Blog

How to Be a Great Tech Leader

The job description for your role as a Tech Leader says that you’re supposed to pick the important tasks for your team, answer questions, solve problems, assemble a release, and generally help your team members, along with doing development.

But does checking these duties off a list make you a great leader? Great tech leadership requires some strong intangible skills. Here is a comparison compiled by fellow developers that will tell you which side you land on:

Do You Promote Teamwork?

Good tech leads work as a member of the team and only consider themselves successful if the team is successful. They do the scut work as necessary and also work to broaden everyone’s technical capabilities and knowledge.

Bad tech leads take high-profile or easy tasks for themselves so they can take credit for doing the work.

Do You Have a Strong Vision?

If you’re good, you should have an overall vision for the technical direction of the product and communicate it to your team. Then delegate feature areas to team members and let them take responsibility for their decisions. Respect your team members’ intelligence and ability and show that you trust them to handle significant sections of the project.

Bad tech leads don’t explaining or clarify direction on a project. They just tell team members what to do. And they don’t share critical institutional knowledge.

Are You Proactive at Project Management?

One sign of a good tech lead? A person who is proactive, who makes sure technical progress is on track and establishes ongoing milestones. They are able not only to anticipate areas of concern but make sure they’re addressed before they become a problem. They identify technical roadblocks and help the team get around them.

Conversely, bad tech leads are reactive. They may delegate, but they don’t follow up to ensure progress is being made. They don’t set goals, they don’t guide their team to make sure everything is on track, and they wait until the last minute to do end-to-end tests of complex systems.

Are You Practical?

If you’re a good tech lead, you know how to find a balance between doing it right and getting it done. You’d encourage your team to find temporary shortcuts or workarounds to problems that are blocking overall progress, but you know that code quality, code reviews and testing are just as important as shipping on time.

Bad tech leads take shortcuts that save time in the short term but cost more in the long term. They can’t or won’t distinguish between situations that call for expediency and those that call for perfection.

Are You Resilient?

When there are changes to the product specification, good tech leads can handle it. They know how to reassign work and get the team back on track. Bad tech leads are upset when the specs change and let it throw off the project timeline.

Are you looking for a great tech job or need help hiring IT talent?

Call Triumph Services today! We specialize in matching job candidates to great technical job opportunities in Virginia and beyond. Contact us today to learn how we can help you!

By Logan Bragg: Partner, Triumph Services. As head of the Recruiting Division of Triumph, he has helped thousands of candidates find rewarding positions.