Tech Lead Q&A and Videos

I was wondering if you have any thoughts about how to run a meeting/brainstorming session effectively keeping a time check and also ensuring that everyone in the meeting gets a chance to speak. Although this is not a new situation, I have struggled with cutting people off when they sort of hijack the meeting taking all the time leaving others checked out. They don't necessarily mean any harm most of the times or don't intend to steal the thunder but as an organizer it is my responsibility to ensure that everyone gets a fair chance to speak.

The main challenge is that most of the times what they are talking makes sense atleast 70-80% of the content so I find it difficult to cut them off easily without being rude or disrespectful. Being rude/disrespectful is the last thing I want to do! And a few are fast speakers that don’t catch cues of someone attempting to say something. Again, not at all a new situation and I think I do an okay job if not a great job in navigating through this but was curious to know additional thoughts and perspectives.

Hello everyone,

As a senior engineer L5 in my company for 1 year, I recently found myself in a new team with a new direct manager but report to the same Director in the same Org due to the recent company restructure/company reorganization as part of layoff changes. My Director and I are the direct responsible individuals for the Backend Platform System for the last 1 year. However, I am finding that a significant portion of my time is being taken up by "glue work," such as onboarding new teammates, updating the Wiki, documenting On-call Runbook, mentoring cross-functional team members, providing code reviews for new developers, and unblocking people in their code development. While these tasks seem important, they are making it difficult for me to focus on my own projects.

In my first one-on-one, my new manager expressed a desire for me to take on new initiatives. I am eager to do so, but I need to be able to focus on my own work to make this possible. My manager understood that the frequent on-call support was a blocker for me and asked me to train and onboard a new teammate to take over the on-call support, as well as field requests from users and help others with their work. However, I have still found myself doing a lot of training and providing support even two weeks since my last meeting.

I would like to hear from others who have found a way to balance these responsibilities effectively. How can I prioritize my own work while still contributing to the team's success? I know this will be a difficult decision, and I'm not sure how to approach it. I'm worried that if I stop doing some of these tasks, it may impact my relationship with my manager and team.

If anyone has faced a similar challenge, I would appreciate hearing about how you approached it. Did you stop doing certain tasks and responsibilities, and if so, how did it affect your relationship with your team? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

I am trying to get promoted to Lead Software Engineer, which relates to an E5 level at Meta, if I am not wrong. I have seen several engineers in my organisation coast at the current level I am.

I wanted to understand if there are some key things I should be doing in order to perform at a Tech Lead level, so that I am promoted to one as well. This would be a bit long question, but please bear with me.

Following are some of the things highlighted in a few discussions:

1. Should have demonstrated complex backend system designs - How do I create this opportunity to build a complex system for myself? Often, the projects we are a part of don't require complex solutions.
2. Have a very strong code quality
3. Mentor other engineers - I started having 1:1s with Junior engineers on how to grow. Have not been doing this with Senior Engineers, but I try to jump in calls with them whenever they need some help. Often, the credit goes hidden, and sometimes it does bother me, but not sure if there is some way around it. What are your thoughts?
4. Handling production outages and incidents - Trying to be on top of it. Recently, have been putting out short term fixes, but alongside working on some libraries to fix it in an extensible way and have a larger impact with other teams as well. Sometimes, having visibility for my work in other teams seems to be difficult, but trying my way around this. If there is something you can recommend, that would be great.
5. Should I mention in my skip levels that this is something I am targeting for myself? - Right now, my focus is to try to uplift the code quality, work on larger designs (a question mentioned wrt this), trying to uplift the team (I have created a channel where I share stuff that can help the team upskill, brief nuggets of information on how to write good code etc. Doing this almost twice a week for around 2 months now), trying to mentor engineers within the team.

Another aspect is that my team would be getting changed soon due to organisational requirements. Given that, How do I make sure I am on the right trajectory to getting promoted ? (One thing on top of my mind is that I would be asking for junior engineers whom I can work with and try uplifting, alongside asking for opportunities/projects that would have large visibility and impact.)

Do you have any other advice for me?

I've seen advices here in Taro that seniors should make themselves very much replaceable so that when this senior is away, someone is able to cover for them and the team could do well, which makes sense.

I thought the fact that people found the advice to be helpful, shows that making yourself replaceable isn't something that's very intuitive the first time. Like if someone didn't read the advice, they probably wouldn't have optimized for that.

I'm not quite senior yet but just curious to understand the situation (and people) better - was this thinking assumes that the amount of scope is in hyper-growth phase? Are there cases where it isn't really applicable / optimal for them to do so (and so they don't make themselves replaceable, and still do well) - then wouldn't they just continue doing it and we can't really blame them? I feel it's rare that people would change their behavior unless they really understand why.

As a Senior software engineer working at a mid-size tech company, I’m still learning how to properly push back when others Sr SWE & managers or Directors from Web or Mobile team tried to get me to do tasks that do not match my own priority.  As much as I like to be nice and support others, I agree that I can only do so much.  I brought this up with my direct manager and my Director (L7 Senior Manager & L8 Director), and they told me to loop them in when I face overwhelming pressures from other engineers/ cross-functional teams. My direct manager also told me they wants me to be able to focus on big project initiative, and they see that I am on track to be the Tech Lead given my current trending.

While I do appreciate that my boss gives me words of assurance and direction and offered to step in to fend off those pressures during my one-on-one call, I recognize that I would have to be the person who is good on establish priorities and be able to push back on people. I cannot really rely on my boss to do the push-back to fend off the pressure given that with the recent layoff, we are short on staff.

Wanted to get some thoughts and suggestions on "How can I push back diplomatically against an overwhelming amount of tasks"?

My manager suggested that I work on the skills below to advance my career. Do you have any masterclasses or other resources to develop these skills? I added links to the resources that I know about.

* Stakeholder management
* Project management
* Design & architecture -
* Communication -
* Leadership -

I watched the video I am particularly interested in the point: "Great TLs sequence their project in such a way that all the highest risk things get knocked out first". Can you please give examples of doing that in a real life? What are some examples of activities that you found higher risk than others and therefore you decided to do them first to minimize the risk?

Apologies in advance for a long question. Not sure how to ask this question without providing deeper context.

I’ve been working with my current manager for the last 1.5 years. While they have recently helped me get promoted to Senior, it’s been a constant struggle. I dread our 1:1 almost every single week because it always run overtime and we are often still not on the same page. 

I see two major issues that haven’t notably improved in the times I’ve reported to them.

(1) My manager isn’t able to coach me, or any of the SWEs on the team. My manager doesn’t seem confident when we have career discussions - I recently asked them what they thought was the difference between good TL and a great one, and they struggled to coherently answer this. Instead, they said they would know better after the next performance calibration.  Additionally, none of my teammate has gotten proper coaching either.  For example, a teammate struggled to submit code due to their poor code quality and thus had low CL velocity, so my Manager simply told them to submit more CLs, which only made them more stressed without a legitimate way to improve. 

(2) My manager lacks technical understanding of our projects and constantly pushes for speed. My manager was externally hired, and to this day, they don’t really understand the complexity of the work our team does. I understand EMs don’t need to contribute code directly, but my manager almost always underestimate how complicated the projects our team takes on are. As engineers, we frequently have to defend our timelines, which is not only frustrating but also pressures some teammates to favor suboptimal design or hastily done CLs that just causes even more churn. 

The weird part is, my manager often seem unaware of their own actions, and when I talk to them about these issues, they are always receptive to feedback and seem willing to improve. However, I simply haven’t seen enough improvement in the last 1.5 years. 

I could leave, since this is having an impact on my emotional well-being. But I do have good standing w/ my own team and the overall org, and I want to use this situation to learn as much as I could. I know that I myself have a lot to learn as a tech lead (Thanks for , it’s really helpful), and I know I can probably get a bit ahead of our projects and start estimating/de-risking earlier, so my Manager doesn’t get overly aggressive with timelines. I know I can also take this chance to more closely mentor my teammates and help them succeed, since they aren’t really getting it from our manager. 

I want to stay, but is it the wrong decision because I have little career support from my manager? If I do stay, what should I focus on so I can really help my team and at the same time learn something valuable for my career?

At Microsoft, basic criteria for promotion is to deliver at next level consistently. Example: At L62, i need to work and deliver at L63s work level standards.

How does it differ from an entry level engineer to the head of engineering level at each of the levels, given the scope grows as well at each level?

• Software Engineer
• Senior Software Engineer
• Tech Lead
• Staff Software Engineer
• Principal Engineer
• Head of Engineering
• Director of Engineering
• Vice President
• CTO

How do each of the levels ensure they are onboarded as quickly as possible to have maximum impact ?

What’s the best way to handle a situation as a tech lead when you are under pressure to deliver your tasks and ensure that the other team members are also on track? If one developer slacks and doesn’t meet the deadline, is it automatically the lead's fault, especially if the situation was raised well in advance. If the person continues to under deliver with poorly written code, is it okay to spend time and pair program and get work done just to meet deadlines? Keep in mind that the developer is a junior engineer and requires fair bit of hand holding.

I had to approve a PR, although I was not 100% confident, it wasn’t a breaking code and it wouldn’t have caused any backward compatible issues. I received extremely harsh feedback for approving a sub standard from a peer/colleague. Had I not completed the PR, my manager would have provided feedback on the delayed project, what’s the best way to navigate between two leads or managers who are not aligned and expect different outcomes from the same situation?

Please help.

I've hit a lot of issues pretty deep into the project's execution that hold it up. It can come as late as running the A/B test where we find a big problem that delays everything and takes weeks to solve. This messes up the initial estimates I set up.

Part of this is because I transitioned between teams recently: On my previous team, it was easier to set up components and test them early, but in this current team, it's hard to get real signal until everything is set-up and we run a full end-to-end test.

Lastly, if I hit an issue like this, how can I minimize its effect on my performance and restructure the timeline in an acceptable way?