Ask HN: Is Multiple Tech Leads Better?
Is it better to have 2 or 3+ tech leads instead of 1? Seems it would help spread out knowledge and reduce the amount of work put on one person's plate
What I understand: a big project divided in 4 parts. Each part is owned by a team of 8-12. A teach lead by team seems fine. Seconded by senior that help mentoring.
How do you really define a tech lead? How did your tech leads become such? Do they really need to carry their whole "part" or only be an technical interface between their team and the others? The real questions are not a bare number, a simple heads count. But a whole definition of a "title" and what this title really mean in your environment.
Experience may vary from context.
In a former company, I had the "tech lead" title. I had the technical responsibility of a team of 8 members (including me). I took the final decision about architecture, implementation, API and other workflows to the outside of the team. We carried 40+ projects (real number is around 60). It was exhausting!
In my current company, the "tech lead" is a non-sense, we are autonomous and we trust each other. We need the CTO to define clear priority list he wants to see happen. Then, usually, someone is the "feature lead", the person who decide the architecture, the order of the different tasks to implement, who manages the attribution of the mentioned tasks. Currently, this feature lead is the more "junior" of the team. Because he took time to understand the feature, he benchmark and test the different solutions. Obviously, as other team members, I challenge his decision about details. But the final decision remains his. And I blindly follow his final word. (Even on those I personally disagree). It's not a matter of ego (I'm more experienced) or of knowledge (I teach him a lot). But really, about the feature and the time invested to understand the feature, the needs and how to integrate it in our code base.
And today, with your question, I realized that I was pretentious. I thought because I follow each pull requests, I discuss with him about the architecture and the feature, I will be able to lead the feature from a day to another. But the reality is: I was miserable. I failed to recognize simple errors. I failed to know where to look when something bad happen (during test phase). All of that, because I was not the feature lead this time and I didn't take as much time as him to really understand the feature and its components.
With your question, I realize now that he really did a great job, and I am happy to work under his lead (during this feature at least).
I repeat myself: The "tech lead" is just a title, what matters is how you define it and how this tech lead endorse the role.