The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change

by Camille Fournier

Finally, I was willing to pick up the pieces and do what needed to be done to make progress. I think, in the end, this pragmatic urgency was the deciding factor. The tech lead role, after all, is a leadership position, even when it’s not a management position.

Your productivity is now less important than the productivity of the whole team. Often, this means that you pay the price of communication overhead.

Regular 1-1s are like oil changes; if you skip them, plan to get stranded on the side of the highway at the worst possible time. Marc Hedlund

Your job with this group is to make sure that they’re learning how to estimate their own work, getting it done roughly within the estimates, and learning from their mistakes.

One of the basic rules of management is the rule of no surprises, particularly negative ones.

The engineering lead will spend less time writing code, but they still engage in small technical deliverables, such as bug fixes and small features, without blocking or slowing down the progress of their team. More than writing code, they hold responsibility for identifying bottlenecks in the process and roadblocks to success for their team and clearing these roadblocks. The person who fills this role is expected to have a large impact on the success of [the organization] as a whole. In particular, leaders in this role are capable of identifying the most high-value projects and keeping their team focused on these projects. As part of keeping the team focused, the engineering lead will partner closely with the product lead to manage project scope and ensure the technical deliverables are met. In addition to focusing the team, they are capable of identifying headcount needs for the team and planning and recruiting to fill these needs. The engineering lead is an independent manager. They are comfortable managing team members with different skill sets from their own. They communicate expectations clearly to all team members, and solicit and deliver individual feedback frequently (not just in the scope of review periods). In addition to strong management skills, the engineering lead acts as a leader for the technical roadmap for their product group (pillar). They clearly communicate the timeline, scope, and risks to their pillar partners, and lead the delivery of major initiati...