Promoted from dev to team lead: things they didn’t tell me | Hacker News Reader

Promoted from dev to team lead: things they didn’t tell me

linearb.io

27 pointsnecco9087 comments

> Getting promoted to dev team lead [...] Three years into my software engineering career and loving it.

How typical is this?

I'm 15 or so years into my career and I've never been a dev team lead. I've lead projects, but mostly because I was the only dev on it. But I've never had a team reporting to me.

Sometimes, when I hear stories like this, I feel like I missed a turn somewhere along the way. Especially when I read articles like, "how I became a senior engineer (two years into my career)" I've never been promoted, my job title is still Regular Engineer. I'm still paid pretty well, so I don't mind that. But it still nags at me a bit.

Don't feel you missed anything. I did the switch quite late into my career and being a lead/manager is a completely different job description. I felt I started at 0 and slowly got better. The learning new stuff part was fine but it is very hard to keep up your hacking skills while dealing with multiple projects/doing management things. If you are happy being an engineer, get paid well for it, and can continue to get employment as you get older, what's the issue?

This engineer was in the perfect environment for someone who wants to grab more responsibility: "My boss [..] pulled me aside one day. He explained our team was growing fast and it was getting tough for him to have 15+ engineers reporting to him directly."

I think this sort of opportunity is more common in small, rapidly growing companies. Something (customer growth, funding, goals) is increasing work faster than hiring can keep up, so insiders are eagerly tapped to take on more. Such environments also have downsides.

It depends where you work, if you work at a FAANG they usually have a path to promotion you’re expected to go through and you can just ask your manager what the criteria are for the next level. In fact it’s up or out till you reach some specified terminal level (at Google this is L4 or one level up from L3).

A bit soured on being a team lead here.

Things to ask:

- Will I be responsible for my the results my team delivers?

- And if so, what tools are available to me that are not available to me in a regular dev role?

This is to say: Will I be a manager? Can I hire, fire, and discipline? Can I delegate and assign tasks?

...

I have been in the situation -- twice now -- in which I was ostensibly the team lead, but had none of those abilities. Leading by example is the absolute base-level tool in your toolbox. If you are responsible for your team's delivery, ensure you have the consummate authority to drive them.

Even more important in your toolbox would be the ability to steer which projects the team takes on, and the freedom to make "how" decisions.

I didn't like that the author is sort of mixing being a Team Lead with being a Manager. The role described in there is more of a Manager.

A great resource for Managers to be (and an article that is not trying to sell you something):

https://www.defmacro.org/2014/10/03/engman.html

Reply on news.ycombinator.com