You have more tools than you think tech leads (No. 60)!
Spend a day with me thinking like a business manager
Hey tech leads,
On Monday, we started a week-long series on why companies and organizations need managers and, by extension, therefore need tech leads. I’m personally pleased with this line of thinking because I don’t think you will find it anywhere else, and it’s the kind of content I would have found very helpful starting out.
When I was an individual contributor early in my career I perceived the work of managers and tech leads from my own needs. I was focused on the information I needed from them to do my work, the guidance I needed from them, and the leadership I wished they were providing. Especially in my early career that meant I was hoping they would tell me really specific, trivial things like what version of log4j to include in my code. Needless to say, I was largely disappointed because I rarely got as much as I thought I needed.
In some ways I thought I wanted to be a tech lead or, someday, a manager to correct these deficiencies as I perceived them—deficiencies that I perceived only from my lens as an individual contributor. Maybe you know what I’m talking about.
But, as you’ll learn, hand holding direct reports is only one small piece of what managers are there to do, as we discussed on Monday. If you think about managers from the correct point of view, that is, the top, most fundamental level, businesses need managers and directors because few will invest millions, or billions through the capital markets, if there isn’t a management structure in place. That’s the main reason management exists.
Why is that?
Why do venture capitalists and shareholders need managers? Because the managers give them assurance the business will provide returns on capital by doing three things:
Seeing into the future—understanding where the market is going and what opportunities there are to make money from those opportunities.
Making clear and correct decisions as to what opportunities to pursue and how.
Acquiring, assembling, and directing all the company’s resources to successfully execute on those decisions.
TL;DR - where do you fit in?
As a tech lead or front line EM, you play an important, if relatively narrow, part of that puzzle. More senior managers need you because they can’t track every little thing or make every little decision.
In today’s letter, we’re going to start with number three from the list. We’re going to start at the end of the process for two reasons. First, too many tech leads are too myopic about the rich set of resources they have available. Second, this is the area where, as a tech lead, you are going to spend the vast majority of your time and energy.
We’ll talk about the first two—peering into the future and making decisions—on Friday. But for now, let’s pretend your team just found out about a really big new feature that you need to build (as I said, more on your role in that process on Friday). For now, let’s say your management made the decision to implement this feature.
Taking my model of management above—and a tech lead, you are part of that triad possibly by proxy from your engineering manager—your task is now to assemble your team’s resources to bring this feature to life. Your task is to lead your team to ship some code.
If you are like a lot of tech leads (including me in my early days), you probably don’t think of your task like this at all. You probably just see it as yet more work that needs to be done and your primary question is something along the lines of, “How are we going to get this done with everything else we have to do?” Or, “Who’s free enough to work on this feature?” Or, “What other feature do I have to tell the product managers we can’t finish if we’re going to work on this new one?”
Those are all valid questions. But let’s not dive into them today. Today, let’s think more broadly.
Resources? What resources? Lots. That’s what.
My main goal in today’s letter is to get you to start thinking more like a business manager (just for today, promise) by getting you to think a lot more broadly and creatively about the resources you probably have available to you. I want you to think broadly because this really enhances your capability and effectiveness as a tech lead—assuming you actually execute on it.
First, there are human resources. I hate that term, but let’s use it for now. Never mind, let’s think the time that your team is giving you or their talents in exchange for money. How do you make the most of those two things? How do you get the team excited? How do you get them to execute? A lot of what I talk about in my Four Core is directed at this particular “resource.”
Speaking of “direction” I had someone I worked with at Disney Studios once who called the software engineers “the talent.” I loved that because it captured some really great concepts—probably similar to what you’d want as a movie director. You need the actors’ time and you also need their skill. How do you get it? Nobody but me in this moment would compare software engineers to Hollywood actors. I know.
But there is more. A lot more. You have the team itself. Teams are, ideally, a lot more than just a collection of individuals. To borrow a term from the 1980s, there should be synergies. One plus one should be equal to something more than two, if you’re assembling your team correctly. What could they do collectively that they can’t do on their own?
Next, there’s the technology. Sure you’ve got your current codebase, but there’s an unlimited amount of free additional software and tools. And even when you need to purchase something, money is rarely a complete blocker to getting things done. Put differently, do you really have the right mix of software and technology in play? Can you do better? What about your tooling? Your gitops? Your chatops? Code reviews? So many possibilities, and almost all of it approaches free in terms of cost.
Physical space. This is one you probably overlook. But, if you work in an office, you probably have a bunch of different options: conference rooms, breezeways, lunchrooms, cafes, outside areas, Philz Coffee down the street. Do you make conscious use of these resources? What about that whiteboard with the diagrams on it from two weeks ago? Are you using them? Obviously not if that old diagram is still there.
Time is another key resource. There are only so many trips around the sun. Are you being conscious about how you’re allocating time for tasks to the team. How long are people spending on tasks? How long should they be? Can you use time in creative ways to, say, time box a task or drive certain behaviors?
What about other teams? To what extent can you enlist others to help you? To what extent can you allocate work among different teams? Maybe another team is better suited to accomplish a task. The reverse is true too. How can your team help others?
What about your managers or executive team? Often we can be reluctant to ask for help, so don’t think of it as asking for help. It’s not an “escalation;” think of management as leverage to be used where appropriate. Speaking as a manager now, I love it when people on my teams engage me this way. It’s a signal that things are happening, and I love being helpful.
What about the community at large? Subject to any privacy or NDA considerations, how can you use the community to help you solve problems and get things done? Could you bring your team to a Meetup? Could they present? What about open source communities?
Captain Obvious reporting to duty
To be clear, I know I’m not naming anything you don’t already know about. I’m calling these things out because there’s a good chance, especially if you’ve just moved up from an individual contributor, that you don’t think of these things as tools to be used or as resources to be deployed. You might be overlooking them. You might be stuck in old routines, habits, “processes,” personalities, whatever. When you see your work life this way, it can feel brittle, stagnant, suffocating.
Instead, start to think of yourself as someone whose job it is now to start deploying the right mix of the company’s resource to make things happen. The greatest leaders are known for being really creative with their company’s resources, but right now I just want you to start being more effective by finding the right mix for the right task. Otherwise, you’re going to be held back when we talk about our topic on Friday.
Hope your week is awesome and effective so far, tech leads!
-michael
The Podcast 🎧
Remember I use the podcast to float some ideas and let them take shape. Then I write them here ^^^^. Click here listen to this morning’s raw material!
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For more-
Consider getting involved in the free, peer to peer Tech Lead Coaching Network that I’m trying to pull together
If you’re in Los Angeles, join the Tech Lead Workshops - LA (or start one in your city!)
Finally, don’t forget to pick up my book, How To Be A Tech Lead (still free)!