8 ms·

I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do?

163 points by joaoqalves 10mo ago

tkel 10mo ago
Don't rely on hierarchy. Earn others' trust as you would when you are an equal. Don't expect deference just because of your position. Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social and easily generates animosity. You'd do better to empower your peers instead, and show them you are able to listen to them as well. Just like you would with friends.
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  Big pile of horse shit, every word. Wasted years in previous company under narcissistic manager with the same mindset. The guy had official senior lead title and was calling the shots. When ther team became too big, he assigned most senior people as “leads” without the official title. You had to perform as a team lead in an environment where your decisions do not have authoritative power, so every small task became negotiation with every member regardless of their seniority. Also no salary bump either. The “teams” quickly collapsed and they hired official team leads from there, with a real authority. > Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social Where did you read this? “Empowerment management for empowered to empower #21”?
- baby 10mo ago
  "Leading without authority"
  - rolph 10mo ago
    in other words buffering of culpability.
- jcalvinowens 10mo ago
  No. Never accept responsibility without power. That is a lesson I wish I'd learned much earlier in my life.
  - rpdillon 10mo ago
    This, and use power sparingly.
28304283409234 10mo ago
"Here's a simple formula that solves this very complex problem that is different for everyone." Good luck with that.
- c16 10mo ago
  The conjoined triangles of success!
  - askvictor 10mo ago
    I hear they teach that at business school
    - ramon156 10mo ago
      The overall theme there is shapes, sometimes colors. Your exam will be to draw within the lines.
  - ionwake 10mo ago
    thats why I decide whether to redirect through Jackson Hole
newsclues 10mo ago
Become a leader.
fredsted 10mo ago
> After that incident, I created an incident review document and suggested a small review of the tasks that should be prioritized to prevent it from happening again. I got carried away and created an initial presentation for the other backend Chapter Leads with a backend strategy. I do not remember it perfectly, but it included hexagonal architecture, a testing pyramid with contract tests to avoid breaking APIs used by mobile apps, and more Definitely got carried away. When coming to a new org, it's always good to learn the ropes a bit before fatiguing the team with more work, processes, and burdens.
- tormeh 10mo ago
  > hexagonal architecture God help me. Was on a project where this was used to justify so much extra boilerplate. Every class had an interface, and then we used dependency injection to supply the class to something expecting that interface. Actually, it was in Rust, so there were no classes, but that didn't stop us. Absolute waste of time.
  - littlecranky67 10mo ago
    Sounds like a regular setup, at least this is very common in modern C#/.NET when you implement REST services. Nothing to do with Hexagonal Architecture, just inversion of control. There is a very thin DI container baked into ASP.NET and the pipeline. Do you have to use that? No, but it gets complicated very quickly if you don't. So any project that is more than a tech demo/eval uses DI. In other languages/frameworks (i.e. Typescript+NodeJS) this is not very common for some reason.
    - tormeh 10mo ago
      I don't know much about C#, but in Rust this is very much not the norm. In fact, there are technical limitations associated with async traits. This sometimes allowed us a reprieve from the madness, but only sometimes. I guess you can write enterprise Java in any language. The entire idea was to make it easier to mock components and therefore easier to test code, however all the code connecting the components became untestable, so we were back to square one, struggling to meet our test coverage quota because of the massive amounts of boilerplate.
jmkni 10mo ago
If nobody is listening to you then you aren't a tech lead, just saying
- OutOfHere 10mo ago
  This. If the lead has no power to suspend people without pay, or to fire people, then he is not a lead. It's okay for this power to be indirect so long as it can be wielded when necessary.
omgJustTest 10mo ago
"I'm a tech lead, nobody listens"... 1. Listen to what other people say and what they think the problem is, or what the problem "says". 2. Think, ask questions to clarify and repeat step 1. Is the problem actually technical? branch a. otherwise branch b. a. have you considered the problem is mostly not technical? then proceed to branch b. b. what miscommunications are keeping the solution from being implemented? 3. Change minds with the words that are convincing to others. Dont be so convinced of your solution that you wouldnt take a better one, return to step 1 unless the problem is "solved" My blog would be uncompellingly short.
- ionwake 10mo ago
  2c. is there a context I dont understand? I think its important to note in most companies I worked in, the issues were mostly political.
- worthless-trash 10mo ago
  But very useful. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
commandersaki 10mo ago
That Spotify squad tribe diagram makes me want to vomit.
- junga 10mo ago
  Same. Strong SAFe vibes. Hopefully I'll never have to 'work' in such a environment again.
- preommr 10mo ago
  I did a reverse image search on it, and it brought up 'vietname board game' and other war-themed images. Who thought it would be a good idea to have a corporate productivity diagram where the workers look like they're prisoners, there's shooting targets plastered all over, and the "coach" looks like a warden that's flashing danger signs (all the colors, and they choose red?). And that's not even including all the poor spacing, text formatting, color scheme, etc. Honestly, the more I look at it, the worse it gets.
  - tuetuopay 10mo ago
    This is pretty in line with the BS side of agile. How many retrospectives I've had with themed MIRO boards, from star wars to indiana jones with a step in whatever war. Par for the course I guess. (not that I'm defending it, aside from the more than dubious theme, it's plain illegible)
- azangru 10mo ago
  What's wrong with it? Squads look like regular small teams. Tribes look like several teams working on the same product and having to coordinate their work. Each team has specialists, who like to hang out together and talk shop, forming different "chapters". The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive :-) But other than that, what's so bad about it?
  - franktankbank 10mo ago
    > The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive Its a great soup, apart from the turds floating in it.
varispeed 10mo ago
At previous corporation, the tech lead simply recommended for sackings a developer who was questioning his approach. Once he got sacked, everyone listened... ...and then most of best skilled people left in the following weeks. Tech lead then hired his mates and company nose dived.
- master-lincoln 10mo ago
  must be an idiot that tech leads boss
  - AdrianB1 10mo ago
    In most non-IT corporations, the managers are non-technical and most are idiots these days. It comes from the MBA hires getting in management roles where they don't understand the area, what Steve Jobs calls "bozos" in his interview (available online).
- darkwater 10mo ago
  I met that exact kind of leader once. In my case, they also tend to work more on their personal brand rather than the company, and keep ship-jumping every couple of years to spread their gospel.
Hydraulix989 10mo ago
You have to build / earn your influence. People listen to you after you have a reputation of being "right" enough times, and by being likeable. Abusing hierarchy isn't it.
- agumonkey 10mo ago
  That depends on the cultural / politics health of the group. The likeable right guy can end up stomped because he's a threat to the wrong dubious people. Seen this first hand in some companies.
pico303 10mo ago
I feel terrible for the author, having to work in this kind of structure. Someone should tell mytaxi that even Spotify never got “tribes and squads” to work, it sounds like for the same reasons/problems mytaxi ran into. Edit: accidentally hit update instead of scrolling… One thing missing from the article that I don’t think has been mentioned is confidence and setting expectations. I’ve found if I expect certain results and convey confidence, people are more likely to follow your lead, or at least listen to you. Don’t act like a know it all, and be sure to encourage and question others so the environment is collaborative (solve problems as a group; don’t be a hero). But set expectations. Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?”
- 9rx 10mo ago
  > Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?” The words that follow support it being "intimacy". That is what intimacy is — being close enough to someone that you can be open without a feeling of being left exposed. How would empathy fit?
socketcluster 10mo ago
I've been tech lead at different companies. Every time I switched companies, I started out as senior dev and got promoted into the team lead role again; each time with full support of my team. I don't look or act like a leader and this has been a hurdle for me. But what typically happens anyway is; within a few months, my code ends up being a core part of the project; my modules become heavily depended upon and somehow I end up maintaining all the config files and guiding architecture decisions. One of my team members joked that I "conquered everyone's code." I probably write fewer lines of code than everyone else but somehow those lines end up heavily used. So then I basically just ask the big boss for a team lead position.
- master-lincoln 10mo ago
  I don't understand why that is a logical progression. Writing good code and leading a team needs vastly different skill-sets in my eyes.
  - antonymoose 10mo ago
    I would argue that the two skills are necessary but not sufficient. If you’re lacking in the core skill, what exactly are you leading? If you’re a great coder and socially inept, good luck leading.
  - zelphirkalt 10mo ago
    On the other hand, if you want to lead a bunch of engineers, you should know their work very well, otherwise you will have unrealistic ideas about what can get done and how they should do it.
    - master-lincoln 10mo ago
      Is this really true that you need managers to understand the domain deeply to manage? You could argue that a manager should have domain experts they can trust in their team to get estimates about time and complexity.
  - Braxton1980 10mo ago
DoctorOW 10mo ago
> Note: this article is a translation from the original “Soy Tech Lead y no me hacen caso. ¿Qué hago?”, in Spanish. I wonder if "tech lead" coincidentally are two words that are the same in Spanish as English, or if this is considered a technical phrase.
- ioma8 10mo ago
  Totally not the same. Its used as technical phrase. In europe we have many languages, but in most of them we use the term Tech lead as phrase.
torginus 10mo ago
[flagged]
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  Very passionate comment with strong words, but very true as someone who worked in a similar environment.
zipy124 10mo ago
This is a very long winded way of saying the phrase "respect is earned not given".
general1465 10mo ago
I still remember when my previous employer has lost domain for like 3 months. Boss and his business partner have setup company and I have joined later. Business partner left. - I was trying to figure out who have access to domain X? It is not on AWS and by whois it is under some random registrar in Europe. I got just shrug from boss. Everything works so why bother? - After 3 years of scratching my head and try to repeatedly get it to attention we finally lost the domain (card probably expired), everyone is panicking, because emails has stopped working, so email based 2FA are not working either which has cascading impact on all services. And I am just raging in my office because I was trying to prevent this situation for 3 years to no avail. - The European registrar did not cooperate at all. We have offered them good chunk of money, no response (weird?), eventually domain got moved around and reregistered by various bots and domain companies and I was able to get it again via domain backorder. I have left shortly after because this was just ridiculous lack of care with good amount of reactive behavior as a cherry on the top. My take away from this is that you can't change the culture. If top is bunch of sloppy clowns, whole company is going to be the same.
- wiseowise 10mo ago
  This, many times this. If you encounter pushback from everywhere – leave, don’t spend your life energy fighting bullshit.
  - nickdothutton 10mo ago
    I won't add much, but if this happens you must leave. Raise the risk. Document it. Document your recommendation and their decision, even if not replying or not making a decision was their decision. Tie it up with a bow on it, keep a copy, and leave.
- kamaal 10mo ago
  >>If top is bunch of sloppy clowns, whole company is going to be the same. This happens so often at big companies as well. Management is always assumed to be correct, and the pay grade argument always kicks in(They are paid more because you are beneath them). And this starts to show up everywhere. You can't take any initiative without sanction from the top, and they are often clueless as to what the ask is. Most of the times its rejected just to assert authority, and not on the grounds of merit. Top bosses are also very envious and proactively trying to kill rising talent out of fear- people better than them, will replace them. To that end no good thing ever happens, if you push too hard you will be eliminated in interest of self preservation. So by and large no good thing is ever suggested, or tried or happens. Eventually until whole business(es) die out. This happens in every company, no matter what companies claim about hiring, retaining and promoting talent. This is just how every place works.
rvz 10mo ago
Leave.
jwarden 10mo ago
Listen to them.
nickd2001 10mo ago
If its any consolation, perhaps there might've been a few other highly intelligent capable sensible people in existence over the last few... shall we say, millennia, who, weren't really listened to either ? ;)
AdrianB1 10mo ago
What I read in the story is the context and some action, but not the result. It is implied there is some sort of result, but it is not described, especially how the actions contributed to the result. It may be well intended, but very superficial, childish.
ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
Welcome to Hell, kid. I was a senior manager, for much of my career, and had about a 30% hit rate, with folks listening to me. My employees had to listen to me, but I actually encouraged them to talk back, if they had issues with my direction. My bosses and peers? ...not so much... This was especially true of the Japanese (I worked for a Japanese company). Even though I had a pretty significant level of influence (for a Westerner), I still had to beg for folks to listen to me. My favorite, was when my team was assigned to help a Silicon Valley startup that my company had made a deal with, after the ink was dry on the contract. There were a lot of problems with that relationship. Most of them, were because the senior Japanese management had made some really big mistakes; chiefly because of cultural differences between the companies (the startup was actually really good, but they were a fairly typical "smoke and mirrors" Silicon Valley startup, and had a different approach to pitching that didn't work well with the Japanese. Neither side really understood the other). We did our best, but our hands were tied. It did not end well, which was pretty disastrous. If someone had asked me to help out, before they signed the contract, it would have been a much better outcome. I'm no captain of industry, but the problems were pretty glaring and obvious, even to us mensches in the trenches. > I think I never read as much in my life as during the month between announcing I was leaving my previous job and joining mytaxi. I liked reading that. I would love folks to do that kind of thing, more often.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
Oh my. If self-otientation is the denoninator then dont advertise your thing multiple times. Instead keep that out and Ill say cool learned something and come back. At some point ill notice the course/book/whatever and be more interested.
ramon156 10mo ago
Only thing I can say is that, what doesn't work for me, is leads that just tell you how to do things. I completely agree with my tech lead, but also it just includes only his opinion and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this my ego? Maybe.
- FroshKiller 10mo ago
  I'm a technical lead, and I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something. I am not looking over their shoulders at every line of code, but I will tell them plainly that I want an interface, a concrete implementation of the interface that is up to them, and a configuration option for substituting a different concrete type. I don't do this because I don't trust them but because I have different requirements. What matters most to them is completing their work items according to specifications. What matters more to me is long-term maintainability of our projects for the rest of the team. Some of them have the long-term needs in mind. Some of them just don't think that way. I try not to make them feel like their work can't be trusted or like my demands are arbitrary. I think they are more receptive to my demands when I can at least provide context for them. That seems absolutely necessary to me. I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control. I appreciate you asking of yourself, "Is this my ego?" It can definitely go both ways.
  - 9rx 10mo ago
    > I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something. Ugh. I recently found myself working with one of those people. What a horrid experience. We waste days trying to reverse engineer out of him what the business problem actually is, and then, once we finally figure that out, even more going over all the things he failed to consider. Software isn't the technical Olympics. It sole purpose in life is to solve human problems. You must work from understanding the human problems. "This is how we are going to do it" obscures all of the information that is necessary to write good software. I have no qualms about pushing back to ensure that we start from the right place, but it is so draining when it happens over and over. Building software doesn't have to be so stupid. Don't be that guy. > I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control. No. You're not. Someone has to wrangle those who are not providing positive contributions (without a forceful hand). But your job is to figure out why they are not providing positive contributions and solve for that problem, not to continually tell them how to do their job. You are no longer in a technical role. "Lead" means you are now in a people role, solving people problems not suitable to be solved with tech. If you'd rather be a software developer, consider doing that job instead.
yoan9224 10mo ago
I've made similar ones early in my career. The formula of Trust + Intimacy + Credibility is solid, but I'd add: solve one painful problem first, then earn the right to propose architectural changes. Ship something valuable in the first month, even if it's not perfect. That builds more credibility than any presentation.
zkmon 10mo ago
> Technical influence does not start with a title. It begins with the visible impact you create. That visible impact need not be entirely from your technical work. It is mostly from your relations, communications, the way you present yourself and the perceptions that you can manage to get from others. Infact, technology component is very little.
agumonkey 10mo ago
there's another dimension is how ready is the group to your ideas some teams distort the meaning of things, and if you try to bring improvements (QA, velocity) they will reject it right away no matter great you are.
arealaccount 10mo ago
I find tech leads to be the most difficult people in any organization to work with (always with exceptions), I think it’s because they are still learning the lead part, and at the same time are trying to prove themselves. Coming in with a hexagonal overhaul is a great example. At least in this case it seems the writer didn’t dig his heals in too much.
- baby 10mo ago
  I think it's also that they have a vision and unfortunately this means they have to say no to landing PRs that don't make sense to the overall vision often. And nobody likes to throw away work.
lsofzz 10mo ago
> I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do? TL;DidntRead Precisely. Take the `TL` title out the door. Take the `ego` out the door. Then, step in the door - as a friend, with empathy, proactive listening and support the engineers. Round-table `discussions`. Not Waterfall. My 2 cents.
pixel_popping 10mo ago
Another website blocking VPN and forcing users to reveal their identity, great.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
sceptic123 10mo ago
No need to answer this person's question, they are not asking for help, they are promoting their upcoming book
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- MyHonestOpinon 10mo ago
  Or just read all the comments and you don't need to buy their book.
nextworddev 10mo ago
One of them could be sabotaging you so he or she can take ur spot
retrocog 10mo ago
The trust equation implicitly assumes honesty. It’s a second-order model: it explains how trust forms among good-faith actors, not how to detect bad ones. Credibility, reliability, and intimacy all collapse without honesty — you can simulate them briefly, but they’re structurally unstable. Once dishonesty is detected, self-orientation effectively goes to infinity and trust snaps to zero. So the equation is a trust amplifier, not a lie detector. Useful for healthy teams, dangerous if applied naively in adversarial or performative environments.
mixmastamyk 10mo ago
Doesn’t only apply to leads, any new employee faces the same dynamics. Honestly it takes a while to understand not just what is broken at a company, but more importantly why. Otherwise the obvious fix might be a band-aid. Reminds me of an old post by Joel, “fixing things when you’re a grunt.” His advice was similar.
rolph 10mo ago
make it a secret, start with "dont tell anyone else but..."
tacone 10mo ago
Just for the laughs, some year ago I had to remind one of the juniors that I was the one in charge, not him. Since he looked unimpressed I asked him to hand me a pen on his desk. He promptly gave me the pen. "See? You're already doing whatever I ask."
RickyLahey 10mo ago
sounds like that person isn't a tech lead
BergAndCo 10mo ago
[dead]

163 points by joaoqalves 10mo ago

tkel 10mo ago

Don't rely on hierarchy. Earn others' trust as you would when you are an equal. Don't expect deference just because of your position. Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social and easily generates animosity. You'd do better to empower your peers instead, and show them you are able to listen to them as well. Just like you would with friends.

wiseowise 10mo ago
Big pile of horse shit, every word. Wasted years in previous company under narcissistic manager with the same mindset. The guy had official senior lead title and was calling the shots. When ther team became too big, he assigned most senior people as “leads” without the official title. You had to perform as a team lead in an environment where your decisions do not have authoritative power, so every small task became negotiation with every member regardless of their seniority. Also no salary bump either. The “teams” quickly collapsed and they hired official team leads from there, with a real authority. > Although hierarchical decision making may be more efficient, it's an unnatural system and anti-social Where did you read this? “Empowerment management for empowered to empower #21”?
baby 10mo ago
"Leading without authority"
- rolph 10mo ago
  in other words buffering of culpability.
jcalvinowens 10mo ago
No. Never accept responsibility without power. That is a lesson I wish I'd learned much earlier in my life.
- rpdillon 10mo ago
  This, and use power sparingly.

28304283409234 10mo ago

"Here's a simple formula that solves this very complex problem that is different for everyone." Good luck with that.

c16 10mo ago
The conjoined triangles of success!
- askvictor 10mo ago
  I hear they teach that at business school
  - ramon156 10mo ago
    The overall theme there is shapes, sometimes colors. Your exam will be to draw within the lines.
- ionwake 10mo ago
  thats why I decide whether to redirect through Jackson Hole

newsclues 10mo ago

Become a leader.

fredsted 10mo ago

> After that incident, I created an incident review document and suggested a small review of the tasks that should be prioritized to prevent it from happening again. I got carried away and created an initial presentation for the other backend Chapter Leads with a backend strategy. I do not remember it perfectly, but it included hexagonal architecture, a testing pyramid with contract tests to avoid breaking APIs used by mobile apps, and more Definitely got carried away. When coming to a new org, it's always good to learn the ropes a bit before fatiguing the team with more work, processes, and burdens.

tormeh 10mo ago
> hexagonal architecture God help me. Was on a project where this was used to justify so much extra boilerplate. Every class had an interface, and then we used dependency injection to supply the class to something expecting that interface. Actually, it was in Rust, so there were no classes, but that didn't stop us. Absolute waste of time.
- littlecranky67 10mo ago
  Sounds like a regular setup, at least this is very common in modern C#/.NET when you implement REST services. Nothing to do with Hexagonal Architecture, just inversion of control. There is a very thin DI container baked into ASP.NET and the pipeline. Do you have to use that? No, but it gets complicated very quickly if you don't. So any project that is more than a tech demo/eval uses DI. In other languages/frameworks (i.e. Typescript+NodeJS) this is not very common for some reason.
  - tormeh 10mo ago
    I don't know much about C#, but in Rust this is very much not the norm. In fact, there are technical limitations associated with async traits. This sometimes allowed us a reprieve from the madness, but only sometimes. I guess you can write enterprise Java in any language. The entire idea was to make it easier to mock components and therefore easier to test code, however all the code connecting the components became untestable, so we were back to square one, struggling to meet our test coverage quota because of the massive amounts of boilerplate.

jmkni 10mo ago

If nobody is listening to you then you aren't a tech lead, just saying

OutOfHere 10mo ago
This. If the lead has no power to suspend people without pay, or to fire people, then he is not a lead. It's okay for this power to be indirect so long as it can be wielded when necessary.

omgJustTest 10mo ago

"I'm a tech lead, nobody listens"... 1. Listen to what other people say and what they think the problem is, or what the problem "says". 2. Think, ask questions to clarify and repeat step 1. Is the problem actually technical? branch a. otherwise branch b. a. have you considered the problem is mostly not technical? then proceed to branch b. b. what miscommunications are keeping the solution from being implemented? 3. Change minds with the words that are convincing to others. Dont be so convinced of your solution that you wouldnt take a better one, return to step 1 unless the problem is "solved" My blog would be uncompellingly short.

ionwake 10mo ago
2c. is there a context I dont understand? I think its important to note in most companies I worked in, the issues were mostly political.
worthless-trash 10mo ago
But very useful. I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

commandersaki 10mo ago

That Spotify squad tribe diagram makes me want to vomit.

junga 10mo ago
Same. Strong SAFe vibes. Hopefully I'll never have to 'work' in such a environment again.
preommr 10mo ago
I did a reverse image search on it, and it brought up 'vietname board game' and other war-themed images. Who thought it would be a good idea to have a corporate productivity diagram where the workers look like they're prisoners, there's shooting targets plastered all over, and the "coach" looks like a warden that's flashing danger signs (all the colors, and they choose red?). And that's not even including all the poor spacing, text formatting, color scheme, etc. Honestly, the more I look at it, the worse it gets.
- tuetuopay 10mo ago
  This is pretty in line with the BS side of agile. How many retrospectives I've had with themed MIRO boards, from star wars to indiana jones with a step in whatever war. Par for the course I guess. (not that I'm defending it, aside from the more than dubious theme, it's plain illegible)
azangru 10mo ago
What's wrong with it? Squads look like regular small teams. Tribes look like several teams working on the same product and having to coordinate their work. Each team has specialists, who like to hang out together and talk shop, forming different "chapters". The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive :-) But other than that, what's so bad about it?
- franktankbank 10mo ago
  > The number of product owners and agile coaches might be excessive Its a great soup, apart from the turds floating in it.

varispeed 10mo ago

At previous corporation, the tech lead simply recommended for sackings a developer who was questioning his approach. Once he got sacked, everyone listened... ...and then most of best skilled people left in the following weeks. Tech lead then hired his mates and company nose dived.

master-lincoln 10mo ago
must be an idiot that tech leads boss
- AdrianB1 10mo ago
  In most non-IT corporations, the managers are non-technical and most are idiots these days. It comes from the MBA hires getting in management roles where they don't understand the area, what Steve Jobs calls "bozos" in his interview (available online).
darkwater 10mo ago
I met that exact kind of leader once. In my case, they also tend to work more on their personal brand rather than the company, and keep ship-jumping every couple of years to spread their gospel.

Hydraulix989 10mo ago

You have to build / earn your influence. People listen to you after you have a reputation of being "right" enough times, and by being likeable. Abusing hierarchy isn't it.

agumonkey 10mo ago
That depends on the cultural / politics health of the group. The likeable right guy can end up stomped because he's a threat to the wrong dubious people. Seen this first hand in some companies.

pico303 10mo ago

I feel terrible for the author, having to work in this kind of structure. Someone should tell mytaxi that even Spotify never got “tribes and squads” to work, it sounds like for the same reasons/problems mytaxi ran into. Edit: accidentally hit update instead of scrolling… One thing missing from the article that I don’t think has been mentioned is confidence and setting expectations. I’ve found if I expect certain results and convey confidence, people are more likely to follow your lead, or at least listen to you. Don’t act like a know it all, and be sure to encourage and question others so the environment is collaborative (solve problems as a group; don’t be a hero). But set expectations. Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?”

9rx 10mo ago
> Also, I don’t think you mean “intimacy.” Do you mean “empathy?” The words that follow support it being "intimacy". That is what intimacy is — being close enough to someone that you can be open without a feeling of being left exposed. How would empathy fit?

socketcluster 10mo ago

I've been tech lead at different companies. Every time I switched companies, I started out as senior dev and got promoted into the team lead role again; each time with full support of my team. I don't look or act like a leader and this has been a hurdle for me. But what typically happens anyway is; within a few months, my code ends up being a core part of the project; my modules become heavily depended upon and somehow I end up maintaining all the config files and guiding architecture decisions. One of my team members joked that I "conquered everyone's code." I probably write fewer lines of code than everyone else but somehow those lines end up heavily used. So then I basically just ask the big boss for a team lead position.

master-lincoln 10mo ago
I don't understand why that is a logical progression. Writing good code and leading a team needs vastly different skill-sets in my eyes.
- antonymoose 10mo ago
  I would argue that the two skills are necessary but not sufficient. If you’re lacking in the core skill, what exactly are you leading? If you’re a great coder and socially inept, good luck leading.
- zelphirkalt 10mo ago
  On the other hand, if you want to lead a bunch of engineers, you should know their work very well, otherwise you will have unrealistic ideas about what can get done and how they should do it.
  - master-lincoln 10mo ago
    Is this really true that you need managers to understand the domain deeply to manage? You could argue that a manager should have domain experts they can trust in their team to get estimates about time and complexity.
- Braxton1980 10mo ago

DoctorOW 10mo ago

> Note: this article is a translation from the original “Soy Tech Lead y no me hacen caso. ¿Qué hago?”, in Spanish. I wonder if "tech lead" coincidentally are two words that are the same in Spanish as English, or if this is considered a technical phrase.

ioma8 10mo ago
Totally not the same. Its used as technical phrase. In europe we have many languages, but in most of them we use the term Tech lead as phrase.

torginus 10mo ago

[flagged]

wiseowise 10mo ago
Very passionate comment with strong words, but very true as someone who worked in a similar environment.

zipy124 10mo ago

This is a very long winded way of saying the phrase "respect is earned not given".

general1465 10mo ago

I still remember when my previous employer has lost domain for like 3 months. Boss and his business partner have setup company and I have joined later. Business partner left. - I was trying to figure out who have access to domain X? It is not on AWS and by whois it is under some random registrar in Europe. I got just shrug from boss. Everything works so why bother? - After 3 years of scratching my head and try to repeatedly get it to attention we finally lost the domain (card probably expired), everyone is panicking, because emails has stopped working, so email based 2FA are not working either which has cascading impact on all services. And I am just raging in my office because I was trying to prevent this situation for 3 years to no avail. - The European registrar did not cooperate at all. We have offered them good chunk of money, no response (weird?), eventually domain got moved around and reregistered by various bots and domain companies and I was able to get it again via domain backorder. I have left shortly after because this was just ridiculous lack of care with good amount of reactive behavior as a cherry on the top. My take away from this is that you can't change the culture. If top is bunch of sloppy clowns, whole company is going to be the same.

wiseowise 10mo ago
This, many times this. If you encounter pushback from everywhere – leave, don’t spend your life energy fighting bullshit.
- nickdothutton 10mo ago
  I won't add much, but if this happens you must leave. Raise the risk. Document it. Document your recommendation and their decision, even if not replying or not making a decision was their decision. Tie it up with a bow on it, keep a copy, and leave.
kamaal 10mo ago
>>If top is bunch of sloppy clowns, whole company is going to be the same. This happens so often at big companies as well. Management is always assumed to be correct, and the pay grade argument always kicks in(They are paid more because you are beneath them). And this starts to show up everywhere. You can't take any initiative without sanction from the top, and they are often clueless as to what the ask is. Most of the times its rejected just to assert authority, and not on the grounds of merit. Top bosses are also very envious and proactively trying to kill rising talent out of fear- people better than them, will replace them. To that end no good thing ever happens, if you push too hard you will be eliminated in interest of self preservation. So by and large no good thing is ever suggested, or tried or happens. Eventually until whole business(es) die out. This happens in every company, no matter what companies claim about hiring, retaining and promoting talent. This is just how every place works.

rvz 10mo ago

Leave.

jwarden 10mo ago

Listen to them.

nickd2001 10mo ago

If its any consolation, perhaps there might've been a few other highly intelligent capable sensible people in existence over the last few... shall we say, millennia, who, weren't really listened to either ? ;)

AdrianB1 10mo ago

What I read in the story is the context and some action, but not the result. It is implied there is some sort of result, but it is not described, especially how the actions contributed to the result. It may be well intended, but very superficial, childish.

ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago

Welcome to Hell, kid. I was a senior manager, for much of my career, and had about a 30% hit rate, with folks listening to me. My employees had to listen to me, but I actually encouraged them to talk back, if they had issues with my direction. My bosses and peers? ...not so much... This was especially true of the Japanese (I worked for a Japanese company). Even though I had a pretty significant level of influence (for a Westerner), I still had to beg for folks to listen to me. My favorite, was when my team was assigned to help a Silicon Valley startup that my company had made a deal with, after the ink was dry on the contract. There were a lot of problems with that relationship. Most of them, were because the senior Japanese management had made some really big mistakes; chiefly because of cultural differences between the companies (the startup was actually really good, but they were a fairly typical "smoke and mirrors" Silicon Valley startup, and had a different approach to pitching that didn't work well with the Japanese. Neither side really understood the other). We did our best, but our hands were tied. It did not end well, which was pretty disastrous. If someone had asked me to help out, before they signed the contract, it would have been a much better outcome. I'm no captain of industry, but the problems were pretty glaring and obvious, even to us mensches in the trenches. > I think I never read as much in my life as during the month between announcing I was leaving my previous job and joining mytaxi. I liked reading that. I would love folks to do that kind of thing, more often.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago

Oh my. If self-otientation is the denoninator then dont advertise your thing multiple times. Instead keep that out and Ill say cool learned something and come back. At some point ill notice the course/book/whatever and be more interested.

ramon156 10mo ago

Only thing I can say is that, what doesn't work for me, is leads that just tell you how to do things. I completely agree with my tech lead, but also it just includes only his opinion and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this my ego? Maybe.

FroshKiller 10mo ago
I'm a technical lead, and I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something. I am not looking over their shoulders at every line of code, but I will tell them plainly that I want an interface, a concrete implementation of the interface that is up to them, and a configuration option for substituting a different concrete type. I don't do this because I don't trust them but because I have different requirements. What matters most to them is completing their work items according to specifications. What matters more to me is long-term maintainability of our projects for the rest of the team. Some of them have the long-term needs in mind. Some of them just don't think that way. I try not to make them feel like their work can't be trusted or like my demands are arbitrary. I think they are more receptive to my demands when I can at least provide context for them. That seems absolutely necessary to me. I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control. I appreciate you asking of yourself, "Is this my ego?" It can definitely go both ways.
- 9rx 10mo ago
  > I often tell my teammates exactly how I want them to implement something. Ugh. I recently found myself working with one of those people. What a horrid experience. We waste days trying to reverse engineer out of him what the business problem actually is, and then, once we finally figure that out, even more going over all the things he failed to consider. Software isn't the technical Olympics. It sole purpose in life is to solve human problems. You must work from understanding the human problems. "This is how we are going to do it" obscures all of the information that is necessary to write good software. I have no qualms about pushing back to ensure that we start from the right place, but it is so draining when it happens over and over. Building software doesn't have to be so stupid. Don't be that guy. > I ask myself all the time whether I'm insisting on too much control. No. You're not. Someone has to wrangle those who are not providing positive contributions (without a forceful hand). But your job is to figure out why they are not providing positive contributions and solve for that problem, not to continually tell them how to do their job. You are no longer in a technical role. "Lead" means you are now in a people role, solving people problems not suitable to be solved with tech. If you'd rather be a software developer, consider doing that job instead.

yoan9224 10mo ago

I've made similar ones early in my career. The formula of Trust + Intimacy + Credibility is solid, but I'd add: solve one painful problem first, then earn the right to propose architectural changes. Ship something valuable in the first month, even if it's not perfect. That builds more credibility than any presentation.

zkmon 10mo ago

> Technical influence does not start with a title. It begins with the visible impact you create. That visible impact need not be entirely from your technical work. It is mostly from your relations, communications, the way you present yourself and the perceptions that you can manage to get from others. Infact, technology component is very little.

agumonkey 10mo ago

there's another dimension is how ready is the group to your ideas some teams distort the meaning of things, and if you try to bring improvements (QA, velocity) they will reject it right away no matter great you are.

arealaccount 10mo ago

I find tech leads to be the most difficult people in any organization to work with (always with exceptions), I think it’s because they are still learning the lead part, and at the same time are trying to prove themselves. Coming in with a hexagonal overhaul is a great example. At least in this case it seems the writer didn’t dig his heals in too much.

baby 10mo ago
I think it's also that they have a vision and unfortunately this means they have to say no to landing PRs that don't make sense to the overall vision often. And nobody likes to throw away work.

lsofzz 10mo ago

> I'm a Tech Lead, and nobody listens to me. What should I do? TL;DidntRead Precisely. Take the `TL` title out the door. Take the `ego` out the door. Then, step in the door - as a friend, with empathy, proactive listening and support the engineers. Round-table `discussions`. Not Waterfall. My 2 cents.

pixel_popping 10mo ago

Another website blocking VPN and forcing users to reveal their identity, great.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

sceptic123 10mo ago

No need to answer this person's question, they are not asking for help, they are promoting their upcoming book

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
MyHonestOpinon 10mo ago
Or just read all the comments and you don't need to buy their book.

nextworddev 10mo ago

One of them could be sabotaging you so he or she can take ur spot

retrocog 10mo ago

The trust equation implicitly assumes honesty. It’s a second-order model: it explains how trust forms among good-faith actors, not how to detect bad ones. Credibility, reliability, and intimacy all collapse without honesty — you can simulate them briefly, but they’re structurally unstable. Once dishonesty is detected, self-orientation effectively goes to infinity and trust snaps to zero. So the equation is a trust amplifier, not a lie detector. Useful for healthy teams, dangerous if applied naively in adversarial or performative environments.

mixmastamyk 10mo ago

Doesn’t only apply to leads, any new employee faces the same dynamics. Honestly it takes a while to understand not just what is broken at a company, but more importantly why. Otherwise the obvious fix might be a band-aid. Reminds me of an old post by Joel, “fixing things when you’re a grunt.” His advice was similar.

rolph 10mo ago

make it a secret, start with "dont tell anyone else but..."

tacone 10mo ago

Just for the laughs, some year ago I had to remind one of the juniors that I was the one in charge, not him. Since he looked unimpressed I asked him to hand me a pen on his desk. He promptly gave me the pen. "See? You're already doing whatever I ask."

RickyLahey 10mo ago

sounds like that person isn't a tech lead

BergAndCo 10mo ago

[dead]