After spending a few years as a senior software developer at Zendesk, I became burnt out due to the covid lockdowns. I quit my job and tried my hand at a few startups and scaleups before finding an opening at REA for a lead developer role. After around 6 months here’s a couple of my thoughts and learnings around the ordeal in no particular order. I’ll probably try to flesh some of these out into their own posts later on.
-
Find a mentor. A good mentor is someone who may have recently been in a similar position to yourself and is able to give you relevant and timely advice on what they did while they were in your position.
-
The job of the lead is to give the team context but to also focus them on specific achievable goals. How do you train someone for a marathon? Have them focus on moving a mile at a time.
-
Overcommunicating is better than undercommunicating. Make sure your team understand the priorities and the expectations you're setting.
-
The role is somewhat amorphous. You will be required to wear different hats to allow your team to progress. You will also need to balance this against what the rest of your team will do. Create or refer to a Ways of Working document. If you’re worrying about delivery, make an effort to understand if your delivery lead is already covering that. If you’re micromanaging, figure out what/when to delegate. Have the conversations to have clarity on who is responsible for what.
-
Write things down to have a paper trail and to settle future debates. Whiteboarding a diagram is also a great way to communicate concepts and to ensure everyone is on the same page.
-
Prioritize. Your role is no longer confined to cards on a board. What can you delegate to your seniors? Understand what you need to deliver today, this week, this quarter. This will help you understand what you can drop. One of my mentors goes even as far as to plan his whole week on his calendar with the assumption that if you do not block off time, it won’t get done.
-
Coaching your reports vs directing. Look at where people are on the situational leadership scale. Allow them room to grow — you do not need to have all the answers.
-
Pointing things out a la Joshua Tree Effect is one of the best things you can do to help your people grow. For example, make an effort to highlight when someone does something “senior” so that the more junior people can have a concrete example to learn from.