The Path to Success as a Great Tech Leader
The most successful projects have a great technical leader who drives the project forward while ensuring that every technical decision is made correctly and building confidence among team members.
A few days ago, David Byttow, a senior software engineer and entrepreneur who has worked for Google, Square, DoubleHelix and other companies, wrote an article about his experience from being a grassroots to being hired by Google. He spent five wonderful years at Google as an engineer. He is constantly learning and growing. In the article, he summarized his work experience and shared the way to become a good technical leader.
David Byttow believes that there are three aspects to being a good technical leader: attributes, activities, and behaviors.
Attributes (referring to the various characteristics of the work itself)
There are three attributes you should keep strengthening over time in your work life: knowledge, speed, and awareness.
1. Knowledge
If a team member asks a question about how a particular component or system works, you should be able to explain it in enough detail or introduce it to someone who can answer the question.
To improve your expertise, do three things (in order of precedence):
- review code
- Read design files
- write the code
A good technical leader should master a variety of technologies, such as: Java, JavaScript, C++, distributed storage systems, web clients, etc.
2. Speed
You should strive to be responsive and make immediate decisions. If an engineer comes to report a problem to you, they all expect you to respond quickly. David Byttow is best at using emails. When his work involves issue tracking, code review and software production, he will send emails to team members in a timely manner and allow them to leave comments via email.
3. Awareness
You should maintain a sense of overall control of the project at all times, otherwise you won't be able to know what's going to happen. If there is an internal or external force threatening the project to slow down, then you should be aware of it. Again, email integration plays a key role here. Ideally, all project-related status or changes should be known in some form via email, even if it's an offline meetup.
initiative
1. Block
Blocking requires a high level of awareness and a high level of strategic decision-making. Technical leaders need to understand what the project is. Before making some bad decisions, blocking them in advance will usually lead to a better solution. There is no best but better. It may be normal for one engineer to submit their code to another engineer for review, but in fact it is very likely to introduce new bugs. You can join their review and alert the engineer who wrote the code, which is good for the whole project.
2. Unblock
As opposed to blocking, unblocking is equally important. If someone has a problem, you should give an answer, or seek help from someone who can solve the problem. For an intern, if they don't get an answer, they tend to get stuck, or worse, get frustrated. You have to keep learning and strengthening your knowledge in every aspect to give the right answer.
3. Redirect
No matter how good you are, there is always something you don't know, and you can't answer all the questions others ask. Even if technically you could do it, it would take almost all of your time. In fact, you don't have to do this at all. You can build a knowledge base, which has methods for solving problems, people you can ask for advice, etc., which will definitely save you a lot of time.
4. Decision making
Part of your job is to make decisions, and your team depends on you for everything. The faster you make a decision, the faster others can take action.
When making decisions, keep the following in mind:
Filter your decisions until you have two options left. The complexity of the problem grows exponentially with the number of options available;
Making decisions quickly is best based on empirical and scientific data;
If you can't make the right decision at a certain point, then you need to consider whether to find someone who can solve the problem to make the decision;
If you still don't have the best option, you may not have enough data or be misled by the wrong question. In the end, either stop or just go with your gut.
5. Role model
The most important thing about technology leaders is that they are role models themselves, that is, leaders must lead by example and can be learned by others. Technical leaders are usually not managers because their energy is mostly on code rather than people. Therefore, respect and trust for team members is extremely important, which is beneficial to the development of work and the progress of the project.
Most leaders may find it difficult to find time to write code, which is not desirable. There are times when the code you write doesn't do much, it might just fix a small bug or add a useful piece of code, and what you do is more valuable than the code itself.
behavior
Listed below are some things that can help technology leaders move their projects forward.
Develop product launch, testing, and release plans
Effectively host engineering team meetings Make
sure meetings are useful, brief, and necessary
Identify priorities
Say no to unnecessary features
and track and resolve issues in a timely manner
Learn collaborate on solutions Bugs Maintain
relationships across
functions Refine goals and set dates for reaching them
Keep the tools you use up to date
Train engineers
Recruit engineers from other teams
Review code and provide useful feedback
Read, write , and give feedback
on Write the right code at the right time
Learn to collaborate with other teams of engineers Think
often and seek better solutions to problems
...
David Byttow believes that to be a successful technical leader, there is no shortcut, you need to do everything down to earth, accumulate slowly, and maintain belief. (Text / edited by Qian Shuguang / Wei Bing)