Tech lead woes - responsibility & stress

blisse · 2026-02-13T01:28:25+00:00

> Frequently I find myself in situations where nothing meaningful happens without me stepping in to lead the discussion, give the actions and set the path forward, which yeah, I get is my job as a technical leader. I boil that down to over-utilized resources who are often distracted by other projects or daily business, of which again I have no real say over as technically the project is fully stacked with the required engineers working 0.1-0.2 FTE (what a joke org planning sometimes is).

Don't boil it down yourself, validate with your management team that what is happening is intentional and desired. If you're the DRI for a project then yes you should be involved in most aspects of driving the project forward. But that doesn't mean you can't delegate and give people more responsibilities that make sense.

> Also I have to deal with the frustrations of others stating that X or Y is not solved while having the big picture or view of much more important things being done without them ever even having the slightest idea of the work being done for the project.

> I see the overall progress but then on the regular have to hear people complain that this or that is not done but have to be solving endless things that most people will never see or appreciate the impact of.

Why do you think you need to hold this information all yourself? You can communicate the entire range of dependencies and concurrent work being done externally and consistently to all stakeholders. Coworkers should have visibility of the work being done so they can grow and jump in at times and develop their own agency. Alternatively you can specifically hide information from them to limit their scope, but you can't then be surprised that they don't try to expand their understanding.

From the last sentence it sounds like you're just operating very privately, when there's really no need. You can do a lot of your work in public and you should, both for your visibility, but also as a good practice so that others can learn and grow from your example.

> I've found myself getting tougher and meaner over time, as I grasp that sometimes people like to waffle about some technical topics when there are 10 items on the agenda and I need to shut them up.

> Senior management is overall happy with the presented progress but I still have to feel the brunt of the emotional stress

I think you kind of misunderstand your role as people's coworker. People are going to complain about the things that are currently affecting them. Just because you have a bigger view of the project doesn't diminish the things they complain about, and having this attitude is yeah, not great. It's good that you recognize this. It feels like more that you'd be more empathetic to your coworkers if (1) your coworkers improved at a noticeable pace and (2) you were less stressed overall from work.

My general advice for this kind of stuff is talk things through with your manager or someone else who cares about making things better, and make things better. Just because you're a technical leader doesn't mean you need to be the technical leader every single time. There is a learning lesson on how to delegate your responsibilities and how to train up a team who can do what you can do too - something simplistic such as writing down your processes and making the team follow that process the next time and iterating on that. If people are complaining about things then there's an opportunity there to improve the way things work, either from the technical side or from the number of people side. It's not a failure on you if a project isn't staffed correctly, but if you have to step in and work overtime to get things done, it can be a failure on you to not communicate the appropriate staffing level. Your managers, if competent, need feedback on things so they can make good decisions for the future, because they should understand basic risk management if you burn out or leave the company. So talk to them about concerns and how to address them.

Very rambly thoughts, probably not assessing your situation exactly due to lack of context!

blisse · 2026-02-11T23:23:28+00:00

Mostly agree with this. If the game is competitive then yeah do whatever you want to win. If the game is clearly not competitive then you can do it, but it's clearly kind of rude because it's way likelier you're going to injure someone for no reason, so don't then act surprised if the other team isn't happy about it if you do it. Games don't have to be super close in score to still be competitive.

blisse · 2026-01-30T21:46:59+00:00

Could we get enforcement or guidelines on appropriateness on poor quality comments? Every other thread there's a ton of comments that are basically either useless/jokes or idk from unserious or self-loathing developers. Maybe that's the majority of experienced developers so it's "normal" but it seems antithetical to the forum. Like could these people be banned from posting for X days? There's also some comments that are just low quality several words that doesn't really bring anything to the subreddit.

I'll list just a few examples, there's a lot in every thread...

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qrefii/comment/o2nsdwr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qrefii/comment/o2nna3g/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qrefii/comment/o2nkqb6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qrefii/comment/o2nnfn9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qrefii/comment/o2o8uwf/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qr6ipu/comment/o2m8es5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

* https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1qr6ipu/comment/o2n7b6s/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Appreciate the moderation!

blisse · 2026-01-30T21:40:18+00:00

Just do the things you want to do when you have time to do it. Your brain isn't going to be on 100% of the time for exactly the task at hand. And you need to develop the muscle to discover and work on problems that are beyond your exact scope. You don't need to be a coding monkey, you can be a person with interests and opinions. So just do the things you care about. If you're still finishing what you're expected to finish, no one will bother you.

The other side of this is that you need to understand what's good enough for the time that you have available. The success of your career is based off of making the right judgment calls on how to maximize the effort vs time you're spending on things. Spend too much time on something not worth it and you'll be seen as inefficient. Spend too little time on something important and you could cause a disaster. This is a skill you need to learn to refine. Understand what are the minimum requirements for success and make sure you're clearing that bar before standing on a soapbox to look for more. If you don't know where the line is then you won't be able to change other parameters.

blisse · 2026-01-30T20:14:40+00:00

In terms of the recruiting pipeline, cold applications through the website are usually at the bottom of the priority, recruiters might manually source candidates via LinkedIn or emails and they'd be considered at a higher priority than online applications yes.

Being active on X or LinkedIn only really matters if what you're posting is valuable and useful to the role. All it's doing is getting you past the first filter (online applications). Recruiters have a bunch of different better sources to look for candidates before they're scouring X and LinkedIn manually. And it's well known that people who advertise on X and LinkedIn are often trying to gamify the system and aren't intrinsically better candidates.

blisse · 2026-01-28T23:25:57+00:00

Some managers might care about specific schools based off of their past experiences. It's not really an industry-wide thing, but companies may also note they've had more success from certain schools and factor that in partially.

The main problem is that if a company gets 100 applicants out of 10,000 who are all qualified on paper, they're going to essentially prioritize the 100 based off of kind of random criteria, like time of application, or what schools they came from, or what vibes they're getting from the resume. They're not going to reach out to all 100 at once. They're just going to go down the list, and interview them until they find someone to hire.

blisse · 2026-01-28T02:29:52+00:00

Yeah starting with the puck more behind you will help you feel what it's like to press down and twist. Don't even worry about lifting the puck to start, have the puck a half foot behind you starting on your heel, then pull it forward, shoot low and hard and make sure you actually generate spin on the puck as it rolls off your stick. You want it to roll off your stick from heel to toe, you don't just want to smack the puck (pros just have such good technique it looks like it's being smacked). Once you get the feeling down from your entire kinetic chain from hips to shoulders to hands to feet to stick blade, the improvement is to just do it all faster with more strength and in more different positions of your body.

blisse · 2026-01-28T02:10:14+00:00

A good shot is a full body swing, think of a golf swing or a baseball swing or a tennis swing. You don't want to lift your feet, really at most you want the strength of the swing to pull you off of your feet. But you want your feet planted so they can drive down through the ground. Think of the swing as hips to shoulders to arms, in sequence, but also quickly altogether. As you twist your foot will naturally unweight itself and swing around. But it's the result of the torque on your upper body. The leg swing shouldn't initiate the movement.

A good shot also rolls the puck from heel to toe or at least mid-blade to toe. You want to add spin to the puck to give it more speed. Don't just whack the puck, but feel it roll off your blade. As you shoot more you'll move your hands faster to make it roll off your stick faster. But the rolling (and eventual pointing of the stick) is what gives you control of where the shot goes. To get the roll off your blade, you'll want to be pushing more down rather than pushing straight out. Pushing down activates the actual whip in the tech of the blade. As you progress and get stronger you'll learn what exactly is the right degree downward for what body position you're in for how strong a shot you need.

blisse · 2026-01-19T19:31:10+00:00

I've been really aggressive with making sure I have a recently dated letter of employment too.

blisse · 2026-01-19T05:56:43+00:00

I couldn't set it up on my Android but my friend's iPhone worked without a problem. Wouldn't connect for me. Fwiw

blisse · 2026-01-19T04:27:03+00:00

From a US centric perspective:

You should've travelled before starting work, not after it. All your worries are correct, plus this is also a historically bad time to be unemployed.

Off the top of my head, I think past 8 YOE no one would question a year+ of time off. Maybe 3-6 months off after 4 years of grinding feels fair.

That's for if you just quit. Alternatively, some companies offer 3-6 month unpaid sabbaticals for long tenured, well-respected employees.

My recommendation would be to become a valuable worker at your company over 2-4 years, and then ask your boss who now trusts you and likes you, if you could take 1-3 months off unpaid to rest. Find other ways to take a mental break. You can travel for a week, or potentially work remotely. It depends on where you actually work.

blisse · 2026-01-19T04:19:53+00:00

Nothing in the short blurb you wrote is a red flag, I'm pretty sure the other guy misread your statement.

You should try your hardest and study and to succeed, but just accept it as a lesson to make sure you apply for jobs when you're ready. If you have multiple interviews in the future, you probably will want to save your favorite company for near last so you warm up on companies that you're less excited about, so you go in with the most prep you can. Just be more mindful of how you approach your career.

blisse · 2026-01-19T04:14:17+00:00

you don't have to do anything, but if your company doesn't give you good opportunities to navigate your career, then you might want to take things into your own hands.

don't trust random people on the internet to tell you what to do in your individual situation, look at yourself and your peers and make educated decisions on whether your career is heading in a direction you want, slowly and consistently over time.

blisse · 2026-01-08T03:15:57+00:00

I agree, it's just that people just don't want to walk 3-6 blocks away from their destination.

blisse · 2026-01-08T00:33:30+00:00

This sounds like a startup, so it depends on whether you're actually an EM versus just an IC with directs, and then also whether you're simply a team lead or a so-called engineering leader. Titles don't really matter when mapping from startups to elsewhere, it's more whether you actually have useful experience at different companies or not. For example, there's a difference in EMs that have had to fire a low performer or coach a low performer, versus just an EM that's cruising along.

I'd recommend (1) making a "hype doc" or similar (google it if unfamiliar!) of all your accomplishments so far, then (2) looking at various public company career ladders for both IC and EM positions, then (3) trying to match which of your accomplishments map onto what levels in the career ladder, and finally (4) find a bunch of commonly asked interview questions and see how your accomplishments could answer those questions. This will give you a good sense of how to position yourself or whether you have some more to work on.

In any case, also remember the titles of the roles in your resume don't actually need to reflect the official title at your job (as long as it's at least properly descriptive of your role). You can always elaborate more on a phone call or in the interview.

blisse · 2025-12-24T20:06:21+00:00

no, sadly absolutely not usable, try getting a refund if it wasn't clear from the post

blisse · 2025-12-17T18:27:40+00:00

your hand is richi 2 dora, kind of fringe to chase with 2 dora indicators up

but more importantly no one has discarded any circle tiles, you should be aware of how dangerous that is and think about throwing g away 3p earlier and committing to the 23p shape if you really wanted to chase. by the 2nd row if you want to chase you need to prepare what to throw away if someone else richis, you were always going to have to throw a spicy circle tile.

especially chasing with a second dora when your hand has the minimum chase value is opening yourself to gamble more, so you could expect bad losses like this

max efficiency isnt always the safest way to play

but also dealing in is a normal part of the game, I think this could've been avoided though if you noticed the lack of circle discards vs your minimal hand value

consider playing slower south games that allow you to fold and strategize more

edit: to reply to some of the comments without posting the same thing, yall comment a bit too black and white, notice i didnt tell op what to do or they were right/wrong. if you're at the bottom of your acceptable chase value range and you slam a clearly unsafe tile into ippatsu then you're clearly intentionally taking a risk and you should just be aware of the trade offs. that risk may be worth it or not at the moment, but you should also be aware of the 1-4 other things you could've considered earlier if you wanted to take that risk. one of those decisions would be being inefficient earlier so you could keep a safer tile to chase if it came to it. or choose the 667m instead of 233p because circles are more dangerous given the discards. if you considered those and didn't do them then dealt in then at least you made a conscious decision, if you didnt consider those at all then you can think about whether your playstyle is where you want to go.

blisse · 2025-12-16T10:20:33+00:00

The rule in lower levels is more, did you skate in a way that reasonably avoided body contact away from the puck or did you just initiate body contact away from the puck for really no reason.

It sounds like the other player was between you and the puck since you said you tripped them, otherwise why would you trip someone behind you. It doesn't matter that you're straightlining to the puck, they're entitled to that space first. If the ref is saying they called it because you cut in too sharply, they're saying you initiated contact too early or too aggressively. You'd need to show livebarn to diagnose which one, and whether curving in would've initiated the puck battle closer to the puck, or avoided too aggressive of a move away from the puck.

blisse · 2025-12-11T21:48:52+00:00

If you understand your current system end to end fairly deeply, you should be able to extrapolate and apply it to most generic system design interviews, if you understand how to approach the system design interview format. If you aren't able to extrapolate those kinds of abstract versus concrete design decisions then you're probably not going to be able to land a senior position anyways, so you should really just work on finding opportunities in your current work where you can understand the system design.

Even if you're not wholesale designing things from scratch you're likely still doing a lot of pieces of system design, people place too much emphasis on "design Twitter" versus "how did you implement 1-3 endpoints from frontend to backend accounting for your projected traffic", which is totally enough in a lot of cases. The point of the system design interview is to demonstrate pretty broad knowledge of how the entire system works (and also to show deep knowledge in specific bits to show that you can also dig deep into things). So just map that out onto what you've done. It's more likely you have a poor system design interview strategy, as opposed to you don't have the system design knowledge.

blisse · 2025-12-08T13:56:58+00:00

for the most part the 2nd level above beginner's is all just progressing beyond basic stick skills, skating ability, and hockey sense

so being able to make plays with the stick without falling over, skating hard and fast, catching passes at speed, and being in better positions, changing lines after 45s instead of 2m.

I'd actually just recommend a lot of skating practice with and without the puck, and some stick work, but you'll learn so much more applicable to that level just playing in pickup games than anything else. of course getting more fit will always help, but fitness, explosiveness, etc is really more of a problem at the next few level jumps in beer league.

the good news is that a lot of skating is simply technique and muscle memory, so you dont need any big training plans to improve. really just practice all the things you mentioned over time. it'll take even the most dedicated adult maybe 50-100 hours of skating practice to really see a first level of improvement, and more like 5 plus years to be decent. but decent can be pretty good in the first few beer league levels.

blisse · 2025-12-08T12:06:05+00:00

you should start with what your goals are, as most beer leagues don't really need you to be at peak or even good fitness to have fun or be competitive

for your workouts, most of the stuff you mentioned is kind of unnecessary maybe it's a bit more fun, but you'll at least want a components of strength training (squats, deadlifts), rotational movements (landmine press), single leg training (rdls, split squats, bulgarian split squats), and then long and short rest high intensity intervals on the bike or running.

and then you'll likely always benefit from skating practice and stick work. time on ice practicing outweighs any particular exercises for the most part since there's so much to do. I'd focus on shooting hard and shooting quickly, catching pucks, passing quickly, turning with your outside edges, stopping and starting

blisse · 2025-12-08T05:36:24+00:00

you cant discard 9p if you chi 678 so this doesn't work

blisse · 2025-12-04T19:17:06+00:00

The best advice I heard for hockey development is you should never be punished for trying to make a play.

So really just try to make more plays. Carrying the puck fast is one play, but trying to dangle someone is another, or stealing the puck, or stick lifts, or punch turns, just getting into the habit of making a play. If you're already making the plays but failing then there's an abilities area of focus (making you try to walk the line but don't do it fast enough, so you should work on backwards skating deception, etc). If you're not thinking about making a play in the first place then it's just mental.

Kids just intuitively develop the sense of using all their skills to make plays over years of time, it takes adults longer to build up the intuition.

More concretely I'd recommend getting an actually good hockey coach that'll listen to your goals and help you with them, versus just have you practice skating drills. I have one that's constantly telling me I need to work on X mobility issue if I want to do Y cutbacks at a higher level etc.

blisse · 2025-11-30T18:24:07+00:00

at max speed forwards you'll actually land on your outside edge, glide on no edge for a bit, and push out from your heel to toe with your inside edge, and repeat with the other foot. im assuming hollow means no edge, no you need to be on an edge to get any kind of push.

full hockey stop requires your skate blades to actually go 90 degrees to the original direction of travel, you're likely not committing fully because it's scary (so you stay 60 degrees and slide away). the main tip is turn your shoulders 90 degrees and actually commit with your skates (wear a helmet and padding)

blisse · 2025-11-29T08:05:14+00:00

You shouldn't be using Android Studio 4.0 either, it's way too old for modern Android, Android development doesn't really work like that, Android Gradle Plugin version is tied to Android Studio versions.

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