We don't need a Tech Lead • Hacker News Board

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#111

Post by btdiehr » Sat, Dec 03, 2016, 6:21 PM UTC

Justen wrote: post #100

btdiehr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is wishful thinking at best, companies require practical thinking because reality is corporate suicide. Not everyone will have great communication skills - and as a team increases in size, this becomes increasingly difficult.

This isn't wishful thinking, I work with a 100% remote dev team and communication skills is one of the top things we screen for when interviewing. I assume other remote teams also value that skill.

Communication skills are certainly important. I believe we both agree communication both at an organizational level, as well at a personal level is important.

My point is that as an organization scales, you will have many teams, and teams of teams even. The wishful thinking is that you can disband this entire structure because 'we hire good communicators'.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#112

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Dec 04, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

crpatino wrote: post #103

crdoconnor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great. But we live in reality where lots of teams are not well functioning some or all of the time Managers abusing their power causes way more dysfunction than a lack of authority ever does. >Unfortunately again, we live in the real world where decision making is often needed exactly because a lot of the time there are team members we can't let run rampant and make their own decisions. That isn't what managing by c…

> That isn't what managing by consensus means. In the real world bad eggs don't "run rampant", they are reined in by peer pressure, and poor developers very often recognize that they are poor developers This does not conform to my experience at all. Once you have assembled a team of solid B+ players (not great guys, but get the job done more often than not) they will laser focus in the sole B- guy in the team and des…

>nobody feels empowered enough to call other people on their shortcomings

I've done exactly that as a non-team lead and a team lead. It doesn't require authority it just requires tact.

>Bring in an A+ team lead

Not that simple. Businesses that bring in "A+" leads often misrecognize confidence and bluster for ability and bring in overconfident B- leads who fuck up everything, including the work of developers beneath them who are better than them.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#113

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Dec 04, 2016, 1:14 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #102

crdoconnor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I fully agree with you. I've seen some "deadlock breaking" where necessary discussions were cut short by, like, 5 or 10 minutes and the resulting "compromise" architectural decisions ended up being disastrous. I've also seen team leads set agendas and drive discussion in such a way as to bury important issues that would otherwise come out while wasting time on minutiae. In contrast I've never really…

A "decider" is not supposed to be a "compromiser". That's just design-by-committee with a benevolent dictator.

That's typically what you get when you have a team lead who doesn't have a full view into everything that is going on (which is the norm).

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#114

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Dec 04, 2016, 1:38 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #85

crdoconnor wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Great. But we live in reality where lots of teams are not well functioning some or all of the time Managers abusing their power causes way more dysfunction than a lack of authority ever does. >Unfortunately again, we live in the real world where decision making is often needed exactly because a lot of the time there are team members we can't let run rampant and make their own decisions. That isn't what managing by c…

> In the real world bad eggs don't "run rampant", they are reined in by peer pressure, and poor developers very often recognize that they are poor developers I wish I lived in your world, but clearly we live in very different worlds.

Which developer ran rampant in your world who wasn't either in authority or favored by somebody who was?

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#115

Post by crdoconnor » Sun, Dec 04, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

calchris42 wrote: post #88

crdoconnor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It becomes infeasible for every person working on a product to have to know exactly who to talk to for every question. It is, however, perfectly feasible to ask such questions on a team chatroom. "Who knows about [x]?" is usually enough to get the right person to talk to and it means the lead doesn't keep getting interrupted.

A team chatroom... what a nice idea. This was a larger, more enterprise company. Enough said? But seriously, I think the answer depends heavily on company and team size. The role I mention is a lot less critical for smaller teams or when there are minimal different stakeholders involved.

>A team chatroom... what a nice idea. This was a larger, more enterprise company. Enough said?

Are you literally saying that larger companies need managers for their dev teams because they're too enterprise to use slack?

FWIW I've used both in larger companies and smaller companies.

>But seriously, I think the answer depends heavily on company and team size.

I don't think it does. Slack chatrooms and email lists scale.

Re: We don't need a Tech Lead

#116

Post by justinhj » Wed, Dec 07, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

btdiehr wrote: post #81

justinhj wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a counterpoint to that maybe everyone on the team should know who the expert is in any particular area and EVERY member of the team should have adequate communication skills

This is wishful thinking at best, companies require practical thinking because reality is corporate suicide. Not everyone will have great communication skills - and as a team increases in size, this becomes increasingly difficult.

I don't know what part of the industry you work in, but the idea that we would hire someone incapable of communication at the level of "you should ask Dave of Simon about that feature" seems nuts to me.