Experienced Devs

3956 readers

1 users here now

A community for discussion amongst professional software developers.

Posts should be relevant to those well into their careers.

For those looking to break into the industry, are hustling for their first job, or have just started their career and are looking for advice, check out:

Logo base by Delapouite under CC BY 3.0 with modifications to add a gradient

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

I got promoted to tech lead. Now what? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Now have direct reports under me. No idea wtf I'm doing, I guess I did a good job? Any advice you have for me?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Oof, I hear you on that.

It's like trying to do customer service 24/7 while on the clock from all angles.

Then you have the stuff that people tell you but don't want you to do anything about. You have to follow that (when reasonable) to keep your team's trust in you. I want to make sure that they feel safe coming forwards if they have a problem. I want to be the team lead that I wished I had when I started working.

Many people heavily avoid a few of our supervisors over poor tact and empathy. A guy had to go to the hospital one day for a broken hand that happened at work. His supervisor insisted that he brought in a doctors note the same day. He understandably quit. I couldn't begin to list the number of HR complaints that this supervisor has had against them. Nothing skeevy, luckily, the person is just very unlikable and short tempered. People in other departments avoid this supervisor like the plague. Some will literally physically try to hide behind stuff when this supervisor walks in so they don't have to worry about talking to them. No, I don't know why this supervisor is still there.

I'm lucky in the sense that I'm good at calming most situations and figuring stuff out. It kind of feels like my job believes that they need me to stay there for that.

I am one of the few people who is good at dealing with that particular supervisor, which is kind of ironic because I totally laughed in their face for raging at me over a dumb thing that someone else did.