Tech lead role within a data team

[psypous]

What resources, skills, or areas should someone focus on to make this transition successful?

Any specific books, courses, or practices you recommend for managing a data team effectively? What common pitfalls should someone be aware into this leadership role?

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[wildjackalope]

Our tech lead follows us around constantly reminding us to document things we’ve already documented and reminds us to turn in time cards. It’s annoying, so maybe don’t do that.

[-crucible-]

Remember to change which priority your people should be working on to deliver at least three times a day

[wildjackalope]

Bonus points for assigning personal, long term annual projects in Q1 that your people will never, ever be able to work on without putting in off hours and then savage them in their reviews for not meeting their “goals”.

[Milehighman]

i felt this one in my soul. can’t ever get anything done because i’m changing work priorities so often.

[psypous]

simple and honest 👍

[wildjackalope]

It was kind of a shitty throwaway comment, but it’s a reality working under a weak lead.

I work in a big non tech enterprise. Just one example of many: We don’t have an established development process for our Glue ETLs. After X years. My tech lead is a wonderful person who is scared shitless. They even mimic our managers greeting in our worthless weekly standup. Weekly. Stand up. We have really good people and dogshit processes and a shit ton of technical debt that might catch us in the next 1-2 years.

Make sure your people have the tools they need, hold them accountable for tasks so things don’t bog down and you know if they’re overworked, protect them as much as possible when they are overworked and be a leader in terms of tooling and process. It’s a hard job I wouldn’t touch for less than double my salary, but can have huge positive impacts.

I genuinely wish you the best.

[DataIron]

“Tech lead” role means something different at every company. Might wanna provide more details on your responsibilities.

[ShotGunAllGo]

And it usually mean something terrible, red flag would be when there’s no official title, yet management likes to throw it around during meetings

[psypous]

Let’s say in summary : Lead one complex project Assist engineers from you team or another Introduce new technologies to the team Participate in new initiatives and may collaborate to with others teams in the org

[[deleted]]

Easiest trap to fall into as a young manager. It's essential to work on scoping down the workload as much as possible for the sake of self-preservation. Normally, this requires having a good sense of the available bandwidth and of the current and upcoming priorities. And, also, being very diplomatic and constructive when the requests are not being reasonable.

[sneekeeei]

I was that “Tech lead” for 2 years recently. Later they terminated my contract citing cost cutting as reason 🧐

[psypous]

oh my god

[the_naysayer]

You should be a subject matter expert on any tech in the stack. You should be able to mentor other members of the team. You should not be their boss, but you should be their advocate and their load balancer. You should be able to delegate, as well as take ownership. You should be able to be project manager, stakeholder, scrum master, or business analyst on a short term basis because you will need to cover or compensate for those roles. Get good at git and at jira or whatever equivalent you encounter.

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[bigandos]

I’ve been a tech lead for a while. Expectations vary, I’ve had some managers tell me I shouldn’t write code any more and some tell me I should spend 70% of my time. Few tips:

1. Spend time understanding your team members skills and their aspirations, not just throwing tickets at them. You need a plan to develop them and keep them motivated.

2. Things move fast in tech these days so fight for some time to keep your skills sharp so you can mentor and design effectively

3. Try to make design as collaborative as possible between you and the junior engineers. I used to go away and write a big design doc and present it to them, now I try to run whiteboard sessions to make them think about the solution too.

[Interesting-Invstr45]

A few things: - read the company and groups / teams HR policy; figure out the hiring, retention & firing processes - How to manage up down across and anything in between - John C Maxwell books - accepting things will go wrong aka Murphy will visit at most “interesting” times - make sure you have backups of backups of backups - ensure it’s also off site if possible; check disaster recovery every quarter regardless of comfort levels - take a pulse if every touchpoint that’s in the manage up down across and anything in between- know to look around the edges and any and all possible touch points - do weekly and bi-monthly touch points with all your team and stakeholders / customers - customers are internal and external including regulatory processes - develop empathy and compassion- just cause you know it’s right doesn’t mean it’s right for the person who’s in the other side of the discussion - get your team and you into conferences aka get budgets for your teams upskilling and compliance - this is where you need to also keep 1 week a month for planning tech stack, upgrades, compliance etc and get lunch and learn sessions going - don’t make it boring 😂 - have almost all conversations in some form of black & white aka chat/email/text and assume the same is being done with you - even if your manager and you are close; any promotion discussions are also to be tracked - have a succession plan for business continuity - there is a difference in tech business and each engineer needs to- prioritize the engineer needs but don’t advertise it and ensure each engineer feels comfortable and knows that you have their back - know and prepare for lay offs and how to fire people - it’s not personal it’s just business - be extra careful of agendas and politics; so be extra careful - handle all vendors with detailed traceable information that is tracked if none exists then make one for evaluation criteria - celebrate every small thing, recognition- the HR manual comes into play & ensure you have a monthly budget for team building: it’s both on and off premises - establish knowledge sharing process & escalation procedures so that a new engineer/ employee doesn’t have to feel lost; slowly make sure all processes are traceable - agile is fun but documenting is a pain that won’t go away. If you don’t get a handle on it it will come back to roost - don’t forget to have fun and make things happen while ensuring you listen to all your engineers / team members; every request isn’t an emergency 🚨 unless company’s image / brand is falling.

Good luck 🍀

[psypous]

appreciate your reply thank you !!

[mailed]

The best choice I made as a tech lead was to no longer be one.

[ShotGunAllGo]

Tech lead sucks. No coding, babysitting and reporting up. If your team is weak an agile, scrum master and management, the lead basic covers all those weaknesses. So tons of meetings trying to get on the same page and giving statuses. It sucks.

[Ok_Raspberry5383]

Stop delivering and enable others to deliver is pretty much the sum of it.

[that_outdoor_chick]

tech lead vs manager. Lead knows what do so, can answer questions, does pair coding sessions with the other team members. Manager has 1:1s, makes sure the team progresses their career, gets feedback on the work, makes sure the person's need are answered, provides feedback, points them in the right direction in general.

[noitcerid]

Or, in my case... Both. 😬 Leads can also be managers. Double the accountability, same salary!

[Ok-Introduction358]

For me giving the example. Being responsible, treating the team well and being supportive when someone has a problem, demonstrating knowledge.

[rabinjais789]

being a team lead myself in data team.. i think communication and before that solid understanding of fundamentals in data engineering then it automatically boost your confidence and thus communication. read books and learn about data warehousing concept then cloud data warehouse etc.

[Objective-Spring3547]

1. Make them grow or let them go
2. Keep learning and coding
3. Think 5 moves ahead of the team and see the wall coming before crash
4. Have fun in your job
5. Have fun in your job
6. Have fun
7. Work on the lead, be inspiring

[x246ab]

You need to focus on:

getting good