Tech Lead: key skills beyond the technical
In my professional life, I worked for more than 6 years as a Tech Lead, sometimes as a Position and other times as a Role. In the end, that’s just an internal organization of positions and roles within each company. However, if we consider it a formal position, what would be the next level? Engineering Manager? I don’t like the idea of limiting a developer’s future to management. There are other options, such as software architecture and even growth as a developer (staff engineer and principal).
Why does management attract so many developers?
To answer this and other questions, I created this post. A Tech Lead’s knowledge must go beyond the technical; many soft skills are necessary to succeed in this role, which generates a trend toward management, aggravated by inefficient career plans in many technology companies. It’s crucial that companies implement efficient career plans so that developers perceive that there are options beyond management. Therefore, I believe that the Tech Lead role can be assigned to any developer regardless of their Position, because with an efficient career plan I can choose between Engineering Manager, Staff Software Engineer, or Software Architect Engineer. Even switching between those areas during a professional career within an organization.
It’s essential that companies establish efficient career plans and that leaders maintain ongoing conversations with their developers to guide them in the direction they want to follow.
Does every developer need to be a Tech Lead?
No, but every developer should possess and develop the same skills as a tech lead. Companies are seeking increasingly collaborative environments that foster self-management, so a developer who wants to grow in this environment will increasingly need soft skills, especially when it comes to self-management, time management, risk management, and much more.
That’s why many developers end up taking on tech lead roles and, eventually, opt for management. However, I believe the most important thing is to define whether you want to continue as an individual contributor or not.
In my particular case, I was an Engineering Manager for over 1 year and didn’t enjoy the position 100%, precisely because I felt distant from technology and software development. I prefer to be an individual contributor and be immersed in the day-to-day of software development, rather than spending time in meetings, documents, and reports. I like the Tech Lead role, as it represents the fusion of both worlds, allowing closer contact with developers, software, and mentoring. I feel that my knowledge stays more alive in this role. However, being an Engineering Manager also has its advantages, and it’s simply a matter of personal preference. I feel more fulfilled and efficient as an individual contributor, despite having had significant achievements and possessing the necessary skills to be an engineering leader.
Successful Tech Lead: keys and skills to succeed
To be a successful Tech Lead, we must go beyond the technical. It’s a common mistake to believe that a tech lead is the person with the most experience and technical knowledge on the team. While experience is crucial, technical knowledge can be acquired and developed. Additionally, in many cases, not being the most technically expert on a team fosters active listening and mutual trust among colleagues.
The skills that truly drive professional growth are soft skills, and in this context it’s no different. Let’s explore some of the most relevant ones:
Flexibility and change management
The context and priorities in the technology area change at high speed. It’s increasingly common for this to happen and for us to face various challenges and obstacles. Team changes, restructuring, capacity adjustments, or any other type of change can arise in our day-to-day. That’s why we need this skill to adapt and work effectively in diverse situations and with different people or groups.
In technical leadership, it’s essential to foster input and respect. It’s important to drive decision-making based on everyone’s opinion, not just one person’s. Everyone should contribute, and we should avoid unilateral decision-making as much as possible, especially by the Tech Lead, who should be the last to speak and only with the intention of unblocking.
Collaboration
For me, this is the most important skill in an organizational context. The sooner we discover that we can’t achieve anything alone, the faster we’ll develop this skill. We always depend on other people or areas to do our work.
In technical leadership, it’s essential to foster empowerment and decentralization of knowledge. An efficient team is one that doesn’t depend on the tech lead in its day-to-day, but functions autonomously. Once they’ve been guided and the direction has been defined, they’re capable of moving the project forward on their own, through collaboration among everyone.
It’s for this and other reasons that I believe the tech lead doesn’t need to be the most technically expert on the team.
A tech lead should foster team spirit, promote and generate participation and collaboration from everyone, so that they have the interest and willingness to work as a team.
Fast learning
In the technology area, we’ll always encounter something new or something we know in depth. This is where one of the most valued skills in software development comes in: the ability to learn something new quickly and efficiently. This allows us to be increasingly flexible in the face of change and to adapt to any context with ease.
Developing this skill isn’t simple and is generally acquired with experience and practice.
Positive thinking
In the technology field, positive thinking relates to the ability to identify positive aspects even in the most complex or unpleasant situations, in order to maximize productivity.
This is similar to what we do in most agile retrospective meetings: reflect on what we did well, what we didn’t do so well, and what we can improve. This way, we can learn from our mistakes and grow as professionals or individuals.
The more we cultivate this skill, the more efficient and less negative we become, increasingly accepting change and transmitting confidence and calm to our team.
Customer orientation
It’s about placing the customer at the center of decision-making and strategic thinking. It involves centralizing efforts to discover and satisfy customer needs, always putting yourself in their shoes, caring about them, and prioritizing their needs.
It implies having a goal orientation and focusing on them to achieve the greatest number of significant changes for the user in short periods of time.
It also implies caring about the quality of the software delivered, tracking the work of others, paying attention to data, and ensuring order and clarity.
Negotiation
It’s the skill of fostering consensus, making divergent opinions and criteria converge in the best possible agreement, based on an objective, pact, or mutual benefit.
It implies knowing how to defend one’s own position and interests, understanding and respecting the interests and positions of others.
In technical leadership, it’s essential to foster constructive discussions within the team, where everyone can express their opinions and reach solutions based on solid arguments and foundations.
Empathy
It’s the ability to understand others. It involves listening to and correctly understanding the thoughts, feelings, or concerns of others, even when they’re not expressed verbally or are expressed partially. This competency evaluates the growing complexity and depth involved in understanding others, and may include intercultural sensitivity.
Empathy is fundamental in feedback culture, but it shouldn’t be limited to people; it should also be applied to organizational and software development contexts. It involves trying to understand why things are the way they are before making any criticism.
To achieve successful software development, it’s necessary to understand the reasons and motives behind the current situation. Having a complete vision and applying empathy facilitates this process.
Planning and organization
It’s the ability to prioritize and establish lines of action, optimizing resources to ensure compliance with expected results through effective management of one’s own work and that of others.
This shouldn’t be a skill exclusive to the Tech Lead; I believe all team members should possess it, but the tech lead undoubtedly must have it very well developed.
Communication
It’s the ability to understand your audience and convey information, interests, or ideas in a clear and comprehensible way.
It also implies practicing active listening to better understand the environment and the current communication topic, thus improving communication in both directions.
It’s about knowing how to adapt communication to the context, environment, and audience, achieving effective public communication.
A good leader fosters communication, perceives when others have difficulty expressing themselves, and provides support when needed.
Analytical thinking
It’s the ability to understand a situation, break it down into smaller parts, and identify the risks involved. It involves organizing the parts of a problem or situation systematically, comparing different elements or aspects, and establishing priorities rationally.
It’s fundamental for problem-solving and incident management in software development.
Teaching
It’s the ability to keep knowledge updated, constantly seeking new knowledge and transmitting it to others.
In technical leadership, this skill is fundamental for fostering knowledge within the team and motivating developers to continue seeking technical knowledge.
Leadership
It involves promoting efficiency and motivation within a team. It implies delegating and developing the team to reach maximum performance, establishing a clear vision, and aligning others with it. It also implies fostering leadership in others, empowering the team, and creating an environment of shared responsibility that allows tackling various topics and actions.
Thinking outside the box
It implies being creative, that is, having the ability to identify, pose, and solve problems in an innovative and divergent way. It’s the skill of establishing different knowledge relationships, formulating new questions, and offering original answers.
It means not accepting things automatically, but forming your own opinion, questioning, and contributing to the discussion of a topic.
A tech lead must constantly foster the creativity of their team to create a more collaborative and dynamic environment.
Conclusion
A tech lead is not the one who possesses the greatest knowledge of the product’s technology stack, but the one who, through their skills, is capable of maximizing their team’s performance. They are the captain of the ship, who assists the Engineering Manager in keeping the team focused and aligned with objectives. Generally, this is a person with highly developed soft skills.
I believe it should always be a role and not a formal position, to avoid it being automatically associated as a step before the Engineering Manager position, even though this is common in practice. There are other career paths beyond management in a Software Engineer’s career, and it depends on organizations to develop them properly. An Engineering Manager doesn’t always earn more than a Software Engineer. Salary depends more on the professional’s level of experience and skills than on the position itself.
Currently, companies are fostering these skills in Software Engineers to such an extent that, in a few years, the Tech Lead role might disappear, being assumed as a cross-cutting responsibility by Engineering Manager I or Staff Software Engineer with multiple teams. In fact, I know some companies that are already implementing this.