You see, I became a tech lead first and that also in my head and later in reality and then eventually an engineering manager.

There I was, a fresh engineer who was being groomed and trained by his manager for leadership because he saw the potential in me just when I was 2 years into my professional career. During that period, I felt a sense of alignment and clarity about where I wanted my career to head.

I remember when I was working at Skilrock Technologies one day after my 1:1 with my manager I just told him: "I want to be a tech lead and I need your help to get me a team".

In hindsight, I was a bit naive. I kinda knew what a tech lead was supposed to do, but not how to be a good one. I was, however, very motivated by the idea of working with my manager to make sure we build a high-performance team and ship great products.

After a few months of showing good leading-by-example behaviors consistently, I was finally given a team with an important project and officially started leading a team.

And I gradually went ahead in my career, I switched and joined a startup named Mingout, at a very early stage. I started building the product with no team. Eventually, I was given a team of engineers and finally, I was leading the backend engineering team. Soon after the frontend lead left the organization and I was presented with an opportunity to oversee the whole engineering division. Since there was no CTO in place, I would need to handle all things tech for the company. Suddenly, I had a lot of responsibilities and was handling the role of pseudo-CTO.

And then one day, I did it again and asked for the Engineering Manager position and that's how my managerial journey started!

What it's like to be in a leadership role in tech?

Leadership roles are not easy to understand in tech, mainly in startups for several reasons.

• No matter what title you're given, each organization approaches leadership differently. At some organizations, you wear multiple hats, at some, you just stay on the Individual Contributor track.

• This role is a hybrid one - You are a manager and an individual contributor.

Ultimately the main goal is to lead a team of engineers and leads to successfully execute and deliver projects.

My initiation as an Engineering Manager happened at Zipteams, where I was given a fairly established description of my role and I could learn the ropes from other managers in different departments.

Having led multiple projects at different organizations and scaled products from scratch to millions of users, I learned that to be a good leader, I needed to develop more than my engineering and managerial skills - I had to change how I thought about the job.

Mindset Shifts

Becoming an engineering leader required me to understand that success was no longer about my output and my needs, but the team's output and needs.

Fully owning the engineering team and product meant I had to spend a significant amount of time understanding:

• Problem: what's the business need? are requirements clarified properly?

• Resources: is the team enough to execute this? do we have all the resources for this?

• Stakeholders: who are the decision makers? which roles does the project interface with?

Additionally, I had to get comfortable doing a lot of non-core-engineering work, such as:

• Partner with the product team to make sure the project is properly scoped and requirements refined.

• Negotiate for more resources or deprioritize features.

• Coach and mentor my team

• Drive and facilitate communications across individuals and teams.

You need to be in the mindset where you can execute while wearing many hats that requires a diverse set of skills and experience, most importantly when to switch between them.

The many Hats

👷🏻‍♀️ High-level Solution Architect

When wearing the architect hat, EMs must be able to translate business requirements into technical solutions and come up with the high-level architecture of a project. They must weigh the pros and cons of different options and make decisions that are sound and meet the requirements.

You are not expected to have all the answers, instead, you need to be resourceful and get the answers by empowering and leveraging the team.

👩🏻‍🍳 Project Manager

You'll need to plan and help prioritize the work for the team. You'll also need to figure out how to distribute the work so that the right people work on the right tasks. And, there are tech debts too that need to be considered.

To scale themselves, leaders need to delegate work while ensuring nothing gets dropped.

In the absence of a dedicated Product Manager, it’s the EM's job to follow up and make sure critical external dependencies are on track.

🎩 Team Leader

Unsurprisingly, the EM needs to act as a leader for the team.

You should be able to effectively communicate the requirements and goals of the project to the team and ensure that everyone is working towards the same vision.

You need to provide technical direction and guidance, especially to the more junior engineers, and ensure that everybody is unblocked and efficient.

🪖 Individual Contributor

Because EMs are so busy, they are not expected to be the main developer of a project, but still work side by side with the team and contribute to the code base - at least in a startup. Wearing this hat is challenging as you have to context-switch a lot and your time is quite fragmented.

🕵🏻‍♀️ Quality Assurance

Must ensure that coding guidelines and best practices are understood and adhered to, promoting consistency and readability of the codebase. During code reviews, provide feedback, identify potential issues or bugs, and guide developers in improving their code quality.

EMs work with the team to define a testing strategy that includes unit tests, integration tests, and any other relevant testing approaches. They may also be involved in creating tools to support the testing process.

Lastly, you'll need to identify performance bottlenecks and work with the team to optimize critical areas of the project.

🧢 Stakeholder Manager

As a stakeholder manager, you need to be able to communicate effectively with all stakeholders (PMs, design, other teams, and perhaps even customers) to ensure that everyone is aligned on the project's goals, timelines, and deliverables. The stakeholders must be kept informed about progress, changes, or delays that may impact the project's timeline or scope.

Great EMs also know to solicit and use feedback and input from stakeholders throughout the project.

You'll often need to translate technical concepts into simpler terms for less technical individuals to understand, yet another reason why communication needs to be a superpower.

🤠 Mentor and Coach

Everyone on a given team won't perform at the same level, either due to seniority or skillset. That’s why leads need to occasionally wear the mentor hat and provide extra guidance and support where needed. Leads are expected to help team members grow by providing opportunities for developing new skills or taking on new challenges.

I found having 1:1 meetings with my team extremely valuable to make sure I know what’s going on, anticipate potential issues, and give feedback.

⛑ Ready to Fill in Gaps

If the list of hats wasn’t long enough, tech leaders also need to be adaptable and good problem solvers. Things rarely go according to plan, which makes tech leaders face unexpected issues. They need to think creatively and outside the box and fill in gaps where needed.

Takeaway

If you want to get into a leadership role in tech, start by showing leadership qualities, asking great questions and taking initiative in solving problems that you see.

Once you have your initiation, be prepared to adapt to different situations and wear multiple hats.

Finally, try having fun in your role. It can be challenging but it's also incredibly rewarding to see a team come together and build something amazing. Even though the responsibilities are a lot, it will allow you to have a larger impact!