How Many People Can Someone Lead?

The distinction here is between Politician and Technician.

At the DevLead level one is a technician - diving into the complexities and trade offs and making a decision that will meet constraints that are the end point of a political process the devlead probably was not a part of

The politician you seem to be thinking of is someone (possibly the same someone) who is active in the political process that ends up deciding the constraints the technician works under - internal and external to the organisation

So this will be some of email threads or chats amoung some or all other devleads, it will be "being helpful" answering requests, assigning resources or time to help other politicians, or worse architecture diagrams, or it will be speaking at conferences etc etc etc. In the lingo it's becoming an "Authority". But one is only an "Authority" by being accepted by a "constituency" - maybe "all the devs in the company who think we ought to start using git" is your leadership position (ok maybe that's a decade old now but it's an easy example). Betray the constituency and lose the leadership position.

Neither are better than the other. Some political processes are better than others (in a democracy we perhaps appreciate this). Open decision making is likely to lead to long term better decisions - even if it is messy.

Linus Torvalds is an obvious leader example - using one political process (this is what I think - essentially using email as Thomas Paine used pamphlets)

But yeah - "managing" 5 people is reasonable - by the time you hit 12 it's a full time job listening to the moaning and they stop being a devlead. Only some can be a politican and a manager at same time.

> This is an authoritarian model that makes the local despot the bottleneck for the team: Decisions end up being routed through the "leader", individual growth and development and team value is constrained within the scope of the "leader".

This isn't an absolute conclusion, I don't think. I can speak for my own organization -

I lead 2 functionally-aligned teams, meaning they own internal product/systems for two different partner orgs. I also have a technical program management function which owns initiatives related to the above when they span more than a single team or are company-wide initiatives. I also have an engineering team with its own EM who roughly cover the scope of whatever my organization is doing - could be single-function, could be company-wide.

In my model, decisions from Principal/Director/Manager team members don't wait on me. They can if they want extra eyes or extra air cover, but otherwise, my job these days is less about setting technical direction and more about unblocking via executive alignment, budget, people, etc.

So far you might be thinking this is uninteresting and just means that my individual managers are the local despot, but I've done two things to (so far) eliminate that -

1. The TPM is responsible for getting us through the design stage, and they manage no one (or maybe other TPMs). This means they herd the cats and work with engineers and SMEs to get aligned on whatever design will make us functionally and technically successful.

2. This one is more on my qualities as a leader, but I also ask the managers on my team to err on the side of delegating more and letting their staff impress them, and being there as a resource when they need help. I think this is called servant leadership, but I don't read a lot of management stuff.

Team composition (experience and horsepower) plays a large role in whether this model can be successful and how hands on you'll have to be, but in trying to distill a decade+ of experience into a couple of paragraphs, this is generally how I like to run things. YMMV of course, I don't hold myself out as an authority, just offering a counterpoint.

> The best managers don't have a hard time finding talent for open positions on their teams: They already have networks of former employees and peers that they can use. Indeed, the employees of the best managers recruit for their teams as soon as positions open up.

If you adhere to the standard 1 year non-solicit, this isn't true right away. Hiring in my first year at a new company is one of the hardest parts of my job. But I'm probably a bit of a rule follower when it comes to the non-solicit - moreso than others, I've observed.

"However what worked well there was that I could trust my team to both execute their work and stay on top of things."

This is key. Do you have people you have to take by the hand and guide through every step, or do you have competent, capable ones, able to think for themself (who will get annoyed, if treated like childs).

Reality is usually a mix and a valuable leadership skill is finding out early, who needs close supervision and who not. With very competent people, you can have a very flat hierachie.

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holders and management; frequent conflict resolution; incredible time and resources management; quick adaption to unexpected situations; acute safety awareness; and to operate in a highly-political environment with severe budget constraints.

She's a nationally board-certified kindergarten teacher in a public school.

Could you please describe your ideal, non-authoritarian model for management and leadership?