Good Tech Lead, Bad Tech Lead
Juri Strumpflohner
Published
A very good read and I couldn’t agree more on this. Here’s a quick summary of the main points from the article.
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Good techleads…
- act as team members
- also do “unsexy” work, clear roadblocks for the team
- broaden technical capabilities of their team; knowledge not concentrated in one mind
- have overall vision of technical direction and explains to team
- trust team members, recognize they are smart
- encourage debates, lead them, help members to come up with a path to a solution
- allow themselves to be persuaded with new ideas (don’t enter discussions with foregone conclusions)
- proactive
- identify areas of overlapping and possibilities to share work
- pragmatic, balance between doing right and getting it done
- details matter, code quality, reviews etc… are as important as shipping on time
- know effective communication is important, more than just writing code
- sacrifice personal productivity for overall team productivity
- constant communication with product managers and designers
- easy-going but assertive
- good tech leads emerge naturally, earn respect through technical competence and experience
- always looking for ways to improve
- boost confidence of everyone else on the team
Bad techleads…
- take only high profile tasks and expect to take credit
- optimize locally without looking at the entire organization
- believe it is more important to win an argument rather than the team gets to the right decision
- delegate, but then don’t follow progress (hope it will get done)
- only focus on being in time, take shortcuts, but increase costs in the long run
- think they’re only productive when writing code and think communication is just point of distraction
- do not take ownership of the product
- confrontational and aggressive
- arrogant and take pleasure in making their mates feel inferior