And let go of the idea that you need to be the person who knows the most about the technology. Your focus needs to switch to motivating your team, running productive meetings, and delegating work. Many people feel that Tech Leads should spend the majority (or at least close to a majority) of their time coding. If you’re spending the majority of your time coordinating, an argument could be made that you’ve been unfairly co-opted into an Engineering Management role. The difference, ideally, between a Tech Lead and Engineering Manager is the coordination part of your job should be a part-time role or a temporary tour of duty.

While Technical Leads do not have management responsibilities, they still bear a responsibility to their peers. They are the drivers of technical knowledge, advancement, and excellence at the team level; this is called force multiplication. To fulfill this responsibility, they must be at the forefront of engineering progress and best practices to continuously expand the capabilities of their Chapter(s), Guild(s), and the engineering team as a whole.

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The Team Lead had 1-to-1s with people focused on feedback and career development. They actively organised activities to build psychological safety and foster trust. The Team Lead would meet with stakeholders outside of the team keeping a good information flow, or to remove blockers. Thus, they dedicate the most significant chunk of their time to a client project.

• Simultaneously, be prepared to unlearn and relearn things you know already as a developer.
• As a result he turns into an “abstract architect”, who can give a lot of smart advices, except that those advices are not tailored and don’t take into account the current project and it’s specifics.
• Find out more about the experiences of other tech leads in Patrick’s book ‘Talking with Tech Leads’.
• You’re probably familiar with the notion of an avatar from creating your ideal customer avatar.
• Tech lead spends ~75% of his time in development activities.

In this way, they participate in building long-term relationships with clients. What holds true regardless of team composition is the Tech Lead’s technical leadership. An effective Tech Lead establishes a technical vision with the team. They work with the team to update and evolve it and turn it into reality.

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A good tech lead not only has these skills but knows when each should be used. This is the phase where you screen out unqualified candidates and move those with the required tech skills to the next level. This should be a quick and easy process that an external service or your HR team can do. There are even testing services that allow you to set up a screener with your job ad. Candidates that don’t pass the screener test can’t apply for the job. Make it clear in your job description what skills, experience, education, and technology are non-negotiable.

For everything they are responsible for, a leader should understand “why”. They are also responsible for ensuring everyone else understands “why” they are working on a project. A leader must explain (often many times) why the project is happening, why the specific people are working on it and how this project fits into the “big picture”.

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He creates a process that puts tasks important for developers upfront. After all, as a tech lead, a part of his job is to optimize processes for his team. A tech lead is, in most cases, an experienced developer who still handles technical tasks in the team but also has additional technical lead developer tasks of managerial nature. To answer this question, you need to know each role’s difference clearly. Based on what we discussed above, tech lead and team lead are two different roles. A team leader does not need to have a technical or programming background.

They should be able to code well and have a deep understanding of various programming languages. They should also be familiar with multiple operating systems, databases and software development tools. Though both technical leads and lead developers have similar duties, the daily tasks a technical lead performs may be more technical in nature. This includes things like researching new coding languages, evaluating new software development tools and assessing employee productivity in regards to programming. In comparison, a lead developer typically oversees a broader range of job functions.

Anyone with a fancy title and enough authority given by the organization chart can give orders. But that’s not what leadership is — it is about what you do. However, it’s important to strike a balance when screening candidates.

If the candidate has soft skills, follow up with a technical interview. It can be done on a video call with a collaborative code editor. Ask the candidate to walk you through their thought process as they work through the problem. Review their resume to check for required skills and experience, then schedule a quick 10-minute call. If the screening call will be done by someone non-technical, you’ll need to make sure they can ask and understand one or two technical questions that will weed out candidates who are either too junior or deceptive. Although it doesn’t hurt to have a second list of nice-to-have skills and experience, don’t go overboard on it, particularly if it’s a skill that can be picked up easily.