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I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

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Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#71

Post by FroshKiller »

ramon156 wrote: post #54

Only thing I can say is that, what doesn't work for me, is leads that just tell you how to do things. I completely agree with my tech lead, but also it just includes only his opinion and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this my ego? Maybe.

I'm a technical lead, and I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something. I am not looking over their shoulders at every line of code, but I will tell them plainly that I want an interface, a concrete implementation of the interface that is up to them, and a configuration option for substituting a different concrete type.

I don't do this because I don't trust them but because I have different requirements. What matters most to them is completing their work items according to specifications. What matters more to me is long-term maintainability of our projects for the rest of the team.

Some of them have the long-term needs in mind. Some of them just don't think that way. I try not to make them feel like their work can't be trusted or like my demands are arbitrary. I think they are more receptive to my demands when I can at least provide context for them. That seems absolutely necessary to me.

I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control. I appreciate you asking of yourself, "Is this my ego?" It can definitely go both ways.

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#72

Post by MangoToupe »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #48
tormeh wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know much about C#, but in Rust this is very much not the norm. In fact, there are technical limitations associated with async traits. This sometimes allowed us a reprieve from the madness, but only sometimes. I guess you can write enterprise Java in any language. The entire idea was to make it easier to mock components and therefore easier to test code, however all the code connecting the components became u…

The easiest thing to test will always be pure functions. Many people don't realize this, and how clean it can make your tests look. Provide input, get return value, assert/check it. Sure, at the end of the day you have some IO somewhere. But that will usually be a smaller part of the code base. Codebases that make testing more difficult than that, are making it unnecessarily complicated. Sometimes you depend on some…

> But that will usually be a smaller part of the code base.

Testing how IO composes makes up most of what you want to test because it's such a difficult problem. Reasoning about this in terms of size of the codebase doesn't make sense.

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#73

Post by baby »

socketcluster wrote: post #15

I've been tech lead at different companies. Every time I switched companies, I started out as senior dev and got promoted into the team lead role again; each time with full support of my team. I don't look or act like a leader and this has been a hurdle for me. But what typically happens anyway is; within a few months, my code ends up being a core part of the project; my modules become heavily depended upon and someh…

Interesting. I've witnessed this happening in the past when someone took over all the boring configuration part of the software. It's so essential to the whole thing that you just end up with responsibilities and trust really quickly.

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#74

Post by baby »

maddmann wrote: post #63
master-lincoln wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why that is a logical progression. Writing good code and leading a team needs vastly different skill-sets in my eyes.

I was thinking the same thing. Sounds more like staff engineer not team lead/mgmt?

Team lead != Tech lead

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#75

Post by baby »

tkel wrote: post #2

Don't rely on hierarchy. Earn others' trust as you would when you are an equal. Don't expect deference just because of your position. Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social and easily generates animosity. You'd do better to empower your peers instead, and show them you are able to listen to them as well. Just like you would with friends.

"Leading without authority"

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#76

Post by braza »

general1465 wrote: post #30

I still remember when my previous employer has lost domain for like 3 months. Boss and his business partner have setup company and I have joined later. Business partner left. - I was trying to figure out who have access to domain X? It is not on AWS and by whois it is under some random registrar in Europe. I got just shrug from boss. Everything works so why bother? - After 3 years of scratching my head and try to rep…

> My take away from this is that you can't change the culture

I've seen the culture changing in some special circumstances a couple times in previous companies, and honestly all of them were ugly: 1) Demographic replacement (having more people saying yes and out-vote the legacy employees)

2) Hired guns from the top to the bottom to shake the system (we called in a company those managers "007" because they used to have licence to fire).

3) Non-compliance stable as a discipline method for the "legacy employees" (very adopted in Central Europe)

4) "Train-your-replacement" as a coercion method for collaboration

5) Some modified version of the "madogiwa-zoku" but instead of looking to the window, they push people to go for the "metawork," like organizing events, being a developer advocate in conferences, assuming roles as "community managers," or being used as a "donkey token" to be used in conferences or panels of "_______________ in tech."

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#77

Post by baby »

arealaccount wrote: post #70

I find tech leads to be the most difficult people in any organization to work with (always with exceptions), I think it’s because they are still learning the lead part, and at the same time are trying to prove themselves. Coming in with a hexagonal overhaul is a great example. At least in this case it seems the writer didn’t dig his heals in too much.

I think it's also that they have a vision and unfortunately this means they have to say no to landing PRs that don't make sense to the overall vision often. And nobody likes to throw away work.

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#78

Post by lsofzz »

> I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

TL;DidntRead

Precisely. Take the `TL` title out the door. Take the `ego` out the door.

Then, step in the door - as a friend, with empathy, proactive listening and support the engineers.

Round-table `discussions`. Not Waterfall.

My 2 cents.

Re: I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

#80

Post by NalNezumi »

braza wrote: post #76
general1465 wrote: post #30

I still remember when my previous employer has lost domain for like 3 months. Boss and his business partner have setup company and I have joined later. Business partner left. - I was trying to figure out who have access to domain X? It is not on AWS and by whois it is under some random registrar in Europe. I got just shrug from boss. Everything works so why bother? - After 3 years of scratching my head and try to rep…

> My take away from this is that you can't change the culture I've seen the culture changing in some special circumstances a couple times in previous companies, and honestly all of them were ugly: 1) Demographic replacement (having more people saying yes and out-vote the legacy employees) 2) Hired guns from the top to the bottom to shake the system (we called in a company those managers "007" because they used to hav…

The last one made me chuckle. Worked in Japan, didn't see many madogiwa zoku (probably because I only worked at startups) although it was talked about a lot. But I guess community manager-esque position did exist, and now it makes sense why so many big company blokes that went to tech meetup came off as very incompetent
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