ohm

ohm

New Tech Lead - what do I need to know?

I just switched jobs to tech lead with a small team of about 6 other developer. This is my first tech lead job. What do I need to know? At first I won’t have people responsibilities (thus no 1-on-1s or career development for my peers), but only tech. Later those responsibilities will be added.

I found this to be a good read.

Any blog posts or even book recommendations? :smiley:

Most Liked

Hallski

Hallski

Congratulations on the new position!

The answer(s) to that question depends a bit on what kind of tech lead role you will have. In my experience the term “tech lead” isn’t as universally defined as many other roles and I have seen very different roles all have the name tech lead.

In most places I have experience with, a tech lead role is not a management position, rather that is a separate tech/engineering manager role but it sounds like it’s included in your role description (at least in the future).

Which other responsibilities are included that you know of?

rustkas

rustkas

I think the book “Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers” is one of the first that you need to read and repeatedly refer to in your daily work.
Book ideas will help you set up your work and organize your workflow.

AstonJ

AstonJ

Ooo congrats @ohm! What kind of projects will you be working on?

I’m not sure if it’s what you’re looking for, but @jrothman has written some books that you might find interesting:

The latter two are not specific to programming/tech leads but might be worth a look all the same :smiley:

I clicked through and thought oh great it’s got 4 stars… then scrolled down to the first review :joy:

I was going to say that I agree with @Hallski too, so thanks for clarifying! It looks like you’ll be overseeing the tech side of things then, such as deciding what languages, frameworks, methodologies to use etc? In which case you probably have most of this covered anyway (due to your experience and interest in the field) but an area where you might need to brush up on is planning and communicating, perhaps specifically outlining things for the benefit of others (such as the roadmaps you mentioned). Again I’m not sure whether they’re the perfect fit, but a couple of other books from Johanna might be worth a look!

The funny thing is when I saw your thread and that you were looking for books on the topic I wondered whether there would be many to choose from - seems like there’s a lot! If you read any please let us know how you get on! :+

Where Next?

Popular General Dev topics Top

AstonJ
The obligatory speed test thread :smiley: Check here: https://www.speedtest.net When complete, click on the share link and copy and pas...
New
AstonJ
Want to plug where you work? Here’s your chance! Perhaps you could also mention what kind of stuff you’re working on? :nerd_face:
New
finner
One of my 2021 resolutions is to read more tech books. As part of this effort I purchased two MEAPs (Manning Early Access Program) which...
New
AstonJ
The dev world doesn’t sit still, in fact it is probably one of the fastest paced industries around - meaning to stay current we are conti...
New
jaeyson
Not trying to add more mess here but, reddit has ELI5 but i wanted to know if it’s okay to ask Elixir-specific (or outside of it) in a si...
New
chaptuck
I am thinking about getting a fitness tracker of some kind (probably one from Garmin). Have any of you developed your own widgets, watchf...
New
Exadra37
Your users of the two forums are spread across the world, thus I am curious how did you solved it?
New
DevotionGeo
Amazon CodeWhisperer is an alternative to GitHub Copilot, and it’s free!
New
New
AntonRich
I don’t know what happened today. But I just started reading SICP which I meant to do for a long time. The book itself: I’m not even s...
New

Other popular topics Top

siddhant3030
I’m thinking of buying a monitor that I can rotate to use as a vertical monitor? Also, I want to know if someone is using it for program...
New
brentjanderson
Bought the Moonlander mechanical keyboard. Cherry Brown MX switches. Arms and wrists have been hurting enough that it’s time I did someth...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
From finance to artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms are a powerful tool with a wide array of applications. But you don't need an ...
New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
DevotionGeo
The V Programming Language Simple language for building maintainable programs V is already mentioned couple of times in the forum, but I...
New
foxtrottwist
A few weeks ago I started using Warp a terminal written in rust. Though in it’s current state of development there are a few caveats (tab...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build efficient applications that exploit the unique benefits of a pure functional language, learning from an engineer who uses Haskell t...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Get the comprehensive, insider information you need for Rails 8 with the new edition of this award-winning classic. Sam Ruby @rubys ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Explore the power of Ash Framework by modeling and building the domain for a real-world web application. Rebecca Le @sevenseacat and ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Fight complexity and reclaim the original spirit of agility by learning to simplify how you develop software. The result: a more humane a...
New