Engineering Manager / Tech Lead

The tech lead is the owner of the technological vision for a project, and the technical leader of the project team.
A tech lead is a software engineer, responsible for leading a development team, and responsible for the quality of its technical deliverables
At the end of the day, it's about making good software with a team
Achieve tech lead mastery in 3 easy steps:
- Facilitate
  - Help your team do their jobs
  - Always be asking yourself - What's next
  - Remove roadblocks
  - Perceive the need
  - Tactic #1 - Tickets, hours & burndowns
  - Know the answers - Or where to find them
    - be a router
    - suggest a resource
    - tell keywords for searching in google
  - It's fine to admit not knowing something but never ever as an excuse. "I don't know,' should burst joyfully from your lips, followed by 'but I will find out!'
- Advocate
  - Keep the big picture in mind
  - You need to have the 10,000 foot view in your head, so you can make good decisions about what to do on the ground.
  - Try to know whys of the decision and not only what
  - Tactic #2 - Write down everything
    - send recap emails
  - How to advocate when talking to
    - Developers - finish in few weeks so don't overengineer
      - Always tell developers why we are doing this
    - Management
      - Advocate for developers
    - Clients
      - No but
        
        Will take 3 more weeks
        
        Will take 10K more
        
        Let me explore and get back to you
    - Just say NO to feature creep (That's advocating for the project)
- Motivate
  - Guide your team to the best possible result
  - Intrinsic motivation
  - First key to motivation
    - Your attitude - You set the tone for the team
      - Never let developers take blame
    - Tactic #3 - Passive-aggressive whiteboarding
  - Tech lead paradox - You're not writing the code, but you shoulder the responsibility for it.
  - Minimize Risk
    - Go after the parts that scare you the most
    - Hunt for answers until you aren't scared
  - It can be hard to code when you're a tech lead
    - Coders work on the maker's schedule
    - But TL's are on the manager's schedule
  - Growth Opportunities
    - Bored people quit

Remove blockers
Empower your team
Share credit, take blame
Never devalue people
Be vulnerable and authentic
Prioritize and focus
Invest in your communication skills

Senior tech lead
- The world willl no longer be binary
- You don't need to have all the answers
  - I don't know. Let's ask someone or find someone who knows
- Your role is not to be liked by everyone
  - If you try to please all, you please none
- You are not alone
- Non-technical areas are also important
- People are complex
- You can't do everything yourself
  - Use the situational leadership model

Tech Leadership

The six main KRAs of Tech Leadership

Technology Performance: System uptime, latency, time for issue detection and resolution.
Product Development: Time to market. Code quality. Bug introduction rate.
Team Development: Time to full productivity and average experience of productive hires. Retention rates of employees. Switching time, costs and risk.
Cost Efficiency: The costs of shipping a story point or release, cost per productive developer and cost per additional customer.
Security & Compliance: Protect customer data. Lower security incident rates. Ensure successful compliance audits.
Strategic Impact: Drive revenue growth and minimize risks with leanness, agility and scalability.