10 Admirable Attributes of a Great Technical Lead
Over the course of my career in software development, I have had the great privilege of working under different technical leads. They are the people who drive the forefront technical direction of the team. I have learned much from them.
To be a great tech lead is hard. It’s an intricate balancing act between two poles of the same attribute. Too much on one side and one can fall.
There is no tech lead who doesn’t have any opinion on anything. They are promoted to a tech lead because they have their core technical competency and are able to direct a team.
They have opinions, which leads to their decision on how the team should move forward. This is great — as at least as a team, we have a direction.
A smart tech leader, while also having opinions, knows when to keep their opinion to themselves and just listen. They know when they should harvest the knowledge of their team members and synthesize them into a better solution before deciding the course forward.
“It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.” — Steve Jobs
