What exactly is a Tech Lead?
Exploring types of Tech Leads and what they have in common.
Types of Tech Leads
“Ask 3 Tech Leads about their role and you might hear 3 different answers.
They all might be right.”
Working with Tech Leads from different companies, I noticed that the expectations on the Tech Lead role differ from company to company but there are a few key elements everyone agrees on:
The Tech Lead is a software engineer
responsible for leading a development team
and accountable for the technical deliverables of that team.
This puts Tech Leads right at the intersection between people, tech and business.
The difference comes from what area Tech Leads focus more on.
Based on this, there are different types of Tech Leads:
“The Tech Lead is the most technical person in the team”
This is the most encountered path for becoming a Tech Lead: a software engineer that gets to have the most knowledge about the technologies and the system of the team gets promoted to the Tech Lead role.
I personally don’t like this strategy because it puts a lot of pressure on the Tech Lead: a person that was until now only focused on tech and individual contribution is put in a position of leading people and ensuring alignment and they are expected to do this transition seamlessly.
People need support in making this transition, if not they will continue focusing on what they feel more comfortable with: coding, and ignoring the rest.
“The Tech Lead does not code”
This is the opposite approach of the previous one. In this case, the Tech Lead focuses mainly on one or the other two aspects of the role: people and business. This might be because of a lack of enough technical skills or because of personal choice.
Regardless of the reason, I believe the Tech Lead should always spend some time coding alongside the team. Losing touch with the “ground code” will make it harder and harder for them to help the team go in the right direction and identify improvements.
“The constantly adapting Tech Lead”
I think achieving balance between the three aspects of the Tech Lead role is impossible and that is why I like to look at it as this: The adapting Tech Lead is constantly aware of all the aspects of the role: people, tech and business and is constantly changing her focus from one to the other based on the needs of the team. This means that each area is getting taken care of but at different points in time.
I deep dive into the topic part of my O’Reilly online course for Tech Leads. Check it out below :)
Until next time,
Good one Anne, I've experienced the difference versions of the Tech Lead you mentioned.
From my experience, the different flavors of Tech Leads come from the engineering organization management.
When an engineering organization defines the role, as Tech Leads, what we can do is take the decision about if that's the kind of Tech Lead we want to be.
From your experience, is Tech Lead a role that only exists within software engineering teams and only in companies of large scale? From my experience in a ~5,000 employee company, we don't have Tech Leads in non-software departments. It's usually the engineering manager that fits the 3 descriptions you defined.