dynamic.