From Engineer to Team Lead to Teams Lead: What Got You Here Won’t Take You Further - LCPS01E01
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Episode Summary
How “technical” should an engineering manager be? And what do different paths into engineering leadership look like?—These questions have been the topic of hot debate in tech for a very long time, even more now ass the industry is going through big changes with layoffs and strategy shifts.
That’s why we’re starting this podcast with a two-episode series about different shapes of leadership roles: You’ll hear from two leaders who both have over 20 years experience, but had very different paths into the technology space and have very different roles now.
In this episode, you hear from Max, who shares his path from engineer to technical lead of leads. We talk about:
The relevance of fruit baskets: Max’ career from a computer science graduate in the early 2000’s, to getting into his first informal, then first formal lead role
New skills to learn, new fears to face: How he adapted to his new roles, changed his approach from direct involvement to empowering his teams, and how he dealt with the emotional and practical aspects of ~leadership~.
Knowing if you’re doing your job well, a.k.a. “When You Do Things Right, People Won’t Be Sure You’ve Done Anything at All.” (Futurama)
Guidance for Aspiring Leaders: Practical advice for everyone in technical roles considering or new to a leadership path.
Resources mentioned:
LeadDev Engineering Leadership Survey: How exactly have tech leadership roles changed? Spend 5-10 minutes sharing your experiences anonymously, and help create more clarity for the engineering leadership community. T Join the conversation on evolving leadership roles by participating in our survey, aimed at gathering collective insights for the tech community. The survey is still open until Apr 12, 2024.
How to work with your peer leaders as a “first team” and why it matters
StaffEng - reports from staff+ engineers in different companies about the different shapes of the role
Book: Tanya Reilly, The Staff Engineer’s Path
Book: Will Larson, Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond The Management Track
Thank you for joining me on Leadership Confidential. Let’s get real—with Max.
Transcript
Max: When you dive into this whole tech bubbly and management thing, there’s always this stigma that managers don't do anything. All the tech guys do all the stuff. There are so many jokes around this where managers are sitting around with one person with a shovel who digs up a street or something like this, making sure you are convincing yourself that you're not looking down on this one poor guy who's there with the shovel. Yeah, that's the interesting part.
Intro
Lena: One might think, or at least hope, that, of all places, a career network would be the place for the constructive exchange of different ideas in the spirit of fostering innovation, learning, and But, turns out, It is possible to get into flame wars on LinkedIn. And an especially great way to start such a flame war is to ask, “how ‘technical’ should an engineering manager be?”
I'm making air quotes around technical. You can't see them, but they're important. This is Leadership Confidential with Lena Reinhardt. Real talk on more than two hard things in technology, finding community, and becoming the engineering leader you can be. I've been thinking about this question, what engineering leadership roles should look like, for a lot of my own career. And currently, a lot of people in our industry think about it too.
After a decade of boom, fueled by cheap money and hot hypes, the tech industry's been going through major shifts. Strategy changes, reorgs, and layoffs, with even two, three, or four rounds of layoffs in single companies. A lot of these changes have played out directly in how engineering leaders spend their time.
Middle management levels have evaporated. Line managers are reporting to executives again. Tech leads are working at lower levels, often much more hands-on. And interviewing for leadership roles has changed. Fewer roles are available, often mostly at line manager level, and interviews are often more technical.
Now, this is a complicated and complex topic, and a lot of people have very strong opinions about this. Here's mine. Don't think there's a one-size-fits-all all for what kind of leader or manager is best for all companies at all times. As someone who's worked in finance and media and arts, in addition to tech, and has been following leadership discourse since the early 2000s, I can also tell you that I haven't seen any other industry where this topic is discussed with such force, outrage, and often largely colored by personal anecdotes.
In other industries, Most people just loathe managers and employees bond over their aversion to leadership, and that's kind of it. I also think that the way this debate has been going in tech since, well, the beginning of tech, which is in opinion pieces and flame wars on social networks, is actively harmful to our industry and to progress in the discipline of engineering leadership.
But. More on that later. All of this is why I want to talk to people for whom this isn't just an abstract theoretical topic, a thought exercise, or stimulating philosophical and intellectual debate, but something that's deeply intertwined with their actual work and life experience. That's why we're starting this podcast with a two-episode series about different shapes of leadership roles.
You'll hear from two leaders who both have over 20 years experience, but had very different paths into the technology space and have very different roles now. One is an engineering manager who's been leading teams for a long time, but wasn't an engineer before getting into this work. My other guest is a technical lead who transitioned from engineer to tech lead to technical lead of leads and had to drastically change his own measures for good work and the way that he gets anything done.
That's Max, and his story is the episode we're starting with today. Max isn't his real name, but what we'll call him in this episode, and we've changed his voice. You'll hear his career journey, what's changed for him at each of these stages, how he grew his skills, and how he deals with the hard parts of technical leadership, as well as his advice for anyone who's on a similar path in technical leadership.
Max is an experienced engineering leader who's been in the tech industry since the early two thousands. He graduated in Europe in computer science with a focus on game development and robotics. After a software engineer role in a mobile gaming company, he moved to a startup and developed expertise in software architecture and cloud native technologies.
Now he works as a technical leader in an agency supporting five engineering teams that he's involved with on a daily basis.
A quick note as we start our conversation. You may hear in Max's audio that some sounds are not entirely as expected, like an S sounding like an F. We're still working on some parts of the voice changing process, so please bear with us.
Here's real talk on more than two hard things in technology with Max.
Max’ Journey
Max: so I started, to work in it quite some time ago. It was, I think around, the two thousands where, the education I think the English term is informatics salesman it was a new, kind of, education there where they wanted to introduce,an interface between the salespeople and the, uh, IT people. Yeah.
Lena: You’ve been to the dark side.
Max: yeah, exactly.
Lena: I had no idea!
Max: And, in general,the education was about, oh god, creating [Microsoft] Access databases and, buying IT stuff, and doing a little bit of network administration, and so on. And, but in, in general, that's, at that point in time wasn't enough for me. It just scratched the surface, around the whole IT business. It's so just setting up networks wasn't enough. I wanted to know how they work and so on. And therefore, after this education part, I started, to study computer science, and, over the course of the studies, I focused on two topics. One of them was, game development and one of them was, robotics.
They're quite, different. Um, yeah. So like, It was into the depths of system architecture itself and creating controllers and many manipulating, the memory itself. And the other one was, about fancy graphics and letting them jump around the screen. And, yeah, I also, finalized, My studies was a diploma and also my last work there was also about artificial intelligence in computer games. And yeah, so that was,
Lena: Damn.
Max: yeah, more or less, some kind of reinforcement learning mechanisms there, but, and after this, I tried to, jump into one of those, topics. So like one of them, robotics, one of them was game development. And by chance I landed in the game development, worked there for, more or less startup like, mobile game development, company. I think it was on iPhone there with, oh, I think the engine was Cocos2d, or something like this.
Lena: Forgot the early days.
Max: No, Unity 3D, or something like that, yet there yet. And, after, and it was really. It was a real startup work. Okay. We had those sessions where it was like, hey, it's already 48 hours at work.
Lena: The pizza as well?
Max: Also the pizza. Yes. Of course. Pizza. And we had something like, we had, also this, a fruit basket, but the fruit over time, the fruit basket changed into, more or less, we only had, chips and chocolate in because we needed them more.
Lena: Right.
Max: And, after that startup time, I switched to another company. At that point, they weren't that big, but I started there as a full stack game developer, and, worked there on browser games or also mobile games and, with Unity 3D and, at the beginning Also not with ActionScript, something like that, but,the role there was more, the role was more stable there, it was quite clear: Okay. we are not developing with a 48-hour crunch time stuff and, um, that was the time, where I deepened the knowledge about, how, how software architecture works and it, and also more how it works in a quite larger scale and how it can be maintained and also in, maintaining running systems.
Max moves into his first leadership role
But, after about five years, it became quite obvious that, the next step was not possible there. I wanted to develop on a larger scale, gathering more knowledge, also maybe, go more in this architectural or people-leading position. And, because of the size of the company, that large and every one of those positions were, given to the people who were longest there. And I had the opportunity to, jump into an agency, where they were also focused on mobile development, but, going away from games there. And,I started there as application developer.
The interesting part is, before that everything was, not in the cloud, I would say, So every server I maintained there was on-premise and, and the interesting part then became, okay. we are developing quite a lot of stuff cloud native and that, was the moment where I also dived into this, became a cloud developer, cloud architect and, yeah, over time, the kind of work I did was organized in an agile way.
That's quite, I think it's important for the next things to come because, at that point in time, it was, like, said, okay, we have this, it's this [tbd] self-organized team, and, growing into this and, I became more and more comfortable with, speaking for the team, raising issues for the team and, besides the job on, okay, I'm, developing applications and I'm doing cloud stuff and I'm doing a little bit of devops and, but okay. But what is needed in the next step for the team? What do we need? When the service is finished, what is the next step in this agile process, how to refine this and so on.
Max: And, because of that, I was, moved over to another, project part, which, started at that point in time as the, kind of lead developer. It was not the official role, but just the role I, I grew into that. It was, “okay, you have the most experience here, so you will also be responsible for everything more or less.” And, we started the project, the project grew and grew and grew and grew.
Growing into and in the role, steering, and multiplying
And over time it became more official that I was leading the team. And I also got, coaching offered, like, how to dive more into, uh, empowering slash leadership role, and what are good tools to manage this one. So like, I think, one of the things which was said there was like, yeah, it's more or less, you already know you're already doing the right things, but here are tools to doing them maybe better. And, um, yeah. so that was. one point where it was really like it became, said, more official there and in my mind, it became also more official and,
the team at first was three people. And over the course of, I think, two years, two or three years, it grew to. About around 10 and, with, always with a different setup. So sometimes there were more QA people involved and sometimes more front-end people and sometimes more back-end people.
And, the tasks that were, already quite different. from what I did before, before it was just developing there, it was also a little bit of steering. So like the steering became because of, it was a self-organized thing. And, at that point in time, it became quite obvious that the steering part became more important.
And this was one,of the, turning points, I would say, because, for me, I liked the work and I also liked the outcome of the work there and therefore I was, steering also in an even more overseeing direction, I would say, so okay, now I have one team, but can I multiply myself even more? And I did this over the course of the past year and I'm currently in, still in the phase of the transition, I would say. So, that's it for now. So that was from everything learning to today.
Lena: That's the last like 20 plus years,
Max: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Lena: and I love the kind of variety that you've had in your career. I'm really intrigued by how you described, especially, yeah, how your role has shifted over time. And it sounds like basically, so the, you've been in various engineer roles previously. You also joined like your current company and agency, as an engineer initially. but as that company grew, your role started to shift at some point you had this sort of. Sounded like almost self-assumed leadership role at first. Yeah, you were the most senior person, most experienced, started speaking for the teams. I think something you mentioned then. Now, it shifted over time into kind of a more official leadership role, like getting coaching, trainings, and now you're overseeing multiple teams at this point, right?
A day and week technically leading multiple teams
Max: Yeah, exactly. So I'm mentoring them and I'm, coaching them technically driving them in a more, consistent direction than they were So the teams were, I'm currently. involved into, some of them existed before some were, newly founded, but, there were quite disconnected and I'm currently working on to connect them and to, give them consistent guidelines to better work together.
Lena: What does your average week or day, whichever is easiest, look like for you now?
Max: I start, usually I start with organizing the day itself. So getting the latest news, because what I experienced was the more teams, the more topics and the more, uh, possible fires, which might appear and need to be prioritized. and, that's also one of the important parts, like organizing the day and prioritizing what, what needs to be done.
And, after this is usually a mixture of, Gathering knowledge meetings, so, like, attending appointments where tech leads come together or the POs [Product Owners] meet up with the directors or something like this. So gathering the high-level information and, distributing them towards the teams.
Lena: And, um, Are those meetings that you just mentioned, are those more about kind of requirements gatherings or things around it basically updates communication?
Max: It depends. It's not only updates and not only requirements, but, but both. So like, sometimes it's also extracting that an update might be a requirement for a certain team. Therefore, and, and, that's, probably, also one, one of the reasons I was set into the role because, we, before this, we did not have anyone who can hear out of a specific meeting that this might be important for a certain team. And, therefore now I'm sitting there and hearing people talk and gathering as much information as I can from them. And also, extend this to, okay, I got this information, now I need a certain person to talk and address this into the team and advise the team in how this information might be resolved in the correct code.
Lena: Yeah. it almost sounds like you're scanning, even when you described how you're starting your day. So if looking at what's happening in the teams, what's happening around, what are people talking about in those meetings and then listening for like, Oh, here's something that some person might need to know about. And then you tell them, or, Hey, here's something that this might mean for the project we're working on for the release or whatnot, and then connecting dots, connecting people.
Max: Exactly and also, often the point that I get some information, which is important for certain people and, and makes this information important for them. That's also. One thing I'm doing on a quite daily basis, I would say.
Lena: Yeah. can you give an example of that? Or even, how this, what this looks like in a concrete sense?
Max: Let's make an example from developer to, to upper management perspective. So a developer sees an issue, an upcoming issue and communicates it with me, and says, okay, so my PO wanted to have, this and that feature. if we develop this feature, we need to, also improve our monitoring as an example. And, right. So if because. dependencies, or we have a blind spot here and I'm making this blind spot important now for the middle, the upper management, and which people need to be involved there, this is then the next step.
So I would say to the developer, yes, you can do it on yourself, but let's figure out if it's the correct way or if there might be something already in place or a plan in place that this might already be implemented. And yeah.
Lena: It's again, making a connection, but then also if needed, like you would probably also be the person who, for example, makes the case to management that, hey, actually prioritizing this observability feature would be helpful, important, even though it's also costly for the business because X, Y, z,.
Max: exactly.
Lena: on how things pan out.
Max: also maybe preventing that things get developed twice or three times something
Lena: Yeah. But also there, there is also like upholding a bit of a kind of technical bar or standard to make sure that at least over time, like the teams are making trade offs that are. Manageable. And then for example, the code base doesn't go to hell, because you're just focusing on feature development,
Max: or creating as an example of creating shadow infrastructure. So like, yeah, we are creating this stuff because it's, it's important for our team, but on a whole, system level, it looks completely different. And,
Lena: right?
Max: Will lead to unexpected costs or some politics are also involved. So like there are people who are saying, Hey, that's my responsibility. And, yeah.
Lena: So you've have, you have described like, you have a bunch of meetings, to talk about those things. what else happens on your day, like in your days now?
Max: I also need to sometimes zoom in and to certain, levels of creating things, be it a deployment pipeline, refining a deployment flow, or be it a specific kind of. cloud architecture or even be it a certain, piece of code. Therefore, I also need to zoom in but, not on the level it was before. So like when I have such tasks, they are not. They're currently not organized in the way they were before. So like, when I'm working on tickets, if I work on tickets, they are not, they're usually not aligned in this sprint world where they need to be refined but are more, created on it for tracking, purpose.
Lena: it's more like fix X problem or X set up Y pipeline. No one's writing a user story for you. Kind of have come up with that stuff yourself.
Max: exactly, and I'm currently not, if I start, to own a certain topic, it's needed that I also have already a plan how to, give it away. Again, that's maybe one of the things,I, one of the most important things of the current role is really that, that, giving away ownership is, one of the things I, needed to get used to be honest.
Lena: it's like you may basically can find technical problems or basically become the person at least kicks off, fix things, some issues, that can also happen. Um, what else do you then do on a regular day/week?
What
Max: I think, I think week is the most, more regular base there because, because it's important to, so this gathering of knowledge of the teams is usually not done in one specific day, but more over the course of the week. So like, organizing this week depending on what those people tell me.
Because the teams, they might not be aligned with their sprint cycles, as an example. And also, I think many people know this, that there are also some side topics coming in all the time. And therefore, and gathering this and reorganizing those things, it's better viewed over the course of the week instead of over the course of a day. So my weekly plan is more organized than a daily plan might be, I think.
Lena: right? Cause in the week you still have, you have some cadences like, yeah, this is when whatever X team does planning, or you hear from some team's manager, whereas the day can be a bit more, you mentioned fires to put out, so a bit more reactive
Max: Yeah, exactly. So it's more consistent over the week.
What’s been challenging for max in his role changes
Max: So like, it's not, and the usual work day, it's, Because of the different teams, it can be completely different. so the planning is always there and also meetings also always there, but what those meetings are about,can be completely different from one day to the other.
So one day it might completely be about, okay. how to create this and that cloud infrastructure and the next, it would be okay, how to connect,system X with that and people, Y to Z. And
Lena: that does sound like a pretty fascinating job, to be honest.
Max: yeah, it is, I guess it's not for everybody. I talked with it a lot, about some of my peers that, certain aspects of this job. Also, maybe as this job in an agency, can be, It can be quite overwhelming because it's not this. every day. I'm doing the same, but it needs a quite of adaptive mindset there.
Lena: Are there other aspects of this job that you feel like aren't for everyone, aside from the kind of high change
Max: I think one thing which might not be for everybody is this, You cannot finish your to-do list because that's what, yeah, that, one important sentence from one of my coaches was exactly that, be comfortable that your to-do list will never be empty again. And, over the course of, became even more apparent. So like when you are leading a team, the more zooming out happens, the more important becomes this. So because when I was working a team lead, I had always this Scrum team I, was working with, therefore, it was already clear: Okay, we are, we have certain meetings we all attend and, there are, uh, regular, cycles where we move. And also I still had tickets there, which I was working on and creating things, it was like, okay, now it's in to-do. And this was even more strict as a single contributor, where it was like, okay, this, that's the task, doing, done—ah, dopamine shot.
At that point in time, it was always this, okay, I want to complete this task and then I'm finishing my day. And this is something I'm encountering less and less. It was more like, I need to be sure when to finish my day and not because the to do list is never empty. There will always be tasks which might need to be done. They always, every task is important, right? Every task is important for someone.
Lena: Yes, exactly. It's
Max: Yeah. and it, as I said, for someone it's always P0, but is it P0 for me? I don't know. Let's find out. And, yeah, this is one of the, most important challenges to get this also comfortable for my head because it's, this is something I would say isn't easy. And, I'm encountering that also in. people I'm mentoring that they're, they have the same challenge, okay, Oh God,I need to complete this. Otherwise, the sprint will fail or something like this. And, mentoring them in a way, yes, but your role doesn't currently cover this, but focus more on, okay, what needs to be done that you are. Do not have this feeling anymore. I also encounter people, which, this wasn't exactly, this, the thing they were not comfortable with, and they were also, they were promoted to team lead and, found out, “oh God, I think this role is not for me, and I want to work again on tickets.”
And, and also I'm encouraging people who are who are also senior leaders or something like this. And also always saying, yeah, it's sometimes I also wanna sit down at the beginning of the day, grab my ticket, do stuff on the ticket in complete silence, preferably. And, yeah,
Lena: you have those days still?
Max: yeah. Yeah. So sometimes I, so,
Lena: so, do I, honestly.
Max: Yeah, it's especially when you zoom in on a specific task and especially if the task, if it's a task I did not do. Or it involves a certain technology I did not work before and I'm diving into this technology and I think, Oh, that's quite fancy. I want to do this. And then I'm doing the proof of concept or something that the other people can work this and then I need to give it away. And it's Oh,
Lena: Oh,
Max: I have so much ideas about this.
Lena: I have so many good thoughts.
Max: Yeah, exactly. I can create the next, I can already create the next, tickets. And
Lena: I can imagine. Yeah.that's hard.I'd love to talk about this a bit more. Awesome. Because honestly, the bit you mentioned that a lot of people struggle with this and kind of the transition to some sort of leadership role, like that also really maps with my experience. what are the things now, like what makes you feel good about your work?
What’s been good about leading?
Max: the good part is the leverage. So, like, one thing is, seeing other people succeed is it all. I think this is from the books. Yeah. Yeah. no, your role is seeing your success is seeing other people succeed. But, this, I think I. if I had not encountered the feeling itself, I wouldn't know what it is because that's, this is really something.
When you see someone, you show them certain things and see how they become self-managed and self-confident and new skills they achieve and they give feedback towards you: “Hey, I'm very thankful for your help there.” And this is that. And, yeah. I think this is, it's really nice to see, to hear and, to, see when some people become the source of knowledge for other people.
Lena: So, passing it forward, almost
Max: it's,it's contradictionary [contradictory] to what you want to achieve when you start your career I would think.. Because, when you start, you want to be the source of knowledge and you want to be the person to go to.
And you want to be the person who knows it all. And yes. And ah, yeah, I'm such a good developer. Yeah. And yeah, and say I'm such a good developer and I'm the expert here and I'm the expert for this and that. But this, this will just work for, a certain degree, because at some point in time, if you are the expert on too many fields and the only expert on too many fields, you need more than one of you. And, and, that's also one of the, one of the interesting topics I would say, with my course. So like, when you are first, you get a single contributor, then you get team lead and then you get teams’ lead. That is because what brought you there is not important anymore and not needed from you anymore.
So like when you are, when you, So because usually and how I saw it also in the past on certain occasions is when you are a good single contributor, you are seen by people and then you will become the maybe most obvious choice to also, you advise other people on how to do this. And, so just not only here, but also other companies. And then we will get promoted to team lead and then you start as a team lead and you do the same things, which we are good at before. but those are just not, your main requirements there, becauseif you do this you will just gather more knowledge and, make yourself a bottleneck where everyone is a reliant on.
And, the longer you do this and the less and less you care about your team itself, the harder it gets for you to keep up with every topic you own, because you are, you want your team to own those topics, the more topics you have, the harder it is, and the more confidence someone has in you, the harder it is to distribute the confidence to other people. It's so hard that, it becomes more and more important that, certain connections are not, good anymore. This is one thing I encountered because at the point of team leader was quite nice: Okay, having all these one-on-ones, and, and, and giving good directions, and proposing ownership to the team and working close with this specific team came also less important when I started to oversee more than one team.
Because I felt at some point, so I was involved in a one specific team from the start and I became more and more disconnected from them. And, and I really felt uncomfortable at that point in time, because also had a good relationship before with the product owner. I had a good relationship and close relationship with, with certain developers. And, I came to a point where I saw, okay, it. Just doesn't feel this way anymore. So when they are doing things and they are doing things on a daily business, that's not my day. So I cannot, and I was just not, able to dive in every topic they were in.
I wasn't able to be the expert in these certain topics. And I came from a team where I was the expert and many topics and I needed to distribute it. And, that felt quite uncomfortable that I could not,explain a topic from every technical detail and every decision, but more needed to know the why's instead of the how's—”why did we do it? Yeah, this and that way.” And not, “how exactly is this piece of code created?” and there was a point where the, where the team said from themselves, “Hey, please don't interfere here in this, that”,
Lena: Ooh, get off our lawn.
Max: Yeah, exactly. And it failed at that point. And so this kind of rejection failed. The feeling was difficult for me because this amount of control you had before, you had to give it away. And, and you need to rely even more on other people. And this is just something. Yeah, it's difficult but when you then see them succeed, it's really like, Hey, that's even better than being responsible for everything here. And when you don't see this whole multiplication thing,. so, okay, I gave away the control and now I'm not responsible for it anymore. And then you see how the team communicates and the confidence they have in certain topics. Um, that's the good feeling about this
Lena: That sounds huge. Yeah. how did you get through the discomfort?
Getting used to the discomfort and counterintuitive parts
Max: I had the good situation. I, I was able to, I have good connections in my company where I can talk to certain people I relied on in the past who have, where I think their opinions matter to me and I am, when I'm talking with them, they can also, realign me, I would say, and they might have faced the same or similar difficulties. Therefore talking about it, it was already quite nice not only peers or more senior members, but also I talked with people from my past team where I was involved and, talk with them about, okay, why did this work well for you? And why did, why not?
Lena: Oh, interesting. Like the team that, where you were a team lead.
Max: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So that's especially what one person says he, he's a quite… senior person, not only from the rank, but also from that, let's say the experience. Hopefully he doesn't hear this, no
Lena: You call them old just now?
Max: yeah,no. Let's just say he's older than me.
Lena: Nice.
Max: No, but, we had a quite nice talk and it, after the waves flattened a bit, I figured a plan for me. So what might be my next steps and, how to measure the. Measuring was important there, so how to, and being also transparent towards the team, what is now expected from them and us also deliver. Let's say delivering those expectations was also the next interesting part, I would say, so because I didn't want to sound so bossy. Okay, now you don't want to do it my way, and if you do not perform then…
Lena: Dictatorship
Max: Yeah, exactly. But it, important for me was, they figured out a quite good plan. Therefore, and, I tried other ways of, communication when it came to, seeing possibly possible flaws in their plan and making them. So raising awareness that decision a Y a might lead to, to, this problem in three months. And, just, I would say giving them, choices to,to work on this.
So like or, placing thoughts on them. Hey, maybe if you choose, this not this technical advanced solution, but a more practical one at first might be beneficial for you. And also for your, because otherwise you, accountability. Otherwise you will need to sit there and connect it. So you want to do the solution where you use three systems. Okay. You need to connect those afterward, or you would just use this solution where you would just have your sole system. It's not the technical academically correct one, but It will cost you less nerves and also maybe less money. And therefore, giving them those choices was quite a, good learning for me. And, yeah, and I, it works quite well in the current status and I'm currently applying this also to, to the other teams.
Lena: So it's basically, it sounds like there is like a place where you can use your expertise to play out scenarios almost for them. and so basically helping them understand, okay, how will your choices like, yeah, pan out over time? What are the costs risks involved? and then again, you as a team can still make those choices. But you'll also know basically what consequences you'll have to live with.
Max: Yeah, exactly. we are currently having this in a hybrid way. Sometimes we will sit together, sometimes we are just writing as synchronously. And, it, it depends on the topic, I would say.
Lena: Yeah, it's fair.
Max: I'm often just,getting the updates just from looking into chats where I'm also involved and just seeing, okay, and, most importantly, not intervene there. So like I'm seeing sometimes chats where they are, when they are discussing and, hold holding myself back with my opinion is sometimes. That's the most important thing around this one. And, also it's just something I also had as it, when I was just a team lead. Um,I also had this there where it was really like, “Oh God, I'm the expert.”
I can solve this in no time. But, sometimes holding back the own opinion will lead to better results and you would have thought of yourself and, and maybe also important for me was, so I never worked in a more, self-organized team than at that point in time. So from the project itself, the boundaries were not very strict, I would say. So like we had some, and the responsibility each team member had was quite huge. And, when I reflect back to then, I also encountered several decisions I made wrong or. my now from 2024 would have done it differently than my person from 2018
Lena: But there are some things that you had to experience in 2018 to also become the 2020 for you.
Max: exactly. And some patterns I recognize and I try to avoid them for the other people and was like, okay. I did this myself, it will not end well. Do you really want to do it? Yes. All right. Then,
Lena: Godspeed. Yeah, not talking about exploding everything. All right. systems down.
Max: Just something which is really something where I thought, Oh God, Hey, this is just an annoyance. I could have, driven around, I would say, but if you want to do it that way, all right. And the thing is, people work differently. So some people, they see what you mean. Ah, thank you very much for your advice. And some people think, Hey, no,I know it better. And then it's okay, let's see,I'm always, I'm open for surprises. So like,someone has a solution, which works against my initial,suggestion or what my initial gut feeling and the solution proves even better then I'm open to learn something.
Max’ advice for others
Lena: there's still technically so much that I still want to ask, but I also I'm just curious, but I also know you have places to be, so I do want to give you a couple of just quick questions. And the first one I wanted to ask is, you'd mentioned, giving away ownership when you start on or take on something. You also mentioned dealing with the never-ending to-do list. what else do you wish you'd known sooner in your career as a lead?
Max: It's good to search for help. So like talking is nice. So like exchanging with. with peers is important. And, that, there was this point where I discovered, okay, the scrum team is not my team anymore, but my team are other people. And the. The other people are not organization wise described as a team, but I need them. And the peer group is more important than the certain organizational team. And this is something what was really important for me. and giving away responsibility. It is a good,that this is something good and not something. bad those things I would say are the most important ones.
Lena: I love those. and, how do you decide that your work day is over?
Max: Usually I'm setting the time at the beginning, maybe at the workday before this, so like tomorrow I'm working until this and that, and,I'm planning my work days and my work weeks, usually now in advance.so I, I see what are my current, what are the current work priorities and what are my, current, private priorities. And then I see, and then I look into, okay, what's important to you when I, when do I need to be at home there and what is important for me at home there and, planning around this.
Lena: what's your opinion on meetings?
Max: uh, depends.
Lena: I know it's a mean question
Max: yeah. I think that this bias towards meeting that they are always bad is wrong. I think they are important and there are important meetings when the important people sit together and do the important decisions, that's, and what, one important person, it may be important that this person is there the whole time and only say one sentence. And this, and I, over, over all the time, I, did not, you could argue that those meetings. Can also be an email or something like this, but usually it, it is just, it's not the way it works
Lena: because of the dynamic
Max: yeah, exactly. So because some, sometimes some people just need to intervene at a specific point in time. It may also be their kind of leadership or developers style in this case, like I'm sitting here, I'm hearing, and, if something happens, I intervene, meetings I dislike, are those where, People attend a meeting knowing that they are doing certain work during the meeting.
So, just being in the meeting because the meeting was set up that's just wrong meetings in my opinion are to, to distribute knowledge, to, to connect people and to have an output. And, those meetings, um, valuable,
Lena: in one sentence, what's the hardest thing about the “becoming more of a multiplier”-quest that you're on.
Max: the hardest thing is that, your success is based on the feedback of others, I would say. So get, getting this together. So like it's.I mentioned this before, this whole, Oh God, I did the task, I moved the ticket to closed. that was my duty. I did it. was my responsibility. My name was on the task. Now my name is, it's not there anymore. And this. this more abstract way of measuring your success is the hardest, okay. there was one, episode of Futurama where, uh, was some cosmic entity says something, if there wasn't mentioned, you did anything, did you, anything at all?
Something like this.
Lena: it kind of a, “if the tree in the forest fell and no one heard it”-kind of a thing, “did it even fall?”
Max: Yeah. Yeah. Something like, figuring out was it really my work that led to success or was it Was it just, yeah. I said you did it. I said do it. You did it Nice. . so did I do anything? I'm not sure. And, um, and, and the thing is, yeah,they, when you then ask the people, they say, yes, it was really important that you were there and you, it was really important. You were there and helped me in this certain situation. And, getting this feedback and getting this just indirect confirmation of your own work is the hardest.
When you dive into this whole tech bubbly and management thing, it's always this, stigma that managers don't do anything in this exam. So yeah, all the tech guys do all this stuff. And, and it's always, there are so many jokes around this where the managers are sitting around with one person with a shovel, who takes up a street or something like this and making sure you're so like, convincing yourself, you're not one of looking down on this one poor guy who's there with the shovel. Yeah, that's the interesting part, but I guess if several people say it's important what you are doing, then it might also be important.
Lena: You might be onto something.
Max: Might be but, when you then see how it works on certain points in time, when you were not involved in a certain project and see what happens there. So with only self-organized, but not steer teams and see, okay, and, oversee sometimes confusion there, then you can also say, okay, I think I'm needed here and, um, let's see how this will work out.
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Highlights and more recommendations for anyone aspiring to, or just newly in a leadership role
Lena: Max and I have had very different leadership roles in our careers, but one big thing in common, it's almost impossible to plan for a day, but we always need to plan for the week instead, or even the month or quarter. Honestly, thinking about it this way has helped me so much in coming to a bit more peace with my never ending to do list.
If you are shifting roles levels like Max has done, and kind of still is, I want to expand on a few of the great points that he mentioned and add some things that can help. A lot of people ask about how to get into the work of a technical or other lead in engineering. And I want to call out a few points that Max highlighted, like speaking for your team or bringing your experience to connect the dots for people or play through scenarios together. Another point that can be really helpful, but also tricky is becoming the go to person or an expert in a specific field or functionality or service.
Many companies require something like this for promotions into leadership roles. Now, the tricky part is that once you are in such a role, you suddenly need to do the exact opposite. You need to help other people become the experts and have as little as possible relying on you. And that big one 80 can be really hard to do because it means what brought you here is not important anymore.
That's why I also have some tips for you for how to adjust once you are in a leadership role. First of all, name the uncertainty and difficulties of your new job. Things like dealing with long running and ambiguous work that's never ever really done or missing the satisfying effect of closing a ticket.
That takes some adjustment for anyone moving into a higher level role. My personal way of dealing with this has been that I'll sometimes still open a ticket for myself just about an email I responded to. So I have something that I can mark as done and bonus a record of the work that I've done. Second, use your new role to lift others up.
One of the most effective leaders that I've ever worked with used to send a weekly email to senior engineers in our company. This person was in a technical leadership role. In this email, they would share what they're learning from the business side. And I'm The projects they're working on that would be important for the teams at some point, and what they're thinking about and spending their time on.
This wasn't just helpful context for the other engineers, but also a really great way to lead out loud to help the other engineers understand what working at such a higher level looks like and feels like. And third, get to know your new and first team. Your peers are now your primary go to place for any questions, camaraderie, and working together.
Spend time with them, collaborate on initiatives that span your teams or organization, and rely on them when things get hard. I have links to articles about how to do all this in the show notes for this episode. The second part of the series will come out soon. And in that episode, you'll hear from someone with a very different path who's grappling with how technical an engineering leader has to be and how to grow his career and skills onward in a changing industry.
Before we go, I have one last important request for you. I'm currently partnering with LeadDev to better understand how exactly leadership roles have been changing. And we're running a survey to gather data on this beyond Anecdotes. You can find the survey at bit.ly/eng-leadership-survey. Your answers will be anonymous and we will share results with the tech community.
Those five to 10 minutes that you spend filling it in, will help bring more clarity to the engineering leadership community at large, And we'll make sure that data gets to statistical significance. So please take the survey and pass it on to your colleagues. The survey closes on April 12th.
Credits & Production Notes
Leadership Confidential was created, produced, and presented by me, Lena Reinhard.
Our guest's voice was digitally modified.
Theme, original composition, and mixing by Esteban Del Pino.
Production assistance, guest support, and social media by Sly Stark.
Thank you for listening. I'll hear you next time.
