My first experience as a Tech Lead

The author says this experience changed how he looked at hiring and leadership. In the selection process, communication, interest in the role and the context a candidate presents became relevant alongside the code. In a leadership role, he also had to think about team composition, project management methods, architecture and coordination with management, which moved him farther from day-to-day coding.

Reading notes

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• In the selection process, he realized that HR, the technical interview, the technical lead, and the manager were part of a process that had previously seemed almost bureaucratic to him.
• While collaborating with HR to prepare a test and the interview format, he began to consider communication, interest in the position, and fit with the candidate’s context as points as relevant as the code.
• He states that, for more advanced positions, soft skills such as communication, documentation, adaptability, and proactivity can be decisive along with technical skill.
• The text says that seniority varies greatly and that there is no universal standard for defining what a senior is.
• For him, a senior solves complex code and architecture problems, maintains quality, follows good practices, and knows project management.
• He adds that the senior acts autonomously, collaborates with teams of different levels and areas, and helps train other developers.
• In his first project leadership role, he needed to study methodologies such as Pert and Planning Poker to answer how many people and what kind of profile would be necessary.
• The work included deciding stack, platform, architecture, tracking metrics, observing each developer’s level, and having many meetings with management.
• He says that, over time, he became further removed from the code and began suggesting improvements, fixing critical bugs, and coordinating tasks with the team.
• In closing, he says he met different kinds of seniors, some not very communicative, others good at teaching, and others more focused on over-engineering, but all with something to teach.