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

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

world.hey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 136 posts

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

#91

Post by 9rx »

pico303 wrote: post #14

I feel terrible for the author, having to work in this kind of structure. Someone should tell mytaxi that even Spotify never got “tribes and squads” to work, it sounds like for the same reasons/problems mytaxi ran into. Edit: accidentally hit update instead of scrolling… One thing missing from the article that I don’t think has been mentioned is confidence and setting expectations. I’ve found if I expect certain resu…

> Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?”

The words that follow support it being "intimacy". That is what intimacy is — being close enough to someone that you can be open without a feeling of being left exposed. How would empathy fit?

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

#92

Post by littlecranky67 »

tormeh wrote: post #68
littlecranky67 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the default way in Rust to write REST endpoints and have the REST endpoint use/create handles to your database transaction that is bound in scope to the underlying HTTP request? (i.e. transaction lifetime and commit/rollback is linked to the HTTP request succeeding)

Often each API route will have its own handler function. That function will - usually through many layers of indirection and abstraction - launch queries towards your database.

That describe a REST API implementation design, but doesn't really answer the particular question: How is the scoping implemented, i.e. how would any given Rust REST API framework couple a Db transaction to a HTTP scope. I mean, I know how that would look like if the framework ofered you no abstraction or DI whatsoever. You would pass the transaction (and maybe database handle) through all sorts of functions, create some sort of context object (that holds all sort of references to the http connection, database, transaction and whatnot, and call everything manually. Eventually you will end up building a similar custom-made abstraction that the built-in DI container in ASP.NET does. But I would expect there are some frameworks for rust that already deliver that.

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

#93

Post by kaffekaka »

ryandvm wrote: post #88
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.

Indeed. Often mutually exclusive. To really build great software, you need time and space to git your head around the problem. This is obviously not possible if you're spending most of your week in meetings and tracking the work of 7 or 8 team members. In my experience, you can be a great IC *or* a great tech lead, but you cannot be both at the same time.

A person might very well be suited for both IC or team lead, there is no conflict in the skills themselves. But as you say, actually trying to apply them both simultaneously in practice could lead to conflicts.

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

#94

Post by 9rx »

FroshKiller wrote: post #71
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 differen…

> I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something.

Ugh. I recently found myself working with one of those people. What a horrid experience. We waste days trying to reverse engineer out of him what the business problem actually is, and then, once we finally figure that out, even more going over all the things he failed to consider.

Software isn't the technical Olympics. It sole purpose in life is to solve human problems. You must work from understanding the human problems. "This is how we are going to do it" obscures all of the information that is necessary to write good software. I have no qualms about pushing back to ensure that we start from the right place, but it is so draining when it happens over and over. Building software doesn't have to be so stupid.

Don't be that guy.

> I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control.

No. You're not. Someone has to wrangle those who are not providing positive contributions (without a forceful hand). But your job is to figure out why they are not providing positive contributions and solve for that problem, not to continually tell them how to do their job. You are no longer in a technical role. "Lead" means you are now in a people role, solving people problems not suitable to be solved with tech.

If you'd rather be a software developer, consider doing that job instead.

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

#95

Post by franktankbank »

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…

> Non-compliance stable as a discipline method

Can you expand? I don't understand what this means.

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

#96

Post by braza »

franktankbank wrote: post #95
braza wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Non-compliance stable as a discipline method Can you expand? I don't understand what this means.

It's some low-risk/consequence project/initiative that is designed to receive people that will be fired due to lack of compliance and/or collaboration with the new management.

Once we had a German colleague that was not so collaborative in sharing the knowledge about some specific parts of the application, and the Tech lead replaced her MacBook with a Windows 10, and she only can write PRs related with DocStrings.

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

#97

Post by zenethian »

braza wrote: post #96
franktankbank wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Non-compliance stable as a discipline method Can you expand? I don't understand what this means.

It's some low-risk/consequence project/initiative that is designed to receive people that will be fired due to lack of compliance and/or collaboration with the new management. Once we had a German colleague that was not so collaborative in sharing the knowledge about some specific parts of the application, and the Tech lead replaced her MacBook with a Windows 10, and she only can write PRs related with DocStrings.

This seems kind of childish to be honest. Why not just fire the person?

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

#99

Post by franktankbank »

zenethian wrote: post #97
braza wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some low-risk/consequence project/initiative that is designed to receive people that will be fired due to lack of compliance and/or collaboration with the new management. Once we had a German colleague that was not so collaborative in sharing the knowledge about some specific parts of the application, and the Tech lead replaced her MacBook with a Windows 10, and she only can write PRs related with DocStrings.

This seems kind of childish to be honest. Why not just fire the person?

Psychotic IMO. We will fire you but only after you've been publicly humiliated? Who thinks to do this kind of shit?

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

#100

Post by franktankbank »

azangru wrote: post #69
commandersaki wrote: post #9

That Spotify squad tribe diagram makes me want to vomit.

What's wrong with it? Squads look like regular small teams. Tribes look like several teams working on the same product and having to coordinate their work. Each team has specialists, who like to hang out together and talk shop, forming different "chapters". The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive :-) But other than that, what's so bad about it?

> The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive

Its a great soup, apart from the turds floating in it.

Post reply on HN