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Comment by golover721 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately a lot of the comments are mixing together leadership with management. These are not the same thing. Some of the best technical leaders I have had the pleasure to work with were not managers.

As a developer gets older and has more experience they are definitely expected to show leadership skills. While this can look different for everybody, usually it looks like some combination of:

1. Ability to mentor others 2. Ability to be the "expert" on the team. A go to developer for design and architecture advice 3. Ability to be the liaison with other development teams, product management, or sometimes upper management

Unfortunately it is rare that you can be an experienced develop er and not be expected to show leadership in these areas, along with your development work.

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Exactly this. As you become a senior dev and up, you have to start having an impact beyond the code you write personally, and the 3 areas you listed are perfect examples.

It doesn’t mean you have to stop coding, or become a people manager, but you do need to start spending a decent amount of time helping the team improve and make good decisions. This does mean less coding, but there can still be a solid amount of coding time.

Like, OP, it sucks that you lost your job, especially during this crazy COVID time. But if you can learn to develop your leadership skills, it’ll be a big help to your career long term. I’d say the biggest thing is to try to keep the needs of the business in mind, and to realize that very often you can make a bigger impact by guiding/mentoring others than you can by just doing it yourself.

and this is why we can only upvote once, otherwise I would give you a million points. you hit the nail on the head. there is more to be a leader than just running to the frontline and getting things done. if you are unapproachable then others cannot learn from you, how can you hand off the skills you've acquired?

So where do you draw the line between team leader and manager? Team size? Amount of liaison with non-technical folks? Can you be a manager and a technical lead?

Manager is a title. Leader is a set of behaviors.

Most managers are not leaders. At minimum, they approve expense reports and check the boxes. Better ones know how to operate in an organization and detect & solve operational problems.

Leaders take a position and make their case and defend it effectively. They grow and support the people around them. And they try to improve themselves along the way by learning from the people above, below, and parallel to them. They have the trust of people around them because they earned it and reflect it.

You can be none of the above, one of the above, or - and this is special - both of the above.

And of course, none of that is static. People can improve and grow at any time.

technical lead on a project is also determined sometimes by other factors - for example:

developer longest on project by a significant factor is likely to be the leader by default.

developer likely to be on project longer than more experienced developers may be deferred to as leader (at least I often do if I am consulting for a short period and a less experienced guy from the company is on the project for the next year I defer to how he wants to do things)

Often leadership is just going to the most experienced because of course they know how to make their case and defend it.

> technical lead on a project is also determined sometimes by other factors - for example:

You're arguing 2 very different concepts with the GP, he made the case (quite elegantly) that a leader is a set of behaviors and you're ignoring all of that and stating "nope, it's a job title".

I'd recommend you re-read their comment.

I was going to respond at length to this but I realized I must be in some bad mood because it started to become rude.

As regards rereading comments I suggest you reread mine with the consideration that the phrases "leader by default" or "deferred to as leader" would indicate someone who is not leader by title, yet has also not necessarily demonstrated a lot of leadership qualities to get the position (as indicated by the rest of the comment).

They are leaders not by title or nature, but leaders by necessity and pragmatism.

Yes, you're right, there's a possible third category of leader by necessity but it could be argued that this is a subtype of leader by title which is why I didn't understand your comment on first read.

Maybe leader by "position" or "circumstance" is a better term as it covers the situations like "most experienced in a team" even if that experience is only a few months more than the person they're helping and even if they don't have the title to match.

I still agree with the parent commenter that distinguished between _true_ leaders and those who've been placed or defaulted into the role.

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