What Makes A Truly Great Tech Lead - A VP of Engineering's Perspective

Former Mixpanel VP of Engineering David Pan (also ex-Twitter, ex-Amazon, ex-Microsoft) shares his wisdom on what it really means to be a tech lead, shipping projects effectively and leaving the team in a better place in the process.

• Overview: Tech leads are extremely valuable. They allow a team to multi-thread and execute on multiple projects at once, not requiring the engineering manager to babysit everything.
• Understands the business context: Great tech leads have strong product understanding and realize that software needs to be built in different ways based on the situation.
• Project risk shrinks over time: Great tech leads are constantly looking for ways to de-risk their projects over time. As things get closer to the ship date, the project actually becomes less scary!
• Level up the team along the way: Great tech leads figure out ways to leave the team in a better place than it was before the project.
• If you're looking to become a great tech lead: Get to know your PM, assess risk proactively and tackle the hardest items first, and find opportunities to level up your teammates.

You can connect with David here: David Pan's LinkedIn

If you want to learn more about becoming a great tech lead, check out the following resources:

• [Course] Tech Lead Blueprint: Role, Skills, and Strategies
• Becoming A Tech Lead Again In Just 1 Month After Joining Robinhood From Meta - Case Study From Alex
• "How do I lead without authority?" - Staff Software Engineer [E6] at Meta
• "How can I hit the ground running as a tech lead?" - Senior Software Engineer [SDE 3] at Amazon