<story><title>Becoming a Tech Lead</title><url>http://blog.fogcreek.com/becoming-a-tech-lead-interview-with-pat-kua/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codingdave</author><text>This makes it sound like &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot; is a switch that gets flipped on your job description, and suddenly invokes a major change in your daily routine. And maybe it is, in some organizations.&lt;p&gt;But in my experience, groups of technical folk self-organize. No matter what the formal hierarchy is according to management&amp;#x2F;HR, an informal meritocracy will form, and natural leaders will emerge... normally being those who are not only good at tech, but also at seeing the bigger picture, including business knowledge and soft skill. These people won&amp;#x27;t be spending 30% of their time coding, they will be spending 80% of it coding... and 20% helping everyone else out, and talking to leadership about strategy. People who spend 70% of their job organizing the coders are not tech leads, they are project managers (or just managers).&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am just arguing semantics, and &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot; means something else to the rest of you... it appears from the few comments here already that every organization labels themselves differently.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spamizbad</author><text>Even if your team is self-organizing, eventually you&amp;#x27;ll need a &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot;. This person really isn&amp;#x27;t a boss. They&amp;#x27;re more of a facilitator that handles all the cruddy work so that developer productivity is maximized and the dev team is free of distraction. They also manage the &amp;quot;politics&amp;quot; of the dev team to the outside -- like making sure strong devs get recognized for their performance, and weaker ones either get mentored (or if that doesn&amp;#x27;t work out, fired).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve worked under 30% leaders before and didn&amp;#x27;t care for the experience as a subordinate. I always felt like POs and PMs broadsided the team, good people weren&amp;#x27;t recognized or rewarded, shitty people got to hang on, etc. The experience wasn&amp;#x27;t awful, but it wasn&amp;#x27;t that great. It would have been much happier had our boss spent two fewer hours each day coding and 2 more hours managing each day.&lt;p&gt;Also some 30% tech leads tend spend that 30% needlessly micromanaging developers on their team by doing stupid shit like constantly having them move classes or modules around the codebase for no rhyme or reason towards better &amp;quot;organization&amp;quot; rather than just telling the team &amp;quot;I think the way x y z exist is messy. When you have downtime, or are sick of working on whatever and need a break, can you folks think of a better way to re-org and refactor them?&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Becoming a Tech Lead</title><url>http://blog.fogcreek.com/becoming-a-tech-lead-interview-with-pat-kua/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>codingdave</author><text>This makes it sound like &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot; is a switch that gets flipped on your job description, and suddenly invokes a major change in your daily routine. And maybe it is, in some organizations.&lt;p&gt;But in my experience, groups of technical folk self-organize. No matter what the formal hierarchy is according to management&amp;#x2F;HR, an informal meritocracy will form, and natural leaders will emerge... normally being those who are not only good at tech, but also at seeing the bigger picture, including business knowledge and soft skill. These people won&amp;#x27;t be spending 30% of their time coding, they will be spending 80% of it coding... and 20% helping everyone else out, and talking to leadership about strategy. People who spend 70% of their job organizing the coders are not tech leads, they are project managers (or just managers).&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am just arguing semantics, and &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot; means something else to the rest of you... it appears from the few comments here already that every organization labels themselves differently.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shawnee_</author><text>&lt;i&gt;These people won&amp;#x27;t be spending 30% of their time coding, they will be spending 80% of it coding... and 20% helping everyone else out&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes companies think they need a &amp;quot;Tech Lead&amp;quot;, when what they actually need is a really good Technical Writer who understands code.  A lot of time (80 percent) spent &amp;quot;coding&amp;quot; isn&amp;#x27;t necessarily great &amp;#x2F; productive &amp;#x2F; effective if it&amp;#x27;s just creating more piles of code.  But coding good documentation, or refactoring documentation around even mediocre code?  That&amp;#x27;s the quickest route to making the sum of the developers&amp;#x27; lives easier.</text></comment>