Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We don't need a Tech Lead

vvgomes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 116 posts

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#11

Post by voidpointer »

zaphar wrote: post #2

I don't know that I fully agree with this. I think in even well functioning teams you need at least one person who is empowered to make the call. In the cases of a disagreement deadlock you need someone to break the deadlock. Whether that person is a called a Tech Lead or something else you still need them and they need authority and freedom to make the call. Maybe his Mediator can be that person but if you give the…

One doesn't become a leader by just being called the lead. Some people have personal traits that make them assume a leader role more often then others. In my experience, a team that is constantly looking for one person to call all the shots isn't very much empowered. If everyone can take responsibility to own up for the calls to make, you end up with a far more engaged team. It requires a certain maturity but a motivated team should be able to grow into such a mode over a couple of weeks or month. Experts will emerge on certain topics and the team will often look to them to weight in on certain topics. That will all come pretty naturally once a team has passed its initial formation phase.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#13

Post by mnsc »

tomca32 wrote: post #3

In the teams without a tech lead that I have seen, people just defer to the most senior/confident developer in the team to resolve deadlocks and decide between some tougher choices. That person essentially becomes a tech lead without a title. Edit: I agree with the child comments. It makes things easier, less prone to miscommunication, and efficient to have an actual tech lead in the team.

Senior does not automatically imply confident. I'm most senior in my team but in certain areas I have to admit I'm not confident enough to make a sane choice. If a junior developer that is confident in a solution can't be able to lead in that decision, the team is dysfunctional as stated in the article.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#14

Post by rjain15 »

Applying the raft protocol quorum on teams, the +1 can the tech lead. According to the Raft Protocol, A quorum is a majority of members from a peer set: for a set of size n, quorum requires at least (n/2)+1 members.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#15

Post by jordan_clark »

My opinion is if you don't need a tech lead, great. But, most teams do. Someone needs to be there making a final decision. Also, it depends on the company and the type of team. If it is a government organization and the majority of the development team are contractors, a tech lead is most definitely needed to advocate in the best interests of the government entity. In this scenario, the tech lead would need to be a government employee.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#16

Post by bryanlarsen »

zaphar wrote: post #2

I don't know that I fully agree with this. I think in even well functioning teams you need at least one person who is empowered to make the call. In the cases of a disagreement deadlock you need someone to break the deadlock. Whether that person is a called a Tech Lead or something else you still need them and they need authority and freedom to make the call. Maybe his Mediator can be that person but if you give the…

A well functioning team makes all decisions by consensus, so there are no deadlocks.

There are certainly disagreements, but they are hashed out in a timely fashion in well functioning teams. That doesn't mean necessarily that everybody completely agrees with everything, but it does mean that members recognize when to defer rather than stall.

If you have deadlocks, it's not a well functioning team.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#17

Post by edblarney »

nitrobeast wrote: post #7

See "conceptual integrity" in The Mythical Man-Month. There needes to be someone who resolves technical conflicts and keeps the design conherent.

You can have a business / product person effectively prioritize the work - this is not necessarily a requirement of tech lead.

But I for one, suggest that 'coherence' is an important thing and someone needs to 'lead' that.

Feasibly, it could be an 'architect' or someone in that role, meaning that 'theoretically' you don't need a 'tech lead'.

But I'd suggest in reality, someone should be the 'lead' in one way shape or form.

Maybe they can soften the role and get the devs to understand that it's more of a 'principal' than a 'boss' type thing.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#18

Post by Normal_gaussian »

If all that matters is the single team and its work, and the members of the team are both completely committed to the project and technically capable then sure, go without some form of lead.

However in practice there are several very good reasons to have a tech lead. Personally I see that it aligns best to have the lead be your architect, who works across many teams, as they have the ability to most clearly identify when an issue can take a compromise or requires struggling ahead with.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#19

Post by MagicAndi »

This article is actually argung that instead of a team leader, we need both a mediator, and a healthy and productive software team. The later aren't that common in my experience, and I've found that those that do exist are typically formed around a strong senior developer, i.e. the team leader that this article argues against. Productive teams may not need a team leader forever, but I suspect they do need one in order to come about.
Post reply on HN